Kaizen Archives | Page 14 of 28

Management Improvement Carnival #149

By Jon Miller - November 20th, 2011

I’m honored once again to contribute to the Management Improvement Carnival series which John Hunter at the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog has kept going now to its 149th round. As I looked back over some of the blog pos

Kitchen Jidoka: Low Cost Automation Example

By Jon Miller - November 19th, 2011

There are not two but three definitions of the Japanese word jidoka, which students of kaizen and the Toyota Production System are likely to encounter. In fact there are two different jidokas. Coined by Taiichi Ohno as a play on words

Blog Action Day: Food and a Lean Culture Change

By Jon Miller - October 16th, 2011

We in the West waste nothing so prodigiously as food. One could argue time, but it’s hard to say what purpose time serves and whether it’s possible to know the way in which we spend it is wasteful or meaningful. That quickl

The Importance of Thinking About the Box

By Jon Miller - September 12th, 2011

Leaders interested in innovation or breakthrough improvement often speak of the importance of “thinking outside the box”. By this we mean discarding existing limitations on our thinking (the box) to generate new ideas, prod

Junaid’s Learning from a TPM Workshop

By Jon Miller - September 6th, 2011

Our friend S.M. Junaid sends us occasional dispatches from his experiences with applying lean and kaizen at his company in Pakistan. Recently he shared his learning from a TPM workshop. An Operator’s Relationship to a Machine is

The 6T of Daily Kaizen from a Cafeteria in China

By Jon Miller - August 16th, 2011

On the 7th floor of the building that houses our office in Shanghai, China there is a cafeteria. As I queued today a large green board caught my eye. There were 6 clip boards next to a poster extolling something called the “6T pr

Questioning the Value of the P-Value

By Jon Miller - July 25th, 2011

The p-value expresses the probability of obtaining a test statistic that is at least as extreme as the one result actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true. The scientific method attempts to disprove the null hypothe

The New Math of Daily Kaizen

By Jon Miller - July 10th, 2011

The true meaning of kaizen, we like to say at our Institute, is to involve everyone everywhere in making improvements every day. Kaizen is not just about the 5-day rapid improvement events, although these can be great vehicles for brin

Video Interview with Massaki Imai, Kaizen Pioneer

By Jon Miller - July 6th, 2011

Masaaki Imai is the founder of our company Kaizen Institute and author of two classics on lean management, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success and Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-cost Approach to Management he is work

The Importance of Being Columbo

By Jon Miller - June 26th, 2011

During the 1970s I shared one experience in common with Taiichi Ohno. We both watched Colombo on television, dubbed in Japanese. In fact this is something I share with possibly a hundred million Japanese people, so it only goes to show

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