Gemba Academy

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

Value Stream Mapping Confusion

By Ron Pereira - February 21st, 2007

When drawing value stream maps there can be confusion regarding the different “times” that are measured and, in some cases, calculated. I recently came up against this myself and thus want to share some tips with you all. Cycle Tim

Lean Six Sigma is Not Lean

By Jon Miller - February 21st, 2007

Lean Six Sigma is not Lean. It is Six Sigma, but one that is more “Lean” than just regular “Six Sigma.” In the English language the adjective (Lean) modifies the noun or subject word (Six Sigma). So Lean Six Sig

Japanese Words

By Ron Pereira - February 20th, 2007

Over the years I have heard American and European employees from many companies grumble when hearing Japanese words. This is most apparent during Lean training. Personally, I feel it is extremely important to use the Japanese names for

My “Sensei” Wife

By Ron Pereira - February 20th, 2007

My wife is the best. As I have to travel some for my work she takes care of the house, kids, dogs, and pretty much anything else you can imagine without me around to yell at… I mean without me to help, of course.Well, in an attempt t

Let’s Establish a Waste and Efficiency Tip Line… and then Another One

By Jon Miller - February 20th, 2007

I caught a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night on television. The bit of news involved the $22 billion in cash lost in Iraq during Paul Bremer’s time there. Both political parties want to be seen as addressing thi

Bollinger Bands

By Ron Pereira - February 19th, 2007

I am not an active trader of stocks or options although I do enjoy reading and studying the methods people use to “time” the markets so to speak. I will confess I have tried to time the markets myself but have gotten whacked more t

Getting the CEO on a Kaizen Team is Like Pulling Teeth

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2007

As I was flipping through my copy of the February 2007 issue of Dental Economics today, an interview with two Danaher executives caught my eye. Danaher is known as a leading American company who has quietly and profitably grown through

NASCAR Fans React!

By Ron Pereira - February 18th, 2007

I’m not a NASCAR fan nor foe. I could really care less about the sport but a recent article bothered me. It seems two popular drivers, Darrel Waltrip and Dale Jarrett, have decided to drive Toyota cars and many NASCAR faithful are b

The Trouble with Exploring “all options” at Chrysler

By Jon Miller - February 18th, 2007

Chrysler is feeling the squeeze. Third quarter losses were twice as large as projected. The DaimlerChrysler leadership are using their wits in an ongoing effort to turn things around. Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche has stated that R

Not Enough “Toyota Way” in Factory Air?

By Jon Miller - February 16th, 2007

There’s a good article over at the New York Times on February 15, 2007 titled The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers. It’s not about putting Jeffrey Liker’s book The Toyota

Two Bin Kanban

By Ron Pereira - February 15th, 2007

A two bin kanban is one of the most popular kanban systems due to its simplicity. The basic idea is an operator will get the material they need from one of the bins while the other bin is being refilled. When things are working properl

Toyota Rebrands in Canada

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2007

Toyota Canada’s new guiding principle, slogan and value statement, to put it in marketing speak, is ‘make things better’. Toyota Canada gave itself a giant pat on the back in explaining the results of their extensive

Standard Work Needed for Use of Windows

By Jon Miller - February 14th, 2007

In chapter 32 of Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, Ohno said, “There is a correct sequence to kaizen.” We must first study and improve the work itself (manual work) then improve the process (sequence, steps) and th

Rarely Has Ranting Been This Good

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2007

Blogger BDG123 at Rantings on Markets, Economics and Business Strategy is an electrical engineer and mathematician by training, one-time corporate consultant and corporate sales and marketing executive in the information technology and

Why Some Lean Six Sigma Programs Fail – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - February 12th, 2007

In part 1 of “Why Lean Sigma Programs Fail” I discussed “activity centered programs.” Now I will introduce the alternative to ACP’s – results driven programs. Very simply stated RDP’s, as I will call them, aim for measura

Building a Lean Video Library

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2007

Our clients often ask us to help them with building a Lean video library. They want us to recommend 5 or 10 videos on Lean manufacturing that will help their people learn first the general concepts, then the more in-depth tools and sys

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