Tips for Lean Managers Archives | Page 6 of 9

The Importance of “So What?” in A3 Kaizen

By Jon Miller - July 28th, 2007

One of the things that makes Toyota-style problem solving so effective is the insistence on true root cause analysis and countermeasures. In simple terms this is known as “asking why 5 times” or “5 why”. Instead

12 Quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. to Inspire Change

By Jon Miller - July 15th, 2007

Martin Luther King Jr. was a great leader and a historic change agent. Studying his quotes can inspire those of us who work to make positive change each day. King said: A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of c

Q&A During a Recent Gemba Walk

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2007

Gemba walks are great fun. But it’s become clearer to me only recently that they can be awkward at first to the leader in transition from traditional style to Lean management. With permission and without revealing the identity of

Top 10 Improvement Tools Named After Lean Sensei

By Jon Miller - July 9th, 2007

1. Ohno Circle Taiichi Ohno was the Toyota executive largely responsible for structuring and implementing the system known today as the Toyota Production System over four decades after World War II. Ohno was known for drawing a chalk c

New Metric for Lean Leadership: MTBFTFTBF

By Jon Miller - July 8th, 2007

Those of you who are familiar with TPM or other progressive maintenance systems will recognize MTBF. The acronym MTBF refers to the mean time between failures. For products, MTBF is a reliability rating indicating the expected failure

Your Lizard Brain Wants to Help You Be Lean

By Jon Miller - July 2nd, 2007

An article on July 1, 2007 in LiveScience titled Study Reveals Why We Learn From Mistakes sheds light on why visual management and the habit of genchi genbutsu is so important to problem identification and learning. Once again, brain s

Intuition, Information and the Toyota Production System

By Jon Miller - July 1st, 2007

There are quite a few things that are counterintuitive about the Lean management system known as TPS. They are all fairly simple things, but hard to do since they feel wrong to people who have not been swimming in the waters of TPS for

The Secret to Calculating Takt Time in Your Head, Fast

By Jon Miller - June 26th, 2007

People are always amazed when I do takt time calculations lickety-split in my head. Here’s my secret: it’s the result of a lot of practice with doing math in the head, and memorizing a few nifty net available time numbers.

What Does the Observer Have to Do with the Observed?

By Jon Miller - June 20th, 2007

The fact that light is both a wave and a particle at the same time has been puzzling physicists for decades. More recently, managers have been puzzled by the fact that work is both value and waste at the same time. This wonderful video

Job Instruction for Lean Transformation Leaders

By Jon Miller - June 18th, 2007

The new book by David Meier and Jeffrey Liker titled Toyota Talent is full of nuggets. Perhaps the best thing I got out of the book is an explicit understanding of the four-step approach to teaching that is Job Instruction. Now I see h

A Standard Way of Starting Your Day

By Jon Miller - June 11th, 2007

Having a standard way of starting your day has been written about in many personal productivity books, blogs and promoted by self-improvement gurus. Yet why is this so hard? In one word, variation. In some ways it is personal standard

How to Reduce the Distance Between Management and Gemba

By Jon Miller - June 5th, 2007

This issue, and how it is addressed, is one of the main factors separating successful and sustained lean transformations from those that are not. Let’s say the distance between management and the gemba is value D and the quality,

Announcing the 5S Challenge Winners!

By Jon Miller - May 18th, 2007

Thank you Konrad, Ron, Robert, Nancy, Chris, Eric, Jason, Rajdeep and Dee for your thoughtful answers to the question “which of the 5S is hardest and why?” There was a lot of emphasis in on keeping it going, the 5th S known

Zero Equals Seven in the Kaizen Mind

By Jon Miller - May 15th, 2007

Taiichi Ohno taught us that even when we think “there is no waste here” you can find at least 7 types of waste. He was known to carry a piece of chalk around and draw circles around managers who could not see these wastes.

To KPO or Not to KPO?

By Jon Miller - May 13th, 2007

Here is a bit of heresy that has been rolling around my brain lately: having a KPO / Six Sigma Competency Center / Office of Operational Excellence / Continuous Improvement Office hurts rather than helps a Lean effort. Best case, these

Seek the Simple Solution from Many People

By Jon Miller - April 29th, 2007

There is an apparent conflict between two of the ten commandments of improvement that has been bothering me for a while. It is the kind of problem that goes away as soon as you stop thinking about it. But I think it may represent somet

How to Use a Kaizen Newspaper

By Jon Miller - April 26th, 2007

Chris asked: Are there rules for what goes on a kaizen newspaper so it does not become a massive action item list? A “massive action item list” should be cause for celebration. A full kaizen newspaper is a good thing. The f

Ten Reasons Why One Piece Flow Will Not Work

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2007

Rather than insisting that one piece flow will work, we like to ask people why one piece flow will not work for them. Here are some of the most common reasons we hear, and some ways we respond: 1. We can’t get needed materials in

What Would You Do If You Had No __?

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2007

One my favorite phrases used by my Japanese teachers’ was “__ ga nakattara dosuru?” or “What would you do if you had no__?” When I heard this I knew we were in for some fun – of watching someone stretch their mind. R

The Best Visual Control in the World

By Jon Miller - April 17th, 2007

Day two of kaizen instruction on the shop floor, I came across the best visual control in the world. All of these years it’s been right in front of me. It’s the change in the human face known as the smile. The people that I

A3 Report Title: PICK UP YOUR TOYS!!

By Jon Miller - April 16th, 2007

I need some parenting help. As the A3 report below will show, our young kids are slow at picking up their toys. The older one is old enough to slow down on purpose and play games with us, and the younger one is young enough or has the

What I Learned Today of Value

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2007

See it through. Delay if you must, but don’t retreat. Follow up until you get an answer, good or bad. Check again. Get it done. Only then, start the next thing.

Skill Matrix Tutorial, Part 1

By Jon Miller - April 2nd, 2007

We receive a lot of questions on this blog about something called the Skill Matrix and how to use it. It seems to be an area of high interest so I will write about it more regularly. The Skill Matrix is a very useful visual management

The Largest Room in the World

By Jon Miller - March 29th, 2007

What is the largest room in the world? I just heard this yesterday. Any guesses? Think about it. Or give a hint to other readers if you know the answer. I’m not telling.

The Art of Nemawashi

By Jon Miller - March 25th, 2007

Nemawashi is the building of support for a project through advance communication and consensus. The Japanese term nemawashi (根回し) comes from “to dig around the roots” in order to prepare a plant for transplant. Withou

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