Kaizen Archives | Page 9 of 12

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei: Kaizen by Inspiration is Not Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 13th, 2009

I was flipping through some Japanese books on sayings and speeches given by Taiichi Ohno looking for inspiration for a quick blog post when I found this passage: “Within the Toyota Production System, a lack of ability to do kaize

How to Use 5S to Manage Kaizen

By Jon Miller - September 29th, 2009

Ronak asked: What should be ideal process flow for kaizen? What I mean is who can give their suggestions, how to evaluate kaizen event, should we plan an event on monthly basis? This is a good question and one that reveals how common i

Toyota-style Problem Solving, Step 7: Check Both Process and Results

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2009

The eight step description of the PDCA cycle of problem solving called Toyota Business Practice (TBP for short) or practical problem solving continues to top my list of important things everyone should know. I’m finding it surpri

What is Kaizen? The Little Gear

By Jon Miller - September 3rd, 2009

What is kaizen? A reader reminded me that a lot of terms used in articles on this blog go unexplained. Although it’s one of our favorite topics, kaizen is one such term that is often used but seldom explained in enough detail for

Important Lessons in Kaizen from A Different Kind of Map

By Jon Miller - August 31st, 2009

Can you guess what the small squares on this map indicate? This is an image that has been distributed on science news websites during the past week. The picture has been cropped to hide some information. This map and the tiny squares o

Bad News from MIT for the PDCA Cycle?

By Jon Miller - August 30th, 2009

According to research reported from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Picower Institute for Learning and Memory we don’t learn from our mistakes. Oh-ho. If this is true the whole scientific basis for kaizen is in tr

The Lean Energy Treasure Hunt

By Jon Miller - August 26th, 2009

One of the most enjoyable and rewarding lean manufacturing improvement activities is the energy treasure hunt. The booty we claim on these energy treasure hunts include savings by shutting off motors or machines left running, replacing

The Harmony of Discipline and Creativity

By Jon Miller - August 5th, 2009

“Creativity and discipline go hand in hand.” So said best-selling author and business guru Jim Collins during an interview in the April 2009 issue of Inc. magazine. These words resonate and bounce around in the back of my h

When Automation is Stupid

By Jon Miller - July 11th, 2009

I don’t know how many times I’ve passed through this section of Narita airport. Only yesterday did it strike me how stupid this moving walkway was. It is all of 18 paces long. Hardly worth breaking your stride to step onto,

The Funny Thing About Waste

By Jon Miller - June 23rd, 2009

The funny thing about waste is that it’s all relative to your sense of scarcity. At least that’s how a Wired magazine article by Chris Anderson titled Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It’s Time to Manage for Abundance, Not

How to Engage People in Kaizen

By Jon Miller - June 9th, 2009

As always, thank you for your questions, comments and improvement suggestions. Today one of our readers shared via email a challenge with getting people engaged in kaizen. Whether it is an improvement suggestion system, a software syst

What is the Role of a Kaizen Promotion Officer?

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2009

Raghavendra asked, “What is the role of a kaizen promotion officer?” I have never been in a kaizen promotion office (KPO) but have worked with and round them for many years. At worst the KPO is a coordination, preparation,

8 Ways to Get Total Involvement

By Jon Miller - May 13th, 2009

There was an inspiring article by Pete Abilla on the Shmula blog yesterday called Total Company Involvement. In any company-wide continuous effort, there are various levels and degrees of employee engagement. In a true high-performance

The Drop, the Bucket and Continuous Improvement

By Jon Miller - April 22nd, 2009

Mr. Obama, who held his first cabinet meeting Monday, has tasked officials with finding $100 million in savings. Asked by reporters after the meeting if that amount is a drop in the bucket of the government’s budget, Mr. Obama sa

The A3 Thinking Blog

By Jon Miller - April 20th, 2009

Launched quietly in March by Art Amalley and Prof. Durward Sobek, authors of the Understanding A3 Thinking book, the A3 Thinking Blog promises to be an excellent resource. So far there are just a handful of articles such as User Feedba

Plan Do Czech Act

By Jon Miller - April 5th, 2009

If there are three things I can’t resist they are Creating lists, Teasing the possibilities out of words, and Attempting to inject levity and fun into teaching kaizen. So please forgive the punning title. The factory tours I part

Happiness the Kaizen Way

By Jon Miller - March 26th, 2009

“There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means – either will do – the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the ea

Kaizen Exercise: Stand in the Circle

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2009

Class dismissed. Your assignment for today is to go stand in the circle. Waste never sleeps. We have an hour. Let’s go see. The assignment is simple: find a spot to observe the process silently. Stand and observe for 30 min. Writ

An Electrically Delicious Lesson on Kaizen

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2009

What would you do if given a do-or-die mission to create a battery out of simple, non-toxic materials, from a sustainable source, without using specialized equipment, with the added requirements that said battery must prevent scurvy an

Kaizen and the Art of Elephant Eating

By Jon Miller - March 10th, 2009

Do you have an elephant that needs to be eaten? If you did, would you know? There is something called the elephant test which comes from the field of law. It is often used for cases in which something “is hard to describe, but in

Lighting a Candle for Energy Sustainability

By Jon Miller - March 6th, 2009

There was a great teaching moment this week. As we were walking around the shop floor at the end of the day, the shift ended and people began streaming out of the factory. Soon the lights began to shut off. We were left alone, in the d

Drive and Dedication Power the TBP Process

By Jon Miller - February 23rd, 2009

As a companion to the problem solving funnel or the 8 step approach of the problem solving process at Toyota, there is a set of principles that guide thought and action. Together these make up the newly described way of working called

A Question About Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 18th, 2009

Here is a question for you about kaizen: You have two continuous improvement systems; one which invests in 10 brilliant people each solving one $250,000 problem per year or another system which invests in 1,000 average people solving o

10 Ways that Kaizen Develops Better Leaders

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2009

Here are ten ways that kaizen develops better leaders. #1 Attention The leader well-heeled in kaizen notices the small things and is bothered by them if they seem abnormal. They pay attention to details. #2 Vision The practice of kaize

5 Why? vs. Why Not?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2009

The Toyota Why Not website came my way via Twitter. It’s an interesting distraction. The best part is the birds chirping. I actually looked for an open window until I realized that birds don’t chirp in January in Seattle. T

Kaizen

Start your improvement training today.