Gemba Academy

What are the “Respect for Humanity” Questions?

By Jon Miller - February 10th, 2020

Lean management aims to make work easier, safer, better, faster and cheaper. The first two centuries of continuous improvement focused on invention, tinkering, and innovation in machinery and materials. With the growth of the service s

Can a Humidifier Help You Sleep Better and Snore Less?

By Ron Pereira - February 7th, 2020

They say good leaders are willing to be vulnerable and share things they may not want to…even things they’re slightly embarrassed to admit. Well, I’m about to test that theory by sharing something most people don

When an Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Billion Pounds of Global GDP

By Jon Miller - February 3rd, 2020

This simple chart gets to the heart how Lean processes, systems and behaviors keep costs low. In brief, the earlier we detect and address problems, the less it costs. This is a broad, common sense principle. It applies to safety incide

How Lean Deployment Is Like Working with Two-Part Epoxy

By Jon Miller - January 27th, 2020

This weekend while working on a particularly challenging home repair project I had the opportunity to work with a two-part epoxy. These are adhesives that create very strong bonds that hold up in many environments and conditions. But

It’s Your Duty to Make Things Right

By Steve Kane - January 24th, 2020

I completed US Army basic training at Fort Dix in May of 1990. Immediately after, I went to advanced individual training (AIT) at the US Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Drill Sergeant Smith was my platoon drill se

Making Meetings Less Terrible

By Jon Miller - January 20th, 2020

Studies estimate that we spend an hour or more each day in meetings or preparing for them. On the one hand, it’s good that humans are communicating, making decisions and solving problems together. On the other hand, unproductive

Sustaining Gains with the Continuous Improvement Ratchet

By Jon Miller - January 13th, 2020

The PDCA wheel held in place on a slope by a wedge is a common representation of how standards are essential to sustains continuous improvement. On the one hand, this is intuitive and easy to demonstrate. On the other hand, it’s

Refining and Reinforcing Principles

By Kevin Meyer - January 10th, 2020

Earlier this month Ron discussed his top ten lessons from the last decade and Jon what he believes is the most important word of the year (“daily”). Although I have tried to divorce myself from the arbitrary boundaries of

The Word of the Year for 2019

By Jon Miller - January 6th, 2020

Looking back on the previous twelve months, there is one word that ties together my lessons learned and aspirations. The word is daily. It’s the humblest of words, suggesting commonplace, regular, routine, of no special note. In

Ten Lessons I’ve Learned Over the Last Decade

By Ron Pereira - January 3rd, 2020

The last decade has, without question, been the most transformative time of my life – personally and professionally. To be sure, I’ve made more mistakes than I can count…but with these mistakes have come valuable le

Remain Detached from the Outcome

By Steve Kane - December 27th, 2019

I’ve been working on my Black Belt certification for several months. The past few have been devoted to a project related to understanding how improvements over the years have impacted business performance. Many of the improvement

Was the Standard Clear Enough?

By Jon Miller - December 23rd, 2019

While observing a morning huddle meeting last week, I heard a senior leader ask, “Was the standard clear enough?” several times as they discussed the previous day’s quality, safety and delivery problems. That’s

Go See, Show Respect, Ask “What Do You Need from Me?”

By Jon Miller - December 16th, 2019

Last week we took a day at the Gemba Academy office in Fort Worth to map and improve our content development process. It was a humbling reminder of the importance of going to the gemba, asking the internal customer what they need and m

Empirical Evidence for the Power of Kata

By Kevin Meyer - December 13th, 2019

We’ve long known that embracing failure with an aim toward learning and improvement can create future success. Organizations that see failure in that light, and support their people with cultures and systems to learn from failu

How to be Tough on Process, Easy on People

By Jon Miller - December 9th, 2019

One of the guiding principles for practicing continuous improvement, or good leadership in general, is to be tough on the process but easy on the people. The idea is to create a blame-free but problem-aware environment. This removes fe

How to Run Kata in the Classroom

By Ron Pereira - December 6th, 2019

If you’re interested in learning how to think scientifically I strongly recommend the Kata in the Classroom (KiC) exercise. I’ve personally run a number of KiC workshops. On one end of the spectrum I’ve run workshop

Practicing Gratitude within the Daily Accountability Process

By Jon Miller - December 2nd, 2019

One of the better ideas I saw this year was during a tour of a lean company. It saw that “Appreciation” was one of the items on the agenda for the tier 2 daily accountability meeting. Each morning the area team leaders and

Which Lean Behavior or Tool Should We Adopt?

By Jon Miller - November 25th, 2019

This week during an interview for a Lean newsletter I was asked a hypothetical question. If I had to choose one Lean behavior or tool for an organization to adopt, what would it be? Easy answers might be “5S because it’s fo

Leading Lean from the Middle of the Organization

By Steve Kane - November 22nd, 2019

This article was originally posted a couple of years ago. Questions about getting other people to change their thinking come up fairly regularly, so I thought I’d revisit the topic here. A common struggle in the lean community

What Does It Mean to Huddle?

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2019

One of the encouraging trends I’ve seen in the past decade with Lean management is the emerging acceptance of team huddles. While still far from universal, this one simple activity is becoming a core part of the daily practice of

How to Measure the M in SQDCM

By Jon Miller - November 11th, 2019

The giant letters SQDCM are common sights on visual display boards of teams on the gemba. They stand for the key performance indicator categories of safety, quality, delivery, cost and morale. Visualization of key performance indicator

Question Yourself

By Kevin Meyer - November 8th, 2019

One of my favorite websites, Brain Pickings, recently turned 13. The reason it’s a favorite is because it offers content that is challenging intellectually – but not to the point of not making sense to humble minds like min

Lean Management for the Day After Tomorrow

By Jon Miller - November 4th, 2019

One of the criticisms of lean management is that it doesn’t address innovation. Lean practices build systems for delivering high quality services on-time to customers at lower costs. This is achieved through robust processes, dai

You’re Not the Hero

By Ron Pereira - November 1st, 2019

We continuous improvement practitioners have much to learn from the movie business. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the “storytelling formula” may be one of the most important things we lean thinkers can learn. Most good mo

10 Behaviors to Practice Respect for People

By Jon Miller - October 28th, 2019

Last week I had the pleasure of facilitating a study mission for a group of leaders from a global manufacturer. We visited several companies. Each was two decades into their lean journey. The host companies were generous in sharing the

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