Gemba Academy

When Customer-Supplier Partnerships… Aren’t

By Kevin Meyer - July 3rd, 2020

Many years ago I wrote about how many companies were trying to get a one-time boost in working capital by extending their purchasing terms from typical net-30 to net-90 and even net-120. In some cases they were even partnering with b

Six-Month Reflection Questions, Adjusted

By Jon Miller - June 29th, 2020

I’m in the habit of looking back every six months, asking myself a few questions, and setting intentions for the future. In Lean terminology this is known as reflection, or hansei. January through June 2020 will go down in histor

Better Problem Solving with Empathy Maps

By Jon Miller - June 22nd, 2020

Maybe things have always been this way. But it seems like we are increasingly shouting at each other rather than working things out. How should we respond to a pandemic? How can we revive the economy? What to do about police brutality?

Pivotal Hubris Moments – Architecting, Detecting, or Preventing Your Demise

By Jessica Bush - June 19th, 2020

The following article was written for Gemba Academy by Mohamed Saleh, PhD Do you ever look back at an event and think, “Oh, there are so many things that I would have done differently? If only I would have known what I know now while

Towards Non-scale Management

By Jon Miller - June 15th, 2020

People think Taiichi Ohno’s book Toyota Production is about TPS. It’s not. It’s even arguable whether he ever envisioned the Toyota method as a system or set out to build one. There is no native word in Japanese for &

Respect for Humanity: To Be Lean or Not to Be, That Is the Question

By Jessica Bush - June 12th, 2020

The following article was written for Gemba Academy by Mohamed Saleh, PhD Many of us grew up admiring figures like Gandhi, King Arthur, Michael Jordan, figures of faith, and our own parents for how they inspired us. They gathered follo

Lean Thinking for Solving Systemic Problems

By Jon Miller - June 8th, 2020

People are marching worldwide in protest of police violence. They are demanding wide-ranging changes to law enforcement and criminal justice. This is bringing the systemic problem of institutional racism into mainstream consciousness.

Strengthening the Base

By Ron Pereira - June 5th, 2020

As the world continues to work through Covid-19 much has been written about prevention. There are many preventive guidelines recommended by various health organizations and I’m sure you know them all by heart now. But thereR

Containment at the Source

By Jon Miller - June 1st, 2020

The past few months have required us to rethink some long-held norms. What jobs are essential? How can we learn, work and play without meeting face to face? What’s the true cost of global supply chains? How tightly do we need to

Why Do We Disrespect the 4th S of 5S?

By Jon Miller - May 25th, 2020

The 5S method is widely recognized as a fundamental and foundational part of Lean management. Without the basic discipline to remove clutter and distractions, put things back where they belong, and plug our leaks and sources of cutter,

What Does Leadership Look Like?

By Steve Kane - May 22nd, 2020

I spoke at a Lean event last year. The audience was about 250 accomplished Lean practitioners. My session was at about 2:00 PM, which was right at the beginning of the afternoon lull. Folks were starting to feel sluggish after a lunc

Akio Toyoda Articulates Toyota Way Principle #15

By Jon Miller - May 18th, 2020

Imagine the head of your organization admitting, in the middle of a global crisis, that it’s become necessary to loosen strict adherence to some of your fundamental business practices. These practices are ones rooted in deeply he

The Point of Pointing and Calling

By Jon Miller - May 11th, 2020

A colleague pointed out and called attention to a question about the practice of shisa kanko so I thought it worth a few words. This is the safety practice of “pointing and calling”. Its roots are obscure, but it has been s

Metrics from the Perspective of the Customer

By Kevin Meyer - May 8th, 2020

A core concept of lean is that value is defined from the perspective of the customer, and therefore waste is as well. We are familiar with both types of muda, waste that is unnecessary and must be removed and waste that is necessary

Applying Lean Thinking to Demand and Supply

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2020

Lean management is mainly associated with making operations more productive, improving safety, quality, speed and thereby lowering cost. Lean management originated from innovations in the supply chain. More recently, lean thinking has

What Are Hypothesis Tests and Why Should We Care? – Coronavirus Edition

By Ron Pereira - May 1st, 2020

As more and more medical studies related to potential Covid-19 treatments are released in the coming days, weeks, and months, you’re sure to hear terms like “significance” and “P-values” mentioned many tim

Condition-Based Management, in Times Like These

By Jon Miller - April 27th, 2020

The format of the 2020 NFL draft was different due to social distancing requirements. Instead of players and announcers on stage, spectators in the audience, and live interviews, we tuned into the home offices of coaches, personnel man

Be Deliberate About Your New Normal

By Steve Kane - April 24th, 2020

We’re at a point with the world’s current events that some governments are beginning to relax isolation orders and business restrictions. It would be easy to think that we might be getting back to normal soon. The harsh rea

Extremely Long-Cycle Standard Work

By Jon Miller - April 20th, 2020

The benefit of standard work, and good standards in general, is that it frees us to from having to figure out or to remember how to do things correctly. Good standards help us quickly distinguish between normal conditions and abnormal

Vaccination, Knowledge Reuse and Organizational Learning

By Jon Miller - April 13th, 2020

Animals and other organisms that are capable of learning acquire problem solving ability in several ways. They may do so through trial-and-error, via observation and social learning, or even from the sudden appearance of insight on how

Restart to a Future State, Not the Previous State

By Kevin Meyer - April 10th, 2020

One of my favorite books is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. When I first read his book several years ago it put a new spin on lean’s perspective on waste and value by applying similar concepts to

Reflections on Four Weeks of Sheltering in Place

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2020

Washington State has been officially sheltering in place since March 23rd. It feels like six week ago. Perhaps this is because we eased into social distancing a couple of weeks earlier, seeing the writing on the wall. The governor exte

How to Manage Chaos & Uncertainty

By Ron Pereira - April 3rd, 2020

One of the most efficient ways to work through an obstacle, or uncertainty, is to learn as fast as possible through experimentation. I think it’s safe to say that most of us have been facing lots of change and uncertainty over the la

Now More Than Ever, Huddle Daily as a Team

By Jon Miller - March 30th, 2020

One of the challenges we face when working from home, or as part of a virtual team, is staying connected with people on the team. Today more of us than ever are in this situation for the first time due to stay-at-home orders related to

Give People a Sense of Certainty Through New Routines

By Steve Kane - March 27th, 2020

The Power of Routine So much of our daily activity is performing routines, even though we may not be aware of it. Getting out bed and ready for work; picking up the phone, wallet, and keys on the way out the door; stopping for coffee;

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