Gemba Academy

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

Excellent Six Sigma Resource

By Ron Pereira - February 13th, 2007

If you are involved with Six Sigma, statistics, quality control, or anything remotely similar I highly recommend you check out Keith Bower’s website. I came across this website a year or so ago and have learned so much. His podcast�

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

Why Some Lean Six Sigma Programs Fail – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - February 11th, 2007

If you have not read the Harvard Business Review on Change I highly recommend it. It is a series of case studies focused on change management. One of the case studies is called, “Successful Change Programs Begin with Results” by Ro

Waiting

By Ron Pereira - February 10th, 2007

If you pick up any book about Lean or attend a Lean training course you will likely hear how overproduction is the mother of all wastes. OK, in the truest sense it probably is… especially for those that manufacture any type of produc

How to Calculate Standard Work in Process (SWIP) Quantity

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2007

Standard Work is one of the more misunderstood concepts in Lean manufacturing. It is neither standardization nor work standards. You can learn more about Standard Work by looking at the following blog posts: Reflections on Standard Wor

Lean Lexicon

By Ron Pereira - February 8th, 2007

I was fortunate enough to receive training from Gemba Research which was excellent and I highly recommend them, as I have stated before. But I would be doing the nice people over at Lean Enterprise Institute an injustice if I didn’t

Stop the Finger Pointing!

By Ron Pereira - February 7th, 2007

I despise, from the deepest pit of my being, the blame game that occurs within so many companies that manufacture products – any product. This problem is sadly amplified in western companies. It typically goes something like this, �

The Toyota Way is Doing Obvious Things

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2007

…but doing them exceptionally well. This was a comment from an economist on a TV news program in Japan I heard some while ago, that seems to have become common knowledge in Japanese business consciousness. This idea of the Toyota

Standard Work

By Ron Pereira - February 6th, 2007

Since the mission of this blog is to offer ideas for how to align the strengths of both Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma I wanted discuss a topic I firmly believe all continuous improvement practitioners should practice. This topic is

We Made Someone at Toyota Headquarters Unhappy

By Jon Miller - February 5th, 2007

We teach the Toyota system. We want to teach it to as many people as want to learn about it. As a consequence we think we provide Toyota with good PR. It seems not everyone at Toyota headquarters agrees. Here is an e-mail we received l

Electronic Kanban

By Ron Pereira - February 3rd, 2007

Here is a question for all the Lean gurus out there. Is “Electronic Kanban” an oxymoron? I have my own opinion but would like to hear yours.

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 3

By Jon Miller - February 1st, 2007

How do you motivate the people on the trailing edge of the bell curve? The so-called “anchor draggers” or CAVE people tend to attract the most attention or concern during the process of change. I wish we had time to bring e

Be SMART!

By Ron Pereira - February 1st, 2007

I am often asked why some projects fail to get results or even get completed. This is a difficult question with many possible answers. But if I were forced to narrow it done the ever famous “you must have a good champion” would be

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 2

By Jon Miller - January 31st, 2007

How to motivate people to change? A day later and I still don’t know, but Taiichi Ohno’s “game of wits” comes to mind (see chapter 25 of Workplace Management). A game is something that is fun. Most of us are mot

Control Charts – Part 3

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2007

Hello friends! This is the 3rd and final installment of all you wanted to know about control charts but were afraid to ask. In part 1 of the series we talked about the history and purpose of control charts. In part 2 we discussed three

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 1

By Jon Miller - January 30th, 2007

How to motivate people to change? That question was asked recently. It’s a good question and one that we should not assume we know the answer to. It is not a question that should be addressed in your organizations by professional

Control Charts – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2007

Welcome back. This is part 2 of the 3 part series on control charts. As promised we will discuss the p, c, and u charts this evening. These control charts are used when we are dealing with attribute data, which is sometimes refe

Control Charts – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - January 29th, 2007

The wife is off to her monthly book club, the kids are in bed, and the dogs are doing what they excel at – absolutely nothing. So I thought I would settle in for a bit and begin the first of a 3 part series on one of my favorite

Toyota Production System Implementation at Japan Post, Year 4

By Jon Miller - January 29th, 2007

Here is an update to the story of Toyota instructors teaching TPS to the Japan Post and a partial answer to the question Toyota Botches Lean Implementation at Japan Post? posted earlier in this blog. The following is a summary from the

I am Humbled

By Ron Pereira - January 28th, 2007

Humility From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHumility is a quality or characteristic ascribed to a person who is considered to be humble. A humble person is generally thought to be unpretentious and modest: someone who does not think

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