Kaizen Archives | Page 16 of 28

FastCap Lean Tour: "Do Kaizen First" Every Day

By Jon Miller - November 7th, 2010

Here is another great video from innovator and lean leader Paul Akers. In this video members of one of Gemba Consulting USA’s lean tour groups from Bombardier Aerospace share their impressions while visiting FastCap. Bombardier i

The Smallest Steps Towards Quality Improvement

By Jon Miller - October 24th, 2010

There is a story about a consultant, apocryphal perhaps, who charged $10,000 for putting a chalk mark on the part of a machine that was causing big problems for his customer. When the customer complained that the charge was excessive f

Thank You for Saving Energy

By Jon Miller - September 29th, 2010

Junaid shared with us a simple energy savings idea he took away from a study trip to Japan: I learned many things from Japanese society energy saving is one of them which we have implemented in our factory in Pakistan. I was really imp

Cross Training, the Johari Window and Kaizen

By Jon Miller - September 27th, 2010

Within a lean work system the practice of job rotation serves the purpose of cross training and increased flexibility. This can be deliberate and time-based for repetitive manual work, such that people switch from one task to another e

Possibly the Worst Ever Use of a Suggestion Box

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2010

A September 20, 2010 New York Times article title Haitians Cry in Letters describes what happened when suggestions boxes were set up recently at the 1,300 camps for refugees of the earthquake in Haiti. The letters in the boxes are not

8 Reasons to Love Kaizen Events

By Jon Miller - September 1st, 2010

Some people disparage the 5-day kaizen event as a driver for continuous improvement. When the kaizen even it the only way of putting creative ideas and lean systems into practice this can be a sign of fake lean. Roadmaps, tools and met

Seven Success Secrets of Small Teams

By Jon Miller - August 12th, 2010

Photo credit: Anoopkn, Wikimedia Commons American football coaching legend Vince Lombardi said: Build for your team a sense of oneness, of dependence on another and of strength derived from unity. United we stand. Divided we fall. Or s

Igor Stravinsky Agrees: Standards Enable Creativity

By Jon Miller - July 12th, 2010

There is a stereotype of the creative person who chafes at standards related to how their work is performed, to the point of eschewing any sort of process-driven continuous improvement approach. This creative person can be a designer,

Red Flags in Ronak’s Kaizen Plan

By Jon Miller - June 28th, 2010

Ronak has successfully implemented 5S and plans to move on to implementing kaizen at his company. His plan for implementing kaizen is: 1. Train employees regarding kaizen, different kind of waste, etc. 2. Launch a tool, an Idea box in

PDCA, Hoshin Planning and the Making of Ice Cream

By Jon Miller - June 26th, 2010

When I was young our family had a hand-cranked ice cream maker not unlike the one pictured above, although ours had an aluminum case and not wood. On winter days we would fill the inner cylinder with a mixture of milk, cream, vanilla,

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