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Ron Pereira

Ron Pereira is a co-founder and the Managing Director of Gemba Academy and has more than 30 years of experience helping organizations improve performance through Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement. Prior to starting Gemba Academy, Ron served in a variety of manufacturing, supply chain, and leadership roles, including process engineer, engineering manager, Master Black Belt, and director of manufacturing and continuous improvement. Today, Ron works with leaders around the world to develop problem-solving capabilities, strengthen leadership, and build cultures where continuous improvement thrives. Through his writing, podcast interviews, and educational programs, he shares practical insights that help organizations achieve lasting operational excellence.

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758 Articles

10 Characteristics of Great Coaches & Learners

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2013

Throughout my professional career I’ve been fortunate enough to learn – and teach others – about leadership, lean, and six sigma. As I reflect back, I believe I’ve uncovered some characteristics of what makes a good coa

Keep Calm & Improve On – Free Desktop Wallpaper

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2013

Our design team just created some pretty cool desktop wallpaper with the words: Keep Calm & Improve On! If you like it, and want to use it as a friendly reminder to “improve on,” please feel free to download the images

5 Powerful Techniques for Dealing with Setbacks or Total Failure

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2013

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right. -Henry Ford It’s 9:25 PM on a Friday night and I’m currently sitting in the Seattle Tacoma airport due to my flight being delayed. Latest estimates have me arriving home in Dall

How Do You Document Your Processes?

By Ron Pereira - May 13th, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly doing our best to “practice what we teach.” Now, to be honest, we’re far from perfect (who is?) but we’re always trying to find better ways to take care of our customers and develop better pr

Going to Gemba vs. Statistical Analysis

By Ron Pereira - May 6th, 2013

Early in my professional career I worked as a Process Engineer at Nokia (in their mobile phone division). I had many responsibilities but, ultimately, my most important job centered on ensuring all of the equipment was producing cell p

Knee Jerk Statistics

By Ron Pereira - April 29th, 2013

The folks over at Minitab recently wrote an excellent article about how a Six Sigma practitioner leveraged binary logistic regression analysis in order to better understand why associates at a manufacturing plant were quitting. What th

The Problem with A3 Reports

By Ron Pereira - April 22nd, 2013

The A3 report may be one of the most misunderstood lean thinking tools of our time. Why do I say this? Simple. It’s Just a Piece of Paper The A3 report, in and of itself, is nothing more than a piece of paper. But, for some reaso

How to Not Become Handcuffed by Lean & Six Sigma Tools

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2013

I’ve been coaching a Gemba Academy customer through the use of some specific tools. This individual works in a MRO environment meaning he deals with very high mix and low volume. This person is struggling to understand how to cre

Lean Office Tip: Learn How to Dramatically Improve Document Creation Efficiency

By Ron Pereira - April 2nd, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly trying to practice what we teach by improving the way we do our daily work. Our Customer Service team, which is lead by Elaine Cressionnie, receives and sends hundreds of emails each week. Many of th

Introducing the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2013

For the past 6 months I, along with my Gemba Academy colleagues, have been extremely busy developing what we now call the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma. I’m obviously extremely biased… but I have to confess… I’m quite happy

How would you explain what Lean is to a 7-year-old?

By Ron Pereira - November 5th, 2012

Yesterday afternoon while driving home from a soccer game (and before I smashed into a Ford truck and obliterated the right side of my little Toyota… but that’s another story) my 7-year-old daughter (the swimmer and stud soccer pla

5 Critical Control Chart Characteristics You May Not Be Aware Of

By Ron Pereira - September 25th, 2012

No matter if you call yourself a “lean practitioner” or “six sigma practitioner” or some combination of the two… one “tool” you should have a deep understanding of is the control chart. I’ve written about control charts

4 Cloud Based Tools That Have Dramatically Increased my Personal Productivity

By Ron Pereira - May 24th, 2012

As a business owner, husband, and father of 5 amazing children time is not something I have a lot of. As such, being able to stay focused and productive is extremely important. A few months ago I realized I was not being as effective a

A Factory of One

By Ron Pereira - April 26th, 2012

If you missed our most recent webinar called “A Factory of One” you can watch a replay of it here. It was excellent and I highly recommend you take the time to check it out. It’s free to view until May 15, 2012.  Aft

Webinar Replay: Using SPC to Make Better Management Decisions

By Ron Pereira - March 27th, 2012

Update: This webinar can now only be seen by subscribers to the Complete Lean Package. In this pre-recorded webinar, Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and the upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen, showed how simple statistical process c

Perseverance & PDCA

By Ron Pereira - March 13th, 2012

“Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). The ability to persevere through the tough times we experience as lean and six sigma practitioners is extremely important. In fact, the ability to persev

GEMBA ACADEMY

Kanban Systems Overview Video

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2012

Here is a free overview video introducing our Kanban course. And here’s a summary document of this video in PDF format that can be downloaded and printed. Visit gembaacademy.com to learn more about our available courses and acce

Improving Point of Use Lid Storage at Starbucks

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2012

On a recent visit to a Starbucks inside the San Francisco airport, I snapped a picture of their cup lid dispenser. As you can see they store lids in this unit and present it close to where the “final assembly” Barista does

10 Books Every Continuous Improvement Practitioner Should Read in 2012

By Ron Pereira - January 12th, 2012

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year and that things are off to an awesome start for you and yours! To help kick off the new year I thought I’d share a list of the 10 books I recommend all Continuous Improvement Practitioner

And with your spirit

By Ron Pereira - January 3rd, 2012

Roman Catholics around the word recently saw a huge change to the way Mass is celebrated. Specifically, there were several changes to the prayers we say. For example, prior to the change if you walked up to any Catholic and said, “Th

The Best of LSS Academy – 2011 Edition

By Ron Pereira - December 29th, 2011

Well, friends, another year has come and gone.  As always, I’d like to sincerely thank each and every one of you for taking the time to visit LSS Academy. We now have more than 16,000 subscribers which is simply mind blowing! I

An Easy Way to Make Your New Year’s Resolution Stick

By Ron Pereira - December 15th, 2011

Action is the foundational key to all success. -Pablo Picasso As 2011 comes to an end and we look forward to 2012… many of us will make new year’s resolutions. Some will commit to working out, some will commit to getting organi

Gemba Glossary: Value Stream Mapping

By Ron Pereira - December 8th, 2011

Here is the next video in our Gemba Glossary video series. This one focuses on Value Stream Mapping. If you missed any of our earlier Gemba Glossary videos please follow the links below. Gemba Glossary: 5S Gemba Glossary: The 7 Waste

All Bleeding Stops Eventually

By Ron Pereira - December 6th, 2011

Here’s a fact you may not have realized… all bleeding stops eventually. The key question, of course, is how long it takes to stop it. Do we quickly apply a band-aid and limit the damage to our body or do we sit around and wait unti

The Courage to Try

By Ron Pereira - December 1st, 2011

I was recently speaking with a Gemba Academy customer who’s looking to start a small lean consulting company. I’ll call this person Bob for the sake of this article. About Bob Bob explained that he doesn’t have a college degree b

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