101 Kaizen Templates Archives

Brilliant Value Stream Mapping Icon Fonts

By Jon Miller - October 20th, 2009

Yesterday, Jamie Flinchbaugh shared a discovery on his blog. Also, the nice folks at Ambor have developed several very useful fonts for Lean. Skill Matrix Font The Harvey Balls ideograms are great for filling out the skill matrix. Comp

101 Kaizen Templates: Workplace 5S Audit Sheet

By Jon Miller - March 19th, 2008

Why would the world need another Workplace 5S Audit Sheet? Well, kaizen never ends, that’s why. Although it does rest sometimes. On this 5S audit sheet, there are 10 questions, two in each of the five categories of 5S. You need

101 Kaizen Templates: PWINT Kaizen Worksheet

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2008

The idea of PWINT kaizen is to look for kaizen ideas that are within a narrowly defined process band, with a particular perspective of observation. The letters PWINT stand for Processing, Waiting, Inspection and Transportation. It̵

101 Kaizen Templates: Production Control Board

By Jon Miller - March 13th, 2008

The hourly production control board, otherwise known as the hour by hour chart, is used to monitor the progress or output of a process against plan. The advantage of this kaizen template is in its simplicity, near real time performance

101 Kaizen Templates: Kaizen Newspaper

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2008

One guideline for operating an effective suggestion system is to limit the scope of suggestions. A person’s kaizen ideas should focus on the work they themselves do. Sometimes teams of people develop kaizen ideas, but the same rule a

101 Kaizen Templates: Kaizen Idea Suggestion Form

By Jon Miller - March 3rd, 2008

Long-term success in becoming a Lean or Agile organization depends on making many small changes. The kaizen philosophy and its many thinking tools helps with this. The suggestion system, when combined with coaching of ideas, is also a

101 Kaizen Templates: Lean Leadership Self Check

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2008

In a blog post, Ron Pereira explains that a Real Leader, “…listens, respects, challenges, disciplines, and genuinely cares about his or her employees. Yes, real leadership is hard to practice. But just like a healthy and ha

101 Kaizen Templates: Daily Hansei Sheet (Pluses & Deltas)

By Jon Miller - February 20th, 2008

Ron Pereira wrote an article titled “How not to screw up pluses and deltas”. It gives useful tips on how to properly review at the end of a day of class room training or a shop floor kaizen. The pluses and deltas activity i

101 Kaizen Templates: Motion Economy Chart

By Jon Miller - February 16th, 2008

One of the toughest things that a kaizen consultant has to do is to tear down the results of past kaizens. This is hard because people develop a sense of ownership of the status quo they helped to build. Even if the status is not good,

101 Kaizen Templates: Spaghetti Diagram

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2008

The spaghetti diagram needs very little introduction. It’s so named because the lines movement drawn on this diagram resemble a pile of tangled noodles. It’s a movement path diagram by a more appetizing name. Seeing Wasted

101 Kaizen Templates: Changeover Analysis

By Jon Miller - February 7th, 2008

There are many common non-lean behaviors such as local optimization, batch work, and building up inventory. Creating WIP lengthens cycle time, worsens quality, builds up barriers between processes and people contributes to late deliver

101 Kaizen Templates: Takt Time Calculator

By Jon Miller - February 4th, 2008

A reader pointed out that the takt time for posting the 101 kaizen template has exceeded. It is true that we have not been hitting a consistent 1 template per 3.5 days. To meet our goal for 101 of these by the end of 2008 we will need

101 Kaizen Templates: ECRS Worksheet

By Jon Miller - January 25th, 2008

We often talk about lean management being the elimination of all waste and non-value added. We may call it the pursuit of perfection, of a waste-free process. But what if we can’t eliminate a certain waste from a process? What to

101 Kaizen Templates: Minor Motion Analysis

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2008

We’re big fans of making significant organization-wide change by involving everyone in small improvement activities every day. This is especially important for sustainability as you progress on your lean journey. As you progress

101 Kaizen Templates: Safety Calendar

By Jon Miller - January 13th, 2008

Early in the year is a good time to refresh our commitment to health, safety and sustainability of our various enterprises. Despite our best intentions, habits being what they are, these resolutions are too often not so resolute. Unlik

101 Kaizen Templates: Stand in the Circle

By Jon Miller - January 9th, 2008

The 60-minute kaizen exercise we call “stand in the circle” originates in the teaching method Taiichi Ohno used. This involved a piece of chalk, a circle drawn on the concrete floor, and a manager left to stand in it for ho

101 Kaizen Templates: The Checklist

By Jon Miller - January 6th, 2008

This is the first post in the 101 kaizen templates series. Only 100 more kaizen templates to go. Takt time is 3.5 days per template. I considered planning out and structuring this series but for now we’ll just go with the flow an

101 Kaizen Templates

By Jon Miller - December 26th, 2007

January 2008 will mark 10 years Gemba Research has been in business. This blog has been active for just over four years now. We are reflecting on the past 10 years in an effort to renew our purpose and focus our energies. We will do th

Mr. Toyota Goes to Washington

By Jon Miller - August 11th, 2005

The August 12, 2005 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Toyota Lobbies to Avoid Blame Amid U.S. Auto Industry Woes” explains how Toyota is adding a sixth lobbyist in Washington D.C. in an effort to avoid being bashed

Kaizen in the Naval Air Command

By Jon Miller - July 23rd, 2005

The U.S. Armed Forces have been using a combination of quality improvement tools and methods for many years. Recently many bases, depots and command centers have been using Lean manufacturing and six sigma tools and principles very eff

101 Kaizen Templates

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