Gemba Academy

Something Lacking in the TPS House

By Jon Miller - September 24th, 2007

People point out from time to time that there is something lacking in the TPS house used to explain the Toyota Production System. Typically it is represented with the two pillars of just in time and jidoka, with a foundation of kaizen,

A New Lean Metric: ROI LT

By Ron Pereira - September 23rd, 2007

When teaching value stream mapping one of the hardest metrics for people to grasp is production lead time (PLT) which is also commonly referred to as throughput time. Here is a quick summary of how PLT works. Say there are 3 proces

Gary Convis on the Role of Management in Lean Manufacturing

By Jon Miller - September 23rd, 2007

Gary Convis is the Chairman of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky and also serves in Officer roles for Toyota’s North American holding companies. Gary Convis helped start up NUMMI, and he was the first American President of a ve

We Live in a Pull Universe

By Jon Miller - September 21st, 2007

Lean manufacturing works, and this has been proven through decades of practice. Yet decades are admittedly not much when measured against geologic time. Some aspects of TPS such building in quality, getting ideas from people who actual

This Too is a Kanban

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2007

The orthodox description of a kanban is a rectangular card in a plastic sleeve used to reorder materials from a supplier or an upstream process, or a triangular metal plate used to signal production for a process that requires changeov

Where is Ron?

By Ron Pereira - September 20th, 2007

Hello from London, England. I wanted to drop a line and apologize for my lack of blogging action! I have been extremely busy as of late and thus my blogging has taken a bit of a hit. I typically post my blogs in the evenings but

How the Skill Matrix Enables Downstream Pull

By Jon Miller - September 19th, 2007

Downstream pull, one piece at a time, works not only for inventory control by signaling production or material movement, but also for maintaining smooth balance and flow of work done by people. This can be manual factory work such as a

Push, Pull, Paper Clips & Problem Solving

By Jon Miller - September 18th, 2007

The Toyota Production System, or what we call sometimes call Lean management, is simply the practice of planning, trying out your plan, reflecting (hansei) on what worked and what did not work and making adjustments through problem sol

Keep Your Kanban Cards Close to Your Genbutsu

By Jon Miller - September 17th, 2007

The primary function of a kanban card is to provide information about production instructions. Kanban cards contain information about where to produce and transport a particular product, when and in what quantity. For information to be

The Push vs. Pull Diversion Diversion

By Jon Miller - September 16th, 2007

I’m still scratching my head over an IndustryWeek article titled The Great Push vs. Pull Diversion by By Edward S. Pound and Mark L. Spearman of Factory Physics, consultants and writers of one of my favorite Lean books. They stat

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 3

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2007

The Road to Tahara Prison A Toyota term employee and blogger named Maruo wrote 72 posts over 4 months on his experience working at the Tahara plant. His blog is called Welcome to Tahara Prison (田原刑務所へようこそ). He signe

What Are You Building?

By Jon Miller - September 13th, 2007

For those of us who are in manufacturers, or in some way involved in making things or helping others make things, we think in terms of what we build, the materials, tools and processes we use. How would you answer if you were asked

Change Leadership, Not Change Management

By Jon Miller - September 12th, 2007

The Hithchhiker’s Guide to Lean is one of the top 10 books on Lean thinking and a must read. We’ve never done a proper, full book review of Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino’s book. This is not that full review, but

Calculating Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)

By Ron Pereira - September 12th, 2007

One of the most powerful operational metrics I know of is Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY). It’s used to assess the “true” yield of a given process. This includes what we often call the “hidden factory” t

Awareness of a Problem Does Not Mean Much

By Jon Miller - September 11th, 2007

Reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been thought provoking. It is a book about the impact of the highly improbable events on our lives and on history, and why humans do not forsee such Black Swan events. There are many

Hope for Chrysler

By Jon Miller - September 9th, 2007

My hope for Chrysler is that Jim Press can act as a consensus builder and not a heroic, problem solving executive. What Chrysler doesn’t need is a wave of Toyota Production System implementation in their factories or a dose of To

Six Sigma in Japan

By Ron Pereira - September 9th, 2007

Here is a question I honestly don’t know the answer to. Do companies in Japan use Six Sigma? When I say Six Sigma I am referring to someone following the standard DMAIC roadmap in attempts to reduce variation, defects, etc.

Job Breakdown Sheets for Teaching TPS

By Jon Miller - September 8th, 2007

Job Breakdown Sheets are used as part of Toyota’s approach to OJT (on the job training), called Job Instruction. A Job Breakdown Sheet details the Major Steps, Key Points and Reasons for the key points. Having a Job Breakdown She

Humility

By Ron Pereira - September 6th, 2007

This past Sunday the readings for Roman Catholics around the world centered on the theme of humilty. The pastor of my parish gave an excellent homily on the topic and I wanted to share some of my own thoughts as it relates to the those

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 2

By Jon Miller - September 6th, 2007

How to Pass the Term Employee Job Interview at Toyota The website “The New – Ask the Term Laborer Porsche” (新・期間工ポルシェに訊け) offers a fascinating glimpse into the secret lives of Toyota term emplo

Kaizen Song: It’s a Long Way to the Top (Teaching Takt, Flow, Pull)

By Jon Miller - September 5th, 2007

By Brad Schmidt Here’s a little back-to-school rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a Long Way to the Top (Teaching Takt, Flow, Pull) [To the tune of It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll) by A

Getting Started with Lean in the Office

By Jon Miller - September 3rd, 2007

One of the most common misconceptions about doing Lean in the office is that there is a different set of Lean tools for the office. We hear “What symbols should we use for value stream mapping in an engineering process?” or

Autonomous Maintenance in the Office

By Jon Miller - September 2nd, 2007

We are going through some design change tests at the Gemba blog as long-time readers may have noted. While testing the various functions and features to send back fix requests to our developer, I came across some reader comments and qu

Management Improvement Carnival #18

By Ron Pereira - September 2nd, 2007

The Management Improvement Carnival is one of my favorite aspects of John Hunter’s Curious Cat blog. John asked me to host the carnival this month and I gladly accepted. So without further delay here are some of my favorite

Game on!

By Ron Pereira - August 31st, 2007

I grew up watching Ohio State play football. I suppose I was watching them play as a young boy in Greenville, Ohio before I even knew what football was. My mom once told me, “You can take the boy out of Ohio (I live in Texas now), bu

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