Gemba Academy

Here are 4.5 Signs that Your Lean May be L.A.M.E.

By Jon Miller - March 22nd, 2007

Mark Graban at the Lean Blog coined L.A.M.E. as “Lean As Misguidedly Executed” and Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog builds on this idea in pointing out how Lean is often added on in press releases, though it may

Work in Process in Knowledge Work

By Jon Miller - March 21st, 2007

The Lean principles of the seven types of waste, flow, building in quality at each step, and making small improvements locally each day are all readily accepted by knowledge workers with a minimum of explanation and demonstration. Visu

North American Manufacturing

By Ron Pereira - March 21st, 2007

I recently read an interesting article related to manufacturing in North America. Here are some interesting quotes for those wanting the abbreviated version: “But CMP, which opened its first U.S. manufacturing operation just north of

Safety Glasses Are a Sign of Unsafe Processes

By Jon Miller - March 20th, 2007

I left the training room too eager to go to gemba today and forgot to put on my safety glasses. Within two minutes one of the safety coordinators on the shop floor stopped me and sent me back to get them. Kudos to the management of thi

Demystifying Design of Experiments

By Ron Pereira - March 19th, 2007

I love Design of Experiments (DOE). Over the years I have done my fair share of them – everything from simple 2^2 full factorial designs to your more complicated Response Surface Methodology designs. Tonight I want to start by explai

Introducing SPACER

By Ron Pereira - March 18th, 2007

Tonight I want to introduce one of the best tools available to ensure you have a good meeting or training class. The technique I am referring to is called SPACER. It stands for: Safety Purpose Agenda Conduct Expectations Roles It sound

Reading Lean for Dummies

By Jon Miller - March 17th, 2007

I just finished reading Lean for Dummies. It covers a lot of ground in 362 pages. It’s full of diagrams, lists and other useful visuals. It is light and accessible reading. Parts IV “The Lean Enterprise” and Part V &#

The Kaizen Mindset Requires Starting with Scarcity

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2007

We have been fortunate to visit Ricoh factories in Japan and in my opinion Ricoh is an excellent company and a great example of implementing the Toyota Production System outside of the automotive industry. They are also a leader in red

The Mysterious Process Cycle Efficiency

By Ron Pereira - March 15th, 2007

A key metric used by Lean practitioners is Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE). You may also hear it called Value Added Ratio. When used in conjunction with a Value Stream Map, PCE is calculated as follows: Value Add Time / Production Lead

Nine Rules for Fighting Endless Meetings

By Jon Miller - March 15th, 2007

I’ve heard that at Toyota the meetings are 60 minutes long, with 50 minutes of actual meeting time and 10 minutes to get to the next meeting. The use of the standardize A3 size one-page format to communicate the progress on PDCA

Oops!

By Ron Pereira - March 14th, 2007

I was just made aware that when you post a blog highlighting other good blogging links from the week you should call this a “carnival.” I called it a blogroll a few weeks back. You learn something new everyday!

Taking the Toyota Production System to City Hall

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2007

There was an encouraging article about Lean government in the March 15, 2007 NB Online (Nikkei Business) titled City Hall in Aichi Studies at Toyota to “Enhance the Capabilities of the Staff (愛知の市役所がトヨタで修

Confused about Waste

By Ron Pereira - March 13th, 2007

A while back I wrote about how I felt waiting was the worst of the 7 wastes. OK, so being trapped on an airplane may have influenced that post a bit but I bring it up since I outlined the 7 (or 8 depending on whose book you read) deadl

Lean for People of Average Intelligence

By Jon Miller - March 12th, 2007

When do you know a management concept has hit the mainstream? Like a bug to a windshield, “Lean” as a management approach has now hit bookshelves in the form of Lean for Dummies. It set me off on a minor rant in the office

TPS and Family Time

By Ron Pereira - March 11th, 2007

For some reason a book I had never read, and should have read many years ago, is the masterpiece The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker. Well the drought is over as I am presently devouring the book. It is a good book so far (I’m in chapter

The War On Waste

By Jon Miller - March 11th, 2007

During training in how to do kaizen, a key activity is helping people understand the concept of waste and make it relevant to their own organization and to their own work. As long as waste is something abstract, or something that happe

Six Sigma City Magazine – Free

By Ron Pereira - March 10th, 2007

I just came across a pretty slick online magazine. Follow this link and gain access to the new online Six Sigma City Magazine. It’s free (for now at least). Until next time, I wish you all the best on your journey towards continu

Get on your Knees

By Ron Pereira - March 9th, 2007

I just read Mike Wrobleski’s recent post on leadership. It was good but actually sparked another thought in my mind related to a previous post he made some time ago after he went to the, oh I pray I get to go one day, Japan Kaikaku E

Quick Changeover and SMED for the Office

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2007

A reader named Sonu read the article Kaizen is Like Climbing a Mountain: Drive Stakes in Along the Way. She asked, “Can single-minute exchange of dies concept be used in the office?” Yes! Since SMED or single-minute exchang

LSSA Carnival: 1

By Ron Pereira - March 8th, 2007

There was some awesome blogging this week. I especially liked Jon Miller’s take on standing in the circle. I nearly fell off my chair laughing at the story Kevin, of Evolving Excellence, had today regarding the heavy heads of consult

LSSA Site Update

By Ron Pereira - March 7th, 2007

I started this blog January 15, 2007 and didn’t know what to expect. I must confess and admit I am really enjoying myself. I have met so many cool people via email and have uncovered this underground movement of Lean and Six Sigma bl

The 5 Why Questions, Like All Roads, Lead to Rome

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2007

Today Patrick Shumaker from Gemba forwarded a great example of asking “Why?” persistently until the root cause is found. Why are U.S. standard railroad gages 4 feet 8.5 inches? Rome. You can find the full story on this bull

Regression – Part 3

By Ron Pereira - March 6th, 2007

This evening we will wrap up our discussion of regression. So far we have discussed what regression is and a few ways to determine whether our model is significant. Next up I want to discuss something called the least squares me

Build a Workplace You Can Be Proud Of

By Jon Miller - March 6th, 2007

People talk about pride. It’s a funny thing. I’ve never seen a “pride” poster in a factory or workplace that had their 5S down, good visual management in place and smiling employees. Maybe they 5S-ed the pride p

Regression – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2007

Last night we began our discussion on regression. Tonight, I want to talk about a few more things related to this topic. As I was thinking of what to write I realized how difficult it is to explain these topics without a flip ch

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