Lean Office Archives | Page 10 of 12

Let’s Establish a Waste and Efficiency Tip Line… and then Another One

By Jon Miller - February 20th, 2007

I caught a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night on television. The bit of news involved the $22 billion in cash lost in Iraq during Paul Bremer’s time there. Both political parties want to be seen as addressing thi

Standard Work Needed for Use of Windows

By Jon Miller - February 14th, 2007

In chapter 32 of Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, Ohno said, “There is a correct sequence to kaizen.” We must first study and improve the work itself (manual work) then improve the process (sequence, steps) and th

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, December 2006

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2007

By Marcie MacRae Going into the holidays and having the majority of the staff out of the office can be a good time to implement a big kaizen in the office. This year while the staff was on winter holidays, the admin team and two consul

The ROI of an Open Office

By Jon Miller - November 29th, 2006

What is the ROI (return on investment) of an open office? That was a question some while back by a reader on this blog about to take the leap and convert their office to an open format. It went unanswered (apologies) and I was recently

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, November 2006

By Jon Miller - November 13th, 2006

Like many companies, we make a lot of improvements each month at Gemba. We don’t always think to write them down or celebrate them. We will “kaizen the kaizen” by writing them down in an effort to be more mindful of t

How Wipro Adapted the Toyota Production System to IT Work

By Jon Miller - October 17th, 2006

An article titled How Wipro Took a Leaf Out of Toyota’s Book in DNA – Daily News & Analysis on October 15, 2006 talks of how Wipro has successfully implemented the Toyota Production System in an IT business. Wipro is an Ind

How Do U Spell Quality?

By Jon Miller - October 16th, 2006

I spent four nights recently at Quality Inn, an American hotel chain. It was a pleasant stay, and not without its lesson in kaizen. I came back to the hotel one night to notice the following: I couldn’t resist taking them up on t

Free Turnaround Advice to All Struggling Airlines

By Jon Miller - October 11th, 2006

It started out as a routine one hour flight delay and missed connection. Snowstorms in the winter, thunderstorms in the summer. When you are traveling by air through the Midwest, plans that don’t go according to plan are almost a

Scottish Local Authority Wins Award for Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 10th, 2006

Congratulations to the Aberdeenshire Council on winning the top Performance Improvement Award from UDITE – The Association of European Local Authority Chief Executives for their kaizen efforts. Kaizen in the public sector, how sweet

A Heijunka Economy

By Jon Miller - September 2nd, 2006

As summer officially comes to a close in the United States this weekend with the kick-off of the American Football season and something Americans call Labor Day, I find myself thinking about heijunka (averaging of both your demand volu

Look Up from Your Work and Ask: “Could We Flow This?”

By Jon Miller - September 1st, 2006

At the center of the Toyota Production System, and therefore of Lean manufacturing, is the fundamental principle of creating flow. For example in a machine shop this means connecting processes so that an operator can be a multi-process

While We’re Promoting Lean Author Interviews on other Blogs…

By Jon Miller - August 29th, 2006

Shmula is a blog with a funny sounding name (who am I to talk?) and the occasional gem of a post about Lean. There is an August 28th interview with Mary Poppendick, author of Lean Software Development and Implementing Lean Software Dev

E-mail 5S

By Jon Miller - August 23rd, 2006

A Wall Street Journal article today says How You Handle Your E-mail Inbox Says A Lot About You. The article identifies that e-mail is overwhelming people. There is an example of one person who was stressed out by 500 e-mails in their i

This Is An Experiment

By Jon Miller - August 15th, 2006

A few weeks ago when I returned to our office after having been on the road for several weeks there were some big changes. The entire layout of the office had been flipped from one side to the other. This is not so hard to do since we

How Can American Government Meet Its Productivity Challenge?

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2006

“How Can American Government Meet Its Productivity Challenge?” asks a McKinsey & Company white paper. The white paper cites an interesting statistic. The 2005 U.S. federal budget outlay was 20.3% of the GDP of the Unite

Kaizen in Software Development: Start by Seeing the 7 Wastes

By Jon Miller - August 8th, 2006

It’s worth repeating time and time again that what makes an organization Lean is not whether they have implemented the methodologies, tools and procedures that people recognize as part of the Toyota Production System model. In ot

The Top 10 Reasons to Start Lean Office and Lean Manufacturing at the Same Time

By Jon Miller - June 27th, 2006

Most manufacturing organizations start their Lean journey on the factory floor first. Many soon recognize that meaningful, lasting improvement is only possible if Lean principles are also applied to administrative processes that suppor

Credit Suisse Does Gemba Research

By Jon Miller - June 25th, 2006

A June 2006 article in Fast Company magazine asks “Talk to Our Customers? Are You Crazy?” The approach Credit Suisse is taking to understand the problems with their products and processes is basically research by going to t

How Toyota Uses Information Technology (IT) for Kaizen

By Jon Miller - June 21st, 2006

There is a staggering amount of good material being printed these days in the Japanese press about kaizen, the Toyota Production System and issues of manufacturing and business competitiveness. I just wish I had more time to read the m

Trying Out Herman Miller’s New Cubicle: Not for the Lean Office

By Jon Miller - June 20th, 2006

Herman Miller is credited for introducing the original cubicle. Instead of recognizing poor design and listening to the voice of customer, they have designed a better cube or according to designer Douglas Ball “an environment tha

Doing More with Less in the Lean Office

By Jon Miller - June 19th, 2006

“An increasing number of local companies are shrinking their employees’ work spaces” begins an article in the Puget Sound Business Journal titled Offices Getting Smaller. Well known firms in our neighborhood including

Sell Complacency, Buy Kaizen

By Jon Miller - June 13th, 2006

On June 12, 2006 Minyanville News & Views commentary money manager Ryan Krueger gave the advice “sell complacency, buy kaizen”. He sees the U.S. as complacent, giving evidence for the eroding dominance as the number on

Lean Thinking & Google’s 9 Notions of Innovation

By Jon Miller - June 12th, 2006

I’ve written from time to time about the relationship between kaizen, Lean process and innovation in this blog. Innovation is the hot thing at the moment as the United States struggles to cope with what appears to be the increasing i

The Lean Office & The Typewriter of the Future

By Jon Miller - May 24th, 2006

I took typing classes before it was called “keyboarding”. The first manual typewriter I used was a fascinating and alien collection of metal eyes and teeth, a beautiful piece of industrial design like this one. The march of progres

Hoshin Kanri Lesson: No Plan Goes According to Plan

By Jon Miller - May 19th, 2006

Having completed the second day of the Hoshin Kanri (Policy Management) session with LEI, I can say that I learned that no plan goes according to plan. Our instructor Pascal Dennis used this phrase several times over two days to drive

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