Gemba Academy

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

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