TPS Benchmarking Archives | Page 14 of 15

Virtual JKE Day Three

By Jon Miller - September 26th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America Day three on the Gemba road was long, hot, and fascinating. We were on our way to catch the bullet train for Denso before 7:00. On the way, we took the usual opportunity to go over what we would be seeing

Virtual JKE Part Two

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America Day 2, the first real day of our Gemba Research Japan Kaikaku Experience tour. “Going to the gemba” is the whole point of this tour – to be the best requires going to see the best. Today

Virtual JKE

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2005

A key aspect of our work here at Gemba is the Japan Kaikaku Experience. We take business leaders to Japan to see the world’s best practitioners of lean. This week, Kent Bradley, on his second tour of Japan, will share his experie

Strong Supervision: The Key to Long-term Kaizen

By Jon Miller - August 27th, 2005

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Tom Berghan, Lean Manager at Genie Industries. He is an avid student of the Toyota Production System and is always good for practical insights into ground-level Lean implementation. Tom observed that as

Wipro Studies TPS to Achieve Lean Transactions

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2005

I’m very excited about an article in Business Week titled “Taking a Page from Toyota’s Playbook” on how Indian info tech companies are adopting the Toyota model. As an example, Wipro visited a Toyota factory to

Toyota Raises Prices, but Not for That Reason

By Jon Miller - July 10th, 2005

Toyota announced 1.6% price increases in several Lexus and Scion model vehicles on Friday July 8, 2005. Some months ago when Chairman Okuda said Toyota may raise prices to help out struggling Ford and GM, I was impressed again by Toyot

95% Cost Reduction: That’s Kaikaku

By Jon Miller - June 19th, 2005

According to a June 17, 2005 article in the Financial Times, Toyota plans to cut the cost of hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles by from $1,000,000 to $50,000 by 2015. That is a 95% cost reduction, in 10 years. The Lean manufacturing e

Balancing Market Leadership and Social Responsibility at Toyota

By Jon Miller - May 14th, 2005

It has been an interesting week for Toyota watchers. In response to Chairman Okuda’s call to Japanese automobile makers last week to raise prices to give GM some “breathing room”, Toyota’s operational executives

Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing Metrics

By Jon Miller - April 22nd, 2005

In one of our Lean Manufacturing Benchmarking Tours to Japan (Japan Kaikaku Experience) the people on the tour had a goal to come up with company-wide metrics. The same metrics would be used for different business units so that the con

Lean Manufacturing with a Temporary Workforce

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2005

One of the companies we visited in Japan in our Japan Benchmarking Trips (Japan Kaikaku Experience) employed a large percentage of temporary labor to help make their labor costs truly variable. One of the questions asked to them from o

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