Gemba Academy

There’s Value in Simple, Visual and Manual Systems

By Steve Kane - September 22nd, 2017

The advancement of technology of the years has put the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. We can look up pretty much anything we want to know in a matter of seconds. Data systems have enabled us to see details of our busines

A Speedy Recovery to Houston, and a Lesson in Overburdened Systems

By Jon Miller - September 18th, 2017

Mura, muri, muda. Three words that someone should have taught the civic leaders of Houston decades ago. This trio explains how systems break, why we waste our resources, and why people suffer worse than we should from predictable disas

A Spymaster’s Guide to Lean Thinking

By Jon Miller - September 11th, 2017

A person works in intelligence told me a few things about that profession. Here is a summary of a few similarities between good spy craft and good business leadership that come with lean thinking. Go to the gemba. Intelligence gatherin

Chess Masters and Lean Thinkers

By Jon Miller - September 4th, 2017

I found an interesting parallel between lean thinking and game mastery in a book about the history of board games by Tristan Donovan titled It’s All A Game. In a section of the book discussing chess, the author introduced an insi

Monuments to the Lean Journey

By Kevin Meyer - September 1st, 2017

Nearly two decades ago I had left the medical device industry to jump into telecom photonics equipment. My team was responsible for the operations side of a facility that was a recently-acquired startup in the space, with a product t

This Area Closed to Improvement

By Jon Miller - August 28th, 2017

An organization I visited recently surprised me. They are on a long-running and successful continuous improvement journey. They do many things right. They recognize where they have gaps and are open to outside help. And yet they have c

Questions from a Gemba Academy Subscriber

By Steve Kane - August 25th, 2017

When customers start a subscription with Gemba Academy we like to start with discussion about how we can help them meet their Lean goals. A recent new customer was very well prepared for our conversation and had four prepared question

What Lean Leaders Can Learn from the Humanities

By Jon Miller - August 14th, 2017

Leaders in business tend to come with educational backgrounds in finance, business, engineering, medicine or law. It is less common that they bring backgrounds in literature, philosophy, the liberal arts. These fields are viewed as les

Walking (and Swimming, Biking, Running) the Talk

By Kevin Meyer - August 11th, 2017

Many of you know Paul Akers of Fastcap. He’s a very passionate lean practitioner, and Gemba Academy has several videos where we talk to him and tour his company. Almost two years ago I was talking to him and he told me how he,

Solving the Engagement Equation with Tracey & Ernie Richardson

By Jon Miller - August 7th, 2017

The Toyota Engagement Equation: How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization by Tracey and Ernie Richardson has been published by McGraw-Hill Education. The book follows the experiences of Tracey

The SELF Journal

By Ron Pereira - August 4th, 2017

I, along with several of my Gemba Academy colleagues, have started to experiment with something called the SELF Journal. Upon first glance the SELF Journal looks like your normal day planner. And it does a great job of helping you pl

What it Means to Turn the PDCA Cycle One More Time

By Jon Miller - July 31st, 2017

A. It’s the first letter in the alphabet. It’s also the last letter in PDCA. Central to the scientific method, problem solving and continuous improvement, the PDCA cycle stands for Plan, Do, Check, and A is for Act, Adjust

Why I Mow My Own Lawn

By Steve Kane - July 28th, 2017

There are things you should do yourself and other things you should pay someone else to do It seems that, for many people, there is no uncertainty about which category lawn maintenance falls into. This is why lawn maintenance compani

Lessons in Problem Solving from Seattle’s Bike Share Fail

By Jon Miller - July 24th, 2017

In March of this year, the City of Seattle put an end to its taxpayer-funded experiment in bike sharing. The Pronto! bike share program allowed members to pick up and drop off one of 500 bikes from 50 stations across Seattle. When the

The Horse, the Carriage and the Carriage Fee

By Jon Miller - July 17th, 2017

The automobile has been with us for approximately a century. For the millennia prior to that, we had horses. Because horses were an important part of lives and civilizations for so long, they generated many idioms and proverbs. You can

Combating Shallow Information with Page-Turning Statistics

By Kevin Meyer - July 14th, 2017

Over the past decade or two I’ve become very aware of the importance of depth of knowledge, and how technology has changed our ability to obtain that depth. Reading books and newspaper articles has been replaced with news sound

Practicing Lean Repairs a Leader’s Brain Damage

By Jon Miller - July 10th, 2017

It’s a sign of how little power I pretend to enjoy these days when an Atlantic Magazine article’s alarming title Power Causes Brain Damage made me more curious than concerned. In it studies suggest that given power, lead

Drive Out Fear

By Ron Pereira - July 7th, 2017

Drive out fear. Dr. Deming told us this many years ago when he published his famous 14 Principles. Most of us have heard these words. Most of us probably think we understand these words. And, I bet, most “actively practicing

Advanced Lean is Paying Due Respect to Basic Lean

By Jon Miller - June 26th, 2017

I used to believe there was such a thing as advanced lean. Many people probably still believe this today. How about you? There are several ways “advanced lean” is used. In an educational context it means “not for be

“I Didn’t Teach the Dog Anything”

By Steve Kane - June 23rd, 2017

The Dog is a Handful I have a Jack Russell Terrier named Kirby. Kirby has some–how should I put it–less than desirable behavioral traits. He’s a great dog most of the time. Other times, he can be a handful. Fo

Lean is a Floor

By Jon Miller - June 19th, 2017

American football is in its preseason. Teams have been holding training events for veterans and new players. Sports media commentators often speak or write about a players “floor” or “ceiling.” A rookie with

Scalable Learning, with a Lean Twist

By Kevin Meyer - June 16th, 2017

Last week John Haley and John Brown penned an interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review titled Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations. They began with a bit of history on how scalable efficiency used

Headwinds, Tailwinds, Continuous Improvement and Respect for Humanity

By Jon Miller - June 12th, 2017

A Freakonomics Radio episode from March of this year titled Why is My Life So Hard? reminds us of the importance of gratitude, introduces the notion and Headwinds/Tailwinds Asymmetry, and offers a new way to understand Lean management

Lean Thinking from Itchy Toes to NASA

By Jon Miller - June 5th, 2017

About a month ago I consulted a physician about itchy toes, for the third time in about a year. Through this process, I was able to reflect on Lean thinking, organizational culture, how we present problems, and what this means for th

Get the Facts

By Ron Pereira - June 2nd, 2017

Without sounding overly dramatic I’m fairly certain my content development team and I are working on the most important Gemba Academy course we’ve ever produced. This new course will be focused on the Job Relations (JR) as

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