Gemba Academy

Build a Lean Enterprise on a Stable Foundation

By Jon Miller - March 8th, 2005

It’s interesting how things come in threes. Recently the issue of stability and how it affects successful Lean implementation came up three times in rapid succession. Following up with a client of ours who is a candy factory (ver

On-time Delivery Starts with Trust

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2005

On a recent trip to Dallas I had the chance to reflect on two different companies facing similar issues with poor on-time deliveries. One was an aerospace company and the other a consumer electronics company. Their production processes

OEE Basics from Europe

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2005

by Charles Lukey What is OEE and what can it do? OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Done correctly, it can show you where your machines are losing money and what you can do about it. OEE is a powerful metric, calculated fr

The Four Elements for Sustaining Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2005

One of the most frequent questions we encounter form our customers and prospects is the issue of how to sustain the gains made through kaizen and other continuous improvement efforts. In a recent discussion among our consultants, we ca

Three Keys to Sustaining 5S

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2005

Visiting a plant tour at a Midwestern cold rolled steel mill today, I had the chance to reflect on what makes a 5S effort sustained and successful. The owner took me through the mill and showed me a line at the start of the tour that w

Value Stream Maps & Right Brain Thinking

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2005

With the increasing commitment of major firms to TPS-based Lean initiatives, Value Stream Maps are increasingly becoming items seen in board rooms as well as kaizen team rooms. George David, Chairman and CEO of United Technologies is s

Where to Start the Lean Journey: 5S or With VSM?

By Jon Miller - February 1st, 2005

From time to time the question comes up, as it did again this week, or where an organization should start their Lean journey. Should they do 5S first and remove the obvious clutter? Or should they Value Stream Map the entire process, i

Why does Toyota Share the Secrets of TPS?

By Jon Miller - January 25th, 2005

During an overview of TPS given during a Just In Time training class, one of the participants asked why it was that Toyota was willing to share their secrets with their competitors. This is a question worth thinking deeply about. Certa

Planning a Lean Journey? Take the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - January 14th, 2005

A survey of members by the Lean Enterprise Institute’s in February of 2004 found that 36% of those surveyed were in the planning or starting phase of Lean implementation. This number may be even higher if the level of requests we

Genchi Gembutsu

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2005

As we being a new year, there have been humbling reminders of one of the fundamentals of the Toyota way, namely Genchi Gembutsu. In short this means “go to the actual scene (genchi) and confirm the actual happenings or things (ge

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