Gemba Academy

A3 Report Title: 189 Apologies

By Jon Miller - December 14th, 2005

We don’t manufacture automobiles, but I know a bit about how it must feel when automobile companies issue a recall and have to ask many thousands of customers to bring in their vehicles to fix a flaw they have discovered. We found ou

Heads Firmly in Sand, Motor City Chairmen Speak Out

By Jon Miller - December 13th, 2005

General Motors Chairman Rick Wagoner asks why U.S. automobile manufacturers are doing so poorly when foreign ones are doing so well in the December 6, 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial A Portrait of My Industry. “Despite public

This Blog Has Been Kaizened to Accept Your Comments!

By Jon Miller - December 12th, 2005

We have upgraded our blogging platform! You are now invited to join the discussion about kaizen, Lean manufacturing and continuous improvement on our blog. You can post your comments in the field directly below each article. We look fo

Lean Food Service in Korea Factory Cafeteria

By Jon Miller - December 11th, 2005

I’ve been a fan of Korean food for a long time, but now I’m also a fan of Korean kitchenware. I’ve always thought the steel chopsticks were particularly a good idea. Here’s my dinner on a washable, reusable dinner tray

The Kaizen Cops Clobber Government Waste in Kenya

By Jon Miller - December 2nd, 2005

I’ve been chuckling quielty to myself for the past couple of days over an article I read. Now that I have internet access, I’d like share it with you. The Kenya News Agency headline screams

Run Faster, Team

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2005

There’s a great day-after-Thanksgiving Day piece on Joe Ely’s Learning About Lean blog. I missed the sports action over the weekend but Joe caught an American football coach’s half-time strategy for doing better in th

Gemba Keiei Chapter 12: Agricultural People Like Inventory

By Jon Miller - November 25th, 2005

Taiichi Ohno makes an interesting connection between the Japanese as historically an agricultural people and the fact that Japanese manufacturers seem to like inventory. Farmers growing rice are at the mercy of the weather. There are d

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 2

By Jon Miller - November 24th, 2005

Why do organizations fail to invest sufficiently in their people? The term Human Capital was introduced over 40 year ago by University of Chicago Professor Gary Becker. Human capital are the assets a person owns in for form of job skil

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 1

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2005

Triangulation is a process by which you figure out where you are by checking three points or positions. Triangulation can be used to study a phenomenon by comparing three (or more) types of points of view or data sources. Three things

The Perils of Not Going “Genchi, Gembutsu” (On Site, With the Actual Things)

By Jon Miller - November 21st, 2005

I take a lot of people from many companies to Japan to see lean organizations, such as the Toyota Motor Corporation. One of the themes you see and hear in Toyota is the idea of Genchi (actual place) and Gembutsu (actual things). Toyota

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