Kaizen Archives | Page 10 of 12

The 7 Creativity Tools for When You are Stuck

By Jon Miller - September 2nd, 2008

There is a lot written about creativity. What is it? How can we develop it? Can it be measured and managed? An increasing amount of discussion in the business community is directed towards the topic of creativity. Many a blogger or spe

Small Teams Enable Kaizen and TPS

By Jon Miller - August 24th, 2008

Earlier this month Pete Abilla wrote about effective team sizes in his newly redesigned Shmula blog. The idea is that generally small teams are more effective because communication is essential to team success and beyond a certain size

Learning from Things that Didn’t Work

By Jon Miller - August 5th, 2008

One of the common objections we hear to doing kaizen is that “We’ve tried it before and it didn’t work,” as if past failures were ever a reason for not trying again. Experience is a good teacher only if we step

The Leisure to do Kaizen

By Jon Miller - July 7th, 2008

The most difficult thing about sustaining a lean implementation to the point where it becomes an indelible part of the way of working is not about understanding the techniques and methods of the Toyota Production System, not about brin

Kaizen: Do What You Can Do Today

By Jon Miller - June 30th, 2008

Some of the best kaizen ideas can be truly very little things. It is the accumulation of small changes daily that give us the habit of coming up with creative ideas. If you don’t have on in your mind already, within the next few

Ambiguous Visual Controls: No Running in the Airplane

By Jon Miller - June 29th, 2008

The more you look the more you see ambiguous visual controls. Some are well-intentioned, while others appear to be half-hearted attempts to comply with some bureaucratic requirements. Others hint at hidden efficiencies or inefficiencie

Jedi Kaizen: Is the Force with You?

By Jon Miller - June 28th, 2008

The type of quick improvements or “just do it kaizen” is sometimes called JDI. Recently I heard it pronounced “jedi kaizen” in passing. The jedi are a group of monks in the Star Wars series. As monks, they live

Calisthenics, Kaizen and Your Daily Stretch

By Jon Miller - May 7th, 2008

I was lucky enough to witness a shift start at a local distribution center today. Like most Japanese companies and too few American companies the shift leader instructed all 40 or so workers in about 5 minutes of calisthenics: simple s

Kaizen and the Way of the Ninja

By Jon Miller - March 31st, 2008

Taiichi Ohno was fond of saying “use the way of the ninja, not of mathematical calculations”. He had fun with language even as he left the people he scolded puzzled by his words. Perhaps in today’s language he might s

A Few More Kaizen Ideas Involving Tennis Balls

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2008

The article 50 Great Things you Never Knew you Could do with Tennis Balls on the The Life Hackery website complies a list of dozens of creative things you can do with tennis balls. I carry a tennis ball in my computer bag as a stress r

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

Considerations on Maintaining the Fairness of Kaizen Ideas Reward Systems

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2008

Would you rather have 10 people each solving one $250,000 problem per year? Or would your rather have 100 people each solving ten $2,500 problems per year? This may be one of the key ways to distinguish continuous improvement via lean

Key Points for Managing Kaizen Idea Systems

By Jon Miller - March 4th, 2008

A sustained kaizen idea suggestion system can be one of the most powerful ways to keep people engaged in continuous improvement. Yet even after 50+ years, Toyota can struggle with this in some parts. Below are the three most common que

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

Kaizen Your Life with the Ten Lessons for Good Health

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2008

These ten lessons for good health (健康十訓) are glazed onto my teacup. Reading these while sipping green tea has helped me survive over the years. Lean healthcare professionals take particular note: prevention trumps correction ev

Management by Kaizen Events

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2008

Mark Graban made the point today in the Lean Blog that kaizen events are not enough. He agrees with another lean healthcare article that by themselves, the rapid improvement events of 3 to 5 days in duration are not sufficient to achie

The Cadence of Kaizen

By Jon Miller - January 4th, 2008

Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning “to change and make good,” embodying both the philosophy an the practice of continuous improvement in business as well as personal life. We are often asked about the “right” way

How to Sustain Kaizen? Follow Up with the Tenacity of the Terminator

By Jon Miller - January 2nd, 2008

Yesterday Mike Wroblewski asked How do we Sustain Kaizen Results? on his blog Got Boondoggle? This is a great topic and one that fits in with the theme of sustainability that is on the minds of lean thinkers like Toyota President Watan

Lean Journey Advice from an Optimistic Hungarian Scientist

By Jon Miller - December 5th, 2007

I spent last week in Hungary on consulting assignment. Several times I heard from the locals, “We Hungarians are a pessimistic people” but they are making slow but steady progress with Lean nonetheless. I was also introduce

Four Things to Do Before Letting the Lean Consultants in the Door

By Jon Miller - November 15th, 2007

We are often asked, “What can we do in the mean time?” when shaking hands on an agreement to begin a Lean consultation with a new client. For most companies that are new to Lean, and even some that have been at it for a whi

What is the Standard?

By Jon Miller - November 6th, 2007

A problem was brought to my attention today. Some of our consultants are not submitting expense reports on time, causing us to be unable to bill clients on time. Simply put, some people are keeping other people from doing their job. Th

Why a Kaizen Newspaper is Called a Kaizen Newspaper

By Jon Miller - November 1st, 2007

The kaizen newspaper is tool used to perform visual management on the process of continuous improvement itself. Many people who have not been introduced to the kaizen newspaper through kaizen events or as part of a program of team-base

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