Manufacturing

467 Articles

It’s Not Supposed To Hurt

By Steve Kane - February 10th, 2015

By Steve Kane Getting Started I bought a road bicycle a few years ago for physical fitness.  It seemed to be the most enjoyable and least painful form of exercise that I could do from home on a daily basis.  Riding, or spinning as cy

Swimming With Alligators

By Steve Kane - January 20th, 2015

By Steve Kane When I was a kid, I visited my dad at his office quite often. I remember he had a note on a corkboard that read “When you’re up to your [backside] in alligators, it can be difficult to remember your original objective

GA 041 | FedEx Office’s Lean Journey with Jamie Parker

By Ron Pereira - January 15th, 2015

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest is Jamie Parker, one of my all-time favorite lean thinkers. Jamie i

GA 040 | Lean Safety with Robert Hafey

By Ron Pereira - January 8th, 2015

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. This episode’s guest is Robert Hafey. Robert has an impressive corporate backgrou

The Value of Not Knowing

By Steve Kane - December 30th, 2014

By Steve Kane “If I am wiser. . . it is because I know that I do not know.” ~ Socrates Is it possible that expertise on a particular subject can become an obstacle to learning and growth? There comes a point when a person

GA 038 | The Lean Journey with Cedric Brown

By Ron Pereira - December 25th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. In today’s episode, we’re sharing a conversation we had with Cedric Brown a

GA 037 | The Evolution of Lean with Chet Marchwinski

By Ron Pereira - December 18th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest is Chet Marchwinski, the Communications Director of the Lean Enterp

GA 036 | The Lean Startup with Eric Ries

By Ron Pereira - December 11th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest is Eric Ries, an entrepreneur and author famous for being at the fo

GA 035 | Daman Products’ Lean Journey with Larry Davis

By Ron Pereira - December 4th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. This episode’s guest is Larry Davis, President of Daman Products. Daman makes hyd

GA 034 | Becoming a Lean Leader with Steve Kane

By Ron Pereira - November 26th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. This episode is a little different. Our Director of Sales and Marketing, Steve Kane, g

GA 033 | The Lean CEO with Jacob Stoller

By Ron Pereira - November 20th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. This episode’s guest is Jacob Stoller, journalist and author who is about to rele

GA 030 | Teaching Lean the Toyota Way with Tracey and Ernie Richardson

By Ron Pereira - October 30th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s episode features our first husband and wife duo, Tracey and Ernie Richard

GA 028 | How Toyota Leverages Lean in the Front Office with Jeff Miller

By Ron Pereira - October 16th, 2014

Today’s guest is Jeff Miller, the Chairman of the Global Best Practices Group for Toyota Financial Services. A long-time Gemba Academy customer, my favorite thing about Jeff is his humility. Despite the prestige that comes with a

GA 026 | How to Conduct a Gemba Walk with Michael Bremer

By Ron Pereira - October 2nd, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest wears many hats. Michael Bremer is a blogger, author, and President

GA 025 | Defeating Complexity By Leveraging People with Kevin Meyer

By Ron Pereira - September 25th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest is Gemba Academy Co-Founder Kevin Meyer. Kevin wears many hats at Gemba

GA 024 | Lean and Green with Keivan Zokaei

By Ron Pereira - September 18th, 2014

Press the play button above to listen to the episode. If you’re reading this via email or RSS click the image below to listen to the episode. Today’s guest is Keivan Zokaei, a UK-based author and consultant. Keivan is a pioneer

GA 020 | Developing People Through Autonomy with Steve Kane

By Ron Pereira - August 21st, 2014

Today’s guest is our own Sales & Marketing Director, Steve Kane. Prior to joining us at Gemba Academy, Steve served as Vice President of Operations at Specialty Silicone Fabricators.  With many years of real – hands o

What’s Faster: One Piece Flow or Mass Production? Watch This Envelope Stuffing Simulation To Find Out!

By Ron Pereira - July 29th, 2014

We recently re-shot the first video I ever created back in 2008. Specifically, this video shows the difference between one piece flow and mass production. I first learned of this simulation many years ago while reading the book Lean

Total Productive Maintenace (TPM) Overview

By Ron Pereira - May 9th, 2011

If your company relies on machines and/or equipment of any kind to satisfy customer demand chances are extremely high that Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) could benefit you. With this said, I’m excited to announce that Gemba A

Should we Pay for Performance? What do you think?

By Ron Pereira - October 3rd, 2010

Dan, a reader of LSS Academy, recently emailed me this excellent question.  I was hoping to get your help as I formulated a response.  Here is Dan’s question. Ever since I studied process improvement at BYU I learned about E. D

3 Soccer Balls on a green soccer field. A soccer goal in the background.

The Making of the 2010 World Cup Soccer Ball

By Ron Pereira - September 16th, 2010

I am coaching my daughter’s U7 soccer team this year and, as such, have been reading as much as I can about the game.  I was a wrestler growing up… never played soccer in my life! Anyhow, I came across this video on how th

3 Practical Ways to Immediately Reduce Costs

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2010

No matter if business is good or bad one thing is for certain… you, and those you work with, should be laser focused on cost reduction. Now be honest, when you read the words cost reduction was the first thing that popped into your m

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

Bill Waddell on American Manufacturing

By Ron Pereira - May 21st, 2009

I don’t pretend to be an “economic guru” by any means… honestly it all makes my head hurt a bit. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy reading Bill Waddell’s thoughts on the state of manufacturing in America &#

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