Six Sigma Archives | Page 6 of 11

How Do You Fight A Fire With A Garden Hose?

By Steve Kane - June 19th, 2015

By Steve Kane Many years ago, I was visiting a friend’s house in Southern California. It was a 1950’s ranch style house with a straight walkway from the street to the door. There was a tall palm tree where the walkway met the s

GA 060 | Practical Problem Solving: Part One with Jon Miller

By Ron Pereira - May 28th, 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 episode is part one of a series featuring Jon Miller, one of Gemba Academ

GA 059 | Lean Beginnings with Steve Stansbury

By Ron Pereira - May 21st, 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 Steve Stansbury, an experienced lean practitioner with a diverse

What Do You Demonstrate and What Do You Tolerate?

By Steve Kane - May 8th, 2015

By Steve Kane I attended the AME Regional Conference in Denver last week and had some great conversations with Lean practitioners from a wide variety of organizations. It seems the topic of discussion in Lean circles has gravitated a

GA 056 | Intentional Leadership with Chris Burnham

By Ron Pereira - April 30th, 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 Chris Burnham, lean thinker and host of the incredible Lean Lead

GA 044 | Beyond Heroes with Kim Barnas

By Ron Pereira - February 5th, 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 Kim Barnas, author and former Senior VP at healthcare network Th

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 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 013 | Lean and Six Sigma in the Service Industry at West Texas A&M with Bryan Glenn

By Ron Pereira - July 3rd, 2014

I’m thrilled to welcome Bryan Glenn as today’s podcast guest. As the Director of Purchasing and Inventory Services at West Texas A&M University, Bryan is responsible for the implementation of the school’s lean ini

What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

By Ron Pereira - November 15th, 2013

The most frequently asked question we receive at Gemba Academy goes something like this, “What videos should we watch first?” A close second is, “”What lean tools or philosophies should we focus on first?” How to Respond Of c

AME Toronto, Lean Accounting, and BMW X5 Seat Manufacturing!

By Ron Pereira - November 6th, 2013

We’ve been EXTREMELY busy over at Gemba Academy! Here’s a short list of what we’ve been up to: We talked all things lean with John Shook, Jim Womack, and Dan Jones at the recent AME conference in Toronto. This 70 mi

Was Steve Jobs a Lean Thinker?

By Ron Pereira - July 29th, 2013

Can Continuous Improvement methodologies such as Lean & Six Sigma help companies innovate? Or, as some argue, does practicing continuous improvement actually stifle innovation? I’d argue authentic continuous improvement can most

Learn How I’ve Leveraged Both Lean & Six Sigma Throughout my Career

By Ron Pereira - July 23rd, 2013

I was recently interviewed by Mark Graban over at LeanBlog.org. The theme of the interview is how I’ve successfully leveraged both lean and six sigma throughout my career. Specifically Mark and I explored: What my views are on

10 Characteristics of Great Coaches & Learners

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2013

Throughout my professional career I’ve been fortunate enough to learn – and teach others – about leadership, lean, and six sigma. As I reflect back, I believe I’ve uncovered some characteristics of what makes a good coa

Keep Calm & Improve On – Free Desktop Wallpaper

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2013

Our design team just created some pretty cool desktop wallpaper with the words: Keep Calm & Improve On! If you like it, and want to use it as a friendly reminder to “improve on,” please feel free to download the images

How Do You Document Your Processes?

By Ron Pereira - May 13th, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly doing our best to “practice what we teach.” Now, to be honest, we’re far from perfect (who is?) but we’re always trying to find better ways to take care of our customers and develop better pr

Going to Gemba vs. Statistical Analysis

By Ron Pereira - May 6th, 2013

Early in my professional career I worked as a Process Engineer at Nokia (in their mobile phone division). I had many responsibilities but, ultimately, my most important job centered on ensuring all of the equipment was producing cell p

Knee Jerk Statistics

By Ron Pereira - April 29th, 2013

The folks over at Minitab recently wrote an excellent article about how a Six Sigma practitioner leveraged binary logistic regression analysis in order to better understand why associates at a manufacturing plant were quitting. What th

The Problem with A3 Reports

By Ron Pereira - April 22nd, 2013

The A3 report may be one of the most misunderstood lean thinking tools of our time. Why do I say this? Simple. It’s Just a Piece of Paper The A3 report, in and of itself, is nothing more than a piece of paper. But, for some reaso

How to Not Become Handcuffed by Lean & Six Sigma Tools

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2013

I’ve been coaching a Gemba Academy customer through the use of some specific tools. This individual works in a MRO environment meaning he deals with very high mix and low volume. This person is struggling to understand how to cre

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

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

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

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