Kaizen Archives | Page 22 of 28

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

True Work, Apparent Work and Busywork

By Jon Miller - May 9th, 2008

Thanks everybody who posted comments, questions and answers to the takt time competition. We are happy to say that you are all winners. Originally the idea was that only couple of people would win a copy of The Illustrated Toyota Produ

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 of the guidelines to 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

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