Kaizen Archives | Page 7 of 12

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

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

The COPQ Iceberg

By Jon Miller - June 25th, 2011

S.M Junaid is the Production Manager of Procon Engineering Pvt (LTD) from Karachi, Pakistan. He periodically shares kaizen examples with us. His previous contributions can be found here and also here. Today’s kaizen example is ti

Kaizen Stories from Masaaki Imai

By Jon Miller - June 17th, 2011

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting with Masaaki Imai,the founder of our company Kaizen Institute Consulting Group. Most people know him as the author of his influential books. 1975 Never Take Yes for an Answer: An Inside Look at

Suggestion Box Visual Mistake Proofing

By Jon Miller - June 14th, 2011

This suggestion box was placed in one of the walkways within the airport in Basel, Switzerland. It caught my eye because of the clever use of plexi glass to make the contents of the box visible. Making the contents of the box visible l

Why You Should Go See for Yourself

By Jon Miller - May 14th, 2011

One of the pillar principles of kaizen and lean management is genchi genbutsu – literally “actual place actual thing” but often translated as “go see for yourself”. One of the first things a lean sensei wi

How to Do Yokoten

By Jon Miller - March 21st, 2011

Much of the work I do today with Gemba Academy is to share knowledge by developing online learning. We develop video library, blog posts, podcasts and other resources to help organizations learn, copy and adapt best available knowledge

The True Meaning of Zen

By Jon Miller - February 2nd, 2011

What is the true meaning of zen? At one level the answer is easy. It means meditation. The Japanese for zen is from the Chinese for chan which in turn comes from the Hindu dhyana, the form of yoga through meditation. Ok, so that is the

The Only Type of Kaizen is Daily Kaizen

By Jon Miller - January 17th, 2011

Last week I was asked to identify the three types of kaizen. People feel the need to classify. Boundaries are useful approximations and should not limit us too much in practice. The three types of kaizen commonly identified are big, me

Tools are Worthless, but Tooling is Everything

By Jon Miller - January 2nd, 2011

Last month LEI Chairman and CEO John Shook asked us all a fundamental question in his e-mail newsletter. Everyone wants to know “what’s next for lean?” and John Shook answers this by saying, but in a much nicer way, &

7 Ways to Keep Kaizen Going after Years of Progress

By Jon Miller - November 30th, 2010

Many organizations have pursued kaizen for years or even decades now, 25 years after the publication of Masaaki Imai’s classic book Kaizen. Yet many find that after a few years of progress with kaizen it becomes difficult to main

One Man’s Trash

By Jon Miller - November 19th, 2010

…is another person’s treasure, as the saying goes. Lean is about making effective use of all resources we are wasting whether time, money, information, material or the creative capabilities of people. Too much focus is give

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

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