Lean Archives | Page 57 of 68

Vague Instructions and Counting

By Ron Pereira - April 7th, 2010

On Monday I wrote a fun little article asking the fine readers of LSS Academy if they could count! Of course this was all done in fun… as I know you can all count. But, as many of you pointed out, there were several lessons to be lea

Can you count? Are you sure?

By Ron Pereira - April 5th, 2010

If you’ve ever gone through some form of continuous improvement training you may have done this little experiment. But in case you haven’t, I’d like to challenge you to count the number of times the letter “F

I Presently Struggle With

By Ron Pereira - March 29th, 2010

One of my favorite quotes from the P90X training videos goes like this. “If you can eliminate the mindset that ‘I can’t. I can’t do pull ups.’ Forget I can’t – say ‘I presently struggle with’ and if you keep that

No Money in Muda!

By Ron Pereira - March 15th, 2010

We’re finishing up the final touches on a new course over at Gemba Academy called “Lean Lingo Explained.” In this course Brad Schmidt, the managing partner of Gemba Japan, explains what several lean terms mean in grea

Peter Drucker’s Impact on Lean Thinking

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2010

The spring cleaning continues. My research library is an embarrassment of riches. Old notes and unfinished files hide in the shame of abundance. More the worse, no matter how much knowledge is shared its abundance only increases. Lucki

Lean Leaders, circa 2020

By Ron Pereira - March 7th, 2010

Guest Post by Michael Lombard of the Lean Builder Blog Have you seen any of Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000” skits? They were funny when he started doing them way back in the 90’s, and were even funnier when he kept doing t

The Goal: A 2 Second Improvement Each Day

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2010

Another hat tip to Jon Miller for first posting this video of Paul Akers and the FastCap team practicing lean thinking. What you think of this process? Do you do something similar at your place of work?

Lean in Hospitals: Running Free vs. Coordinated Efforts

By Ron Pereira - March 3rd, 2010

Guest Post by Alicia C. Simmer of KHC There’s a choice to be made in how hospital leaders approach implementing lean: either let lean run free or force lean efforts to be coordinated. Running Free In the ‘running free’ approach,

The Lean US Senator Preaches the Gospel that is Lean on Fox News!

By Ron Pereira - February 26th, 2010

Hat tip to Jon Miller for first posting this video of Paul Akers preaching lean on Fox News. Yes, preaching lean on the most watched news station in the free world – Fox News. Check it out for yourself!!!

Senate Candidate Paul Akers Preaches Lean on Fox News

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2010

Wow.

5 Questions to Ask Before You Attempt to Implement Kanban

By Ron Pereira - February 18th, 2010

My first manufacturing experiences were with two different multi-billion dollar manufacturing companies who happened to run massive ERP systems meaning we had massive MRP systems running the shop floor. Sound familiar? Anyhow, as a y

Subsidiarity: A (Medieval) Lean Principle

By Ron Pereira - February 14th, 2010

Guest Post by Mark R. Hamel of Gemba Tales OK, there probably weren’t many lean practitioners in the Middle Ages, but Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century theologian, philosopher and all around brainiac did play a significant role in dev

Gemba Tales: Lean stories, lessons and reflections

By Ron Pereira - February 9th, 2010

Over the last year several new lean and six sigma related blogs have appeared. I follow most of them. Some I like more than others… which is to be expected I guess. Anyhow, one of the newer blogs that has definitely caught

Don’t Let the Door Hit You in the Ass

By Ron Pereira - February 2nd, 2010

Man, oh man. The lean and business blogosphere feels as if it’s about to explode. Ever since everyone’s “model” of how to run a business (a.k.a. Toyota) has run into serious trouble people seem to be jumping off the TPS bandw

What Are Your Thoughts About Toyota’s Situation?

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2010

As regular readers of this blog know, I am not a big “news” reporting guy. In other words, I rarely read a news story and then bang out an article around it since, honestly, this type of writing bores me beyond words. But, unless y

Live Strategy Deployment Video Workshop

By Ron Pereira - January 28th, 2010

I recently facilitated two different Hoshin Kanri (aka Policy Deployment) workshops. Both have been extremely successful and the teams I worked with were able to reflect, align, and energize all at the same time. I plan to write more

Building Lean Awareness Worldwide, and a Geography Lesson

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2010

Mark Graban shared some visitor statistics from his blog this week, asking his readers to guess which country ranked #2 in readers, after the USA. Curious about this blog, I fired up the Google and found some interesting results. We st

Going Analog

By Ron Pereira - January 18th, 2010

Technology is great, no doubt about it. After all… it’s because of the Internet and computers you’re reading these words. Not so long ago this wouldn’t have been possible. So, let me be clear, I am not a techn

Introducing the 5 Why “So What” Test

By Ron Pereira - January 10th, 2010

We, over at Gemba Academy, are busy finishing up our 8 Step Practical Problem Solving course which is modeled after the Toyota Business Practice (TBP) methodology. In one of the modules we’re exploring 5 Why Analysis in more detail s

2 Ways to Handle Varying Inventory Levels When Creating Value Stream Maps

By Ron Pereira - January 7th, 2010

Shaunak, a reader of LSS Academy, recently sent me the following question via email. By the way, if you have ever have questions related to continuous improvement (lean and/or six sigma) feel free to email me. I will do my very best

Kanji and Humility

By Ron Pereira - January 6th, 2010

“We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.” – Rabindranath Tagore My friend, and fellow Texas lean blogger / Big Ten college football fanatic, Mark Graban wrote an article earlier this week summarizing ten t

How to Write an Arbitrary Dividing Point in Time Resolution

By Jon Miller - December 31st, 2009

I’ve never been a big believer in Arbitrary Dividing Point in Time Resolutions, or as some people call them, New Year’s Resolutions. Goal setting should be a constant output of the continuous improvement lifestyle, the resu

2009 Carnival of Lean Blogs

By Jon Miller - December 30th, 2009

It’s time for a quick look back on the year before we slam, lock and bar the door on 2009 and welcome 2010 and the opportunity to demonstrate our learning by not repeating our mistakes. I can’t wait. Carnival master John Hu

The 18 Most Active LSS Academy Articles in 2009

By Ron Pereira - December 21st, 2009

I recently wrote about the most read LSS Academy articles in 2009. Now, in this post, I’d like to share with you the LSS Academy articles that garnered the most comments in 2009. As you’ll see some of these posts are quite

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