Gemba Academy Blog

Remove Waste, Uncover Individual Human Beings

By Jon Miller - July 5th, 2012

Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management was originally published in 1982, following his first book, Toyota Production System which came out in 1978. In the preface to the 1987 English language version of Workplace Management, Taiichi

The Neglected Art and Science of Organization (re)Design

By Jon Miller - July 3rd, 2012

I follow three simple rules whenever looking at an organization chart with a view to improving its effectiveness. First, remove structural causes of delay or loss in information and decision flow wherever possible. Second, decrease spa

World Peace through 5S

By Jon Miller - July 2nd, 2012

Congratulations to Kaizen Institute Romania, KI Japan for the 2nd successful “5S in the City” event. In cooperation with the Japanese non-profit organization 日本を美しくする会 (Organization to Clean Up Japan), a t

Placing a Popular Taiichi Ohno Quote in Context

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2012

There is a popular quote by Taiichi Ohno which has always bothered me. Unless you are completely new to Lean, you’ve seen it. “All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to

Kaizen Transformation Update from Procon Engineering

By Jon Miller - June 4th, 2012

We have shared updates on the kaizen journey at Procon Engineering of Karachi, Pakistan from time to time (TPM story, COPQ story). S.M. Junaid has been very patient with me over the past few months, sending me news which I have not pos

Go to Gembanana

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2012

The Wall Street Journal article titled Five Lessons From the Banana Man introduces us to the practical business wisdom of Samuel Zemurray, the former head of the United Fruit Company. The article is a good reminder that so-called Lean

4 Cloud Based Tools That Have Dramatically Increased my Personal Productivity

By Ron Pereira - May 24th, 2012

As a business owner, husband, and father of 5 amazing children time is not something I have a lot of. As such, being able to stay focused and productive is extremely important. A few months ago I realized I was not being as effective a

Where is Your Suggestion Box?

By Jon Miller - May 15th, 2012

The placement of a suggestion box within an organization speaks volumes about their level of commitment and sophistication in pursuing customer service, quality and continuous improvement. The example above was in the lobby of a county

How is PDCA Inimical to Innovation?

By Jon Miller - May 8th, 2012

PDCA. Plan, Do, Check, Act. This process is at the core of kaizen, lean, six sigma, continuous improvement, hoshin kanri, the scientific method and the learning organization. I also believe that the PDCA cycle is inherent to the creati

How to do Hansei

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2012

I am wrapping up a fairly intensive period of reflection. This week was the first board meeting since the merger of Gemba Research and Kaizen Institute nearly 18 months ago. It has been a time of challenge, opportunity and personal gro

A Factory of One

By Ron Pereira - April 26th, 2012

If you missed our most recent webinar called “A Factory of One” you can watch a replay of it here. It was excellent and I highly recommend you take the time to check it out. It’s free to view until May 15, 2012.  Aft

How to Tell if a Visual Control is Working

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2012

Humans Wanted for Lean Journey. Small Wages, Bitter Cold, Constant Danger…

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2012

Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer celebrated for his exploration of the Antarctic. During the 1914-1917 expedition aboard the aptly-named Endurance, he lead his crew without loss of life through disasters which included their sh

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Prehistoric Shark Attack Evacuation Plan

By Jon Miller - April 14th, 2012

This may be the most unhelpful emergency evacuation visual control in the United States of America. The evacuation plan resembles a journey through a shark’s intestines. Should one need to actually consult it, the ability to read

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Never stay in rooms 601-617

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2012

This ambiguous visual control creates more doubts than assurances. What is the message here? Do some people prefer and wish to be directed to the unclean rooms? Room 621 was in fact quite nice.

Yet More Musings on Muda

By Jon Miller - April 1st, 2012

Michel Baudin’s blog article More Musings on Muda, meant to end fruitless debate on the definitions and categorizations of the types of waste, in fact, led to some brief but interesting exchanges on Twitter. The discussion center

Review of The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

By Jon Miller - March 27th, 2012

My experience with startups extends to starting Gemba Research, a consulting and training company which we merged last year with Kaizen Institute, Gemba Academy, an online lean training venture, and three other business selling lean-re

Webinar Replay: Using SPC to Make Better Management Decisions

By Ron Pereira - March 27th, 2012

Update: This webinar can now only be seen by subscribers to the Complete Lean Package. In this pre-recorded webinar, Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and the upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen, showed how simple statistical process c

Lean, Bias, Impartiality and Justness

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2012

I considered myself to be appropriately biased against biases, but it turned out I was wrong. Such is often the way with cognitive biases. Reading Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, I learned to think of biases in a

Perseverance & PDCA

By Ron Pereira - March 13th, 2012

“Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). The ability to persevere through the tough times we experience as lean and six sigma practitioners is extremely important. In fact, the ability to persev

Kanban Systems Overview Video

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2012

Here is a free overview video introducing our Kanban course. And here’s a summary document of this video in PDF format that can be downloaded and printed. Visit gembaacademy.com to learn more about our available courses and acce

Lean Retail Exercise: “Not My Job” Edition

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2012

The retail industry has a poor image when it comes to the motivation level of its employees. They are often portrayed in popular culture as neither well-trained nor well-paid, not always inspired to deliver a great customer experience.

Building Excellent Systems: Top-down or Bottom-up?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2012

“We have to take these pockets of excellence, these islands of excellence and make them systems of excellence.” These could be words of an executive in encouragement of a kaizen team, spoken in any number of languages, at a

Improving Point of Use Lid Storage at Starbucks

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2012

On a recent visit to a Starbucks inside the San Francisco airport, I snapped a picture of their cup lid dispenser. As you can see they store lids in this unit and present it close to where the “final assembly” Barista does

Consumption Rate, Replenishment Time, SWIP and Why Glaciers Need Love

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2012

Over the past week, the greater Seattle area was met with the largest snowfall in a decade or two. Recently I was in New York City, where the season’s supply of snow had dropped last October, with barely a blizzard since. Back in