Gemba Academy

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

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 the IET E

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

Give Me 60 Minutes and I’ll Give You a Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2007

That’s 60 minutes from everyone in supervisory position and above, at least once every three weeks, forever. If that’s too much to ask, save yourself two minutes and stop reading now. There’s something called “s

Regression – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2007

After posting my recent blog on hypothesis testing I received a request to write about regression in a similar manner. As I am always focused on the “voice of the customer” I will take on regression tonight. This will b

How Do You Sustain Improvement?

By Jon Miller - March 3rd, 2007

“How do you sustain improvement?” This is one of the most common questions posed to us about kaizen and Lean. I used to think this question required a thoughtful pause and a serious three-part reply. But lately I ask “

Lean Culture in a Temporary Workforce

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2007

Can you have Lean manufacturing without Lean enterprise? Can you have Lean enterprise without a Lean culture? Can you have Lean culture without a motivated shop floor? All of the trappings of operational excellence such as one piece fl

The Tipping Point

By Ron Pereira - March 1st, 2007

The blog”scribbit” is one of the coolest, non CIPish, blogs I have ever come across. This blogger has some serious skills. She recently posted a blog about an excellent book I highly recommend you read – The Tipping P

Top 5 Things I’ve Never Heard from a Kaizen Team Member

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2007

#5. “I’m surprised at how little we got done in four and a half days.” #4. “I have no concerns about these results being sustained.” #3. “Everything went as planned.” #2. “There’s n

How Much Should We Pay for Kaizen Ideas?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2007

“How much should we pay for kaizen ideas?” This is a question we often hear during a kaizen class. The type of kaizen we are talking about here is the everyone-everyday kind, otherwise known as the soikufu system in Japanes

Hypothesis Testing

By Ron Pereira - February 27th, 2007

Originally published February 27, 2007 One of my favorite statistical tools is hypothesis testing. We can use hypothesis testing for many purposes. For example, we would use the popular 2-sample t-test when we have two samples of varia

Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2007

Today’s article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, The Scott County Way: Educators take a page from ‘The Toyota Way’ to boost curriculums, made my day a little bit better. It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corpo

Lean Six Sigma Hot Sports Opinions

By Ron Pereira - February 26th, 2007

It seems “Lean Six Sigma” has been on the minds of some bloggers lately. There was a great discussion over at the Gemba Research blog here. I saw Rob commented on the topic here. Last, but certainly not least, the folks at the Scra

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2007

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today’s Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a

Once a Month Cooking – Lean or Not?

By Ron Pereira - February 23rd, 2007

A few posts ago I went on about my Sensei wife. I told you how she was teaching my kids about lean concepts, etc. Well, I must be fair and balanced with my blogging and need to confess something to you all. Tonight, my beautiful wife i

The Seven Habits of Toyota People

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2007

The harder Toyota’s overwhelming success becomes to ignore, the more books and articles are written about what makes them great. Many say the same thing, but in different ways. I’ve just started flipping through a Japanese

The New Savior of the Free World – MVT

By Ron Pereira - February 22nd, 2007

Matt, a reader of this blog, sent me an article from Chief Executive magazine. While I was not going to comment until I studied this more I decided what the heck… tap dancing makes for boring blogs. I’m letting it fly!A company th

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