Gemba Academy

What Motivates?

By Ron Pereira - July 23rd, 2010

If you are reading this via email or RSS, you may need to click through to the website to see the video.

How to Determine Cycle Time, Takt Time, Lead Time

By Ron Pereira - July 20th, 2010

Vaibhav, a reader of Gemba Academy’s blog, emailed us the following question. Can you please help me understand the definitions for the following terms? Cycle Time Manufacturing Lead Time TAKT Time Inventory Turns Your help to c

Multiple Grey spheres with one red sphere in the cluster representing an abnormality

5S Isn’t About Cleaning, Straightening, or Standardization

By Ron Pereira - July 19th, 2010

Quick question for you… what’s the true purpose of 5S (or 6S)? Go ahead and answer in your head or out loud. Now, if you’re close enough to some colleagues ask them the same question. Go on, I’ll wait. Great. Now that we have s

New Video Training for the 7 QC (Quality Control) Tools

By Jon Miller - July 17th, 2010

Some say “lean reduces waste, six sigma reduces variation” but this is a misconception. Both aim to reduce waste and both rely on a variety of common sense tools and sophisticated statistical methods to improve quality and

Kaizen Song: (SWIP Can’t Be) Zero

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2010

Tony asked in a comment to an article about how to calculate standard work in process (standard WIP): Can I ask you a question: Standard WIP = One piece flow? No Tony, the two are not the same. The minimum necessary amount of stock to

Igor Stravinsky Agrees: Standards Enable Creativity

By Jon Miller - July 12th, 2010

There is a stereotype of the creative person who chafes at standards related to how their work is performed, to the point of eschewing any sort of process-driven continuous improvement approach. This creative person can be a designer,

Visualizing the Water Level

By Jon Miller - July 8th, 2010

One of the simplest and most powerful visual controls is the horizontal line. Placed strategically above a stack of inventory, across a graph plotting daily quality performance or even to indicate a safe height clearance for vehicles,

Andon Systems in a Land Where Red Means Go

By Jon Miller - July 2nd, 2010

My daily walk to the office is filled with quiet danger. Much of Shanghai is a scene of too many people too eager to get to wherever they think they must go on streets that are too narrow. I have been to Shanghai perhaps 10 times. Duri

Free 7 Quality Control Tools Overview Training Video

By Ron Pereira - July 1st, 2010

Quality control can take a lifetime of learning to master, but Gemba Academy is here to help you get started with our free 7 quality control tools overview training video. Contrary to what some think, lean-thinking companies are very c

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Donut Shop Edition

By Jon Miller - June 30th, 2010

Always on the lookout for ambiguous visual controls, I spotted one today at the donut shop by our office during a stop for my morning coffee. These pastries which were clearly a tray of vintage 1970s Orange Shag Carpet donuts were misl

Red Flags in Ronak’s Kaizen Plan

By Jon Miller - June 28th, 2010

Ronak has successfully implemented 5S and plans to move on to implementing kaizen at his company. His plan for implementing kaizen is: 1. Train employees regarding kaizen, different kind of waste, etc. 2. Launch a tool, an Idea box in

5 Ways to Improve Your Teaching Skills

By Ron Pereira - June 28th, 2010

Have you ever been forced to listen to a monotone, boring, and oh so irritating instructor teach a class? I’m guessing most of you are nodding your head up and down. Well I have and can tell you one thing… it hurts. A lot! But it d

Summer Seminars in Shanghai

By Jon Miller - June 28th, 2010

This summer I am working from our Shanghai, China office. My team here has signed me up to lead some seminars. Our China team hosts lean discussion groups they call “salons” so I am looking forward to participating in one o

PDCA, Hoshin Planning and the Making of Ice Cream

By Jon Miller - June 26th, 2010

When I was young our family had a hand-cranked ice cream maker not unlike the one pictured above, although ours had an aluminum case and not wood. On winter days we would fill the inner cylinder with a mixture of milk, cream, vanilla,

The Power of Everyday Frontline Employee-Driven Innovation

By Jon Miller - June 23rd, 2010

By Andy Brophy The management of ideas is, in many organisations large and small, a huge untapped or poorly underutilised resource. Yet ideas are the prime source of improvement and innovation. Moreover, good Idea Management brings wit

The 12 Herculean Labors of Lean Leaders

By Jon Miller - June 17th, 2010

When we say that a task is Herculean, it means it is extremely difficult. Heracles was a Greek hero (Hercules in the Roman version) who got into some trouble for killing a member of his family in a fit of madness and was assigned a ser

Toyota to Reduce Span of Control in Engineering

By Jon Miller - June 14th, 2010

The Nikkei reported on June 11, 2010 that Toyota is bringing back front line supervisors, adding a layer of management to staff positions that has been missing since 1989. This is an admission by Toyota, the world’s greatest lean

How to Radically Increase Personal Productivity

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2010

Think back to the last meeting you attended. How many people were there? How long was the meeting? Let’s assume – for sake of example – that there were 8 people in your meeting. Let’s also assume the meeting lasted 1 hour. This

21 Questions to Ask When Walking the Model Line, Part 2

By Jon Miller - June 9th, 2010

Continuing our walk on the model line, here are questions 11 through 21 to ask when performing a lean maturity audit: 11. What methods are used to smooth out the variation in workload due to changes in product mix or work volume? What

21 Questions to Ask When Walking the Model Line, Part 1

By Jon Miller - June 8th, 2010

The model line is a value stream or a section of a value stream used as a pilot to demonstrate an organization’s capability to deploy lean systems and behaviors. The model line approach is used early in an organizations lean jour

Leaders Who Think Across Silos

By Jon Miller - June 5th, 2010

A Newsweek article titled ‘Know What You Don’t Know’ interviews Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers and plumbs his insights into the futre of leadership. One passage caught my eye in paticular: You came out of law school

Jim Joyce and Accountability

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2010

As those that follow Major League Baseball know, umpire Jim Joyce cost pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game earlier this week. For those that don’t know the story, Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga needed one more out in or

Good Fortune Deceives, but Bad Fortune Enlightens

By Jon Miller - June 3rd, 2010

Previously we made an analogy between King Pyrrhus and Toyota’s cost of victory in the battle for sales volume. I recommend the Classics once again as a source of wisdom for leaders. In the most challenging of times they could be

Enhancing Total Management Commitment

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2010

In an e-mail, Junaid asked: How we will enhance top management commitment and involvement for implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)? This is a great general question to ask for any effort to establish excellence, maintai

3 Practical Ways to Immediately Reduce Costs

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2010

No matter if business is good or bad one thing is for certain… you, and those you work with, should be laser focused on cost reduction. Now be honest, when you read the words cost reduction was the first thing that popped into your m

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