Thomas Huxley Quotes on Managing by Fact

By Jon Miller - February 13th, 2013

Management by fact is a key guiding principle of kaizen and lean thinking. By gathering facts and evidence people are able to communicate realities, define problems, and convert them into opportunities to improve the situation. Many of

Kaizen, Japan and Achilles’ Heel in Reverse

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2013

The article Kaizen – the Achilles heel of Japan on a blog titled “On the Surface – Logical thinking in an everyday world” (which I suspect may be a title attempting irony but at two posts it is too early to tell

Introducing the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2013

For the past 6 months I, along with my Gemba Academy colleagues, have been extremely busy developing what we now call the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma. I’m obviously extremely biased… but I have to confess… I’m quite happy

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Labeling Confusion

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2013

A label is a visual control that should clarify, not confuse. Here is an ambiguous visual control, its intentions good but lost in translation. Does metal stand in an airport even need a label? Perhaps. There is not much else that one

Review of The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew May

By Jon Miller - January 13th, 2013

First of all I would like to thank Matthew May for the opportunity to contribute a page to his book, and for the review copy of the book. With greater skill in subtraction, my days will be less full and future reviews will no doubt be

Lean Leader Arrives at the Top of China

By Jon Miller - January 9th, 2013

I took a clipping from the December 5th 2012 edition of the China Daily, the article titled pomp and ceremony must end. Xi Jinping, the new leader of China urged officials to “slash red tape, including unnecessary visits, meeting

Ambiguous Visual Controls: No Dogs Allowed

By Jon Miller - January 8th, 2013

This one hurt my head a little.

The Kaizen Way for Resolutions

By Jon Miller - January 1st, 2013

The New Year is a time for reflecting on the past annual cycle, the one to come, and for making resolutions. The question on my mind is “Why do plans go awry?” In truth my goals and resolutions from year to year do not diff

Plain-spoken Interview with Masaaki Imai

By Jon Miller - November 27th, 2012

If wisdom comes from time spent on the front lines where the action is, what does that make senior executives at large companies whose roles remove them from the front lines? Masaaki Imai minces no words on this and other topics in thi

Following the Muri Mura Strategy

By Jon Miller - November 26th, 2012

In the Seattle Times article Boeing Dreamliner on track, but rework may stretch to 2015, aerospace executives reported to Wall Street analysts the company’s historic scientific milestone of bending the fabric of time and space, a

Challenging “Challenge” within the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - November 14th, 2012

At the heart of the Toyota Way are two pillars, Continuous Improvement and Respect for People. These are supported by five values, Challenge, Improvement, Genchi Genbutsu, Respect and Teamwork. The word “challenge” means ei

The First Emperor of China Followed the Toyota Way?

By Jon Miller - November 12th, 2012

A November 2nd article in Sci-News.com proposes Toyota’s Labor Model Used in China 2,200 Years Ago. China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang is known as not only a conqueror and stabilizer of warring kingdoms, but a great standa

Panta Rei

By Jon Miller - November 11th, 2012

“If we want things to stay as they are, they will have to change.” The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

How would you explain what Lean is to a 7-year-old?

By Ron Pereira - November 5th, 2012

Yesterday afternoon while driving home from a soccer game (and before I smashed into a Ford truck and obliterated the right side of my little Toyota… but that’s another story) my 7-year-old daughter (the swimmer and stud soccer pla

5 Critical Control Chart Characteristics You May Not Be Aware Of

By Ron Pereira - September 25th, 2012

No matter if you call yourself a “lean practitioner” or “six sigma practitioner” or some combination of the two… one “tool” you should have a deep understanding of is the control chart. I’ve written about control charts

How is PDCA Inimical to Innovation?

By Jon Miller - May 8th, 2012

PDCA. Plan, Do, Check, Act. This process is at the core of kaizen, lean, six sigma, continuous improvement, hoshin kanri, the scientific method and the learning organization. I also believe that the PDCA cycle is inherent to the creati

How to Tell if a Visual Control is Working

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2012

Humans Wanted for Lean Journey. Small Wages, Bitter Cold, Constant Danger…

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2012

Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer celebrated for his exploration of the Antarctic. During the 1914-1917 expedition aboard the aptly-named Endurance, he lead his crew without loss of life through disasters which included their sh

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Never stay in rooms 601-617

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2012

This ambiguous visual control creates more doubts than assurances. What is the message here? Do some people prefer and wish to be directed to the unclean rooms? Room 621 was in fact quite nice.

Yet More Musings on Muda

By Jon Miller - April 1st, 2012

Michel Baudin’s blog article More Musings on Muda, meant to end fruitless debate on the definitions and categorizations of the types of waste, in fact, led to some brief but interesting exchanges on Twitter. The discussion center

Webinar Replay: Using SPC to Make Better Management Decisions

By Ron Pereira - March 27th, 2012

Update: This webinar can now only be seen by subscribers to the Complete Lean Package. In this pre-recorded webinar, Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and the upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen, showed how simple statistical process c

Lean, Bias, Impartiality and Justness

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2012

I considered myself to be appropriately biased against biases, but it turned out I was wrong. Such is often the way with cognitive biases. Reading Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, I learned to think of biases in a

Kanban Systems Overview Video

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2012

Here is a free overview video introducing our Kanban course. And here’s a summary document of this video in PDF format that can be downloaded and printed. Visit gembaacademy.com to learn more about our available courses and acce

Improving Point of Use Lid Storage at Starbucks

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2012

On a recent visit to a Starbucks inside the San Francisco airport, I snapped a picture of their cup lid dispenser. As you can see they store lids in this unit and present it close to where the “final assembly” Barista does

Consumption Rate, Replenishment Time, SWIP and Why Glaciers Need Love

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2012

Over the past week, the greater Seattle area was met with the largest snowfall in a decade or two. Recently I was in New York City, where the season’s supply of snow had dropped last October, with barely a blizzard since. Back in