Gemba Academy Blog

Blog Archive

Free Scholarship at the Lean Six Sigma Academy

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2007

My friend Ron Pereira started a blog two weeks ago called Lean Six Sigma Academy. The articles so far have been an interesting mix of topics such as Process Mapping – Lean or Six Sigma Tool?, CAVE People, Lean or Six Sigma?, Six

Evolution of Dance

By Ron Pereira - January 27th, 2007

This has nothing to do with Lean or Six Sigma but is perhaps the funniest 6 minutes you will ever experience! If you prefer to watch a Lean video scroll down and watch the Toyota video. But not even Toyota can compete with this guy! En

The Toyota Way

By Ron Pereira - January 27th, 2007

The Toyota Way

The Forgotten M’s

By Ron Pereira - January 26th, 2007

Those familiar with lean manufacturing have likely heard the word muda many times. Muda is the Japanese word for waste and is the enemy of us all whether we know it or not. Strangely enough muda is not the only enemy of a lean system.

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, December 2006

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2007

By Marcie MacRae Going into the holidays and having the majority of the staff out of the office can be a good time to implement a big kaizen in the office. This year while the staff was on winter holidays, the admin team and two consul

CAVE People

By Ron Pereira - January 24th, 2007

Most of us have encountered individuals I call CAVE people. These people are: Citizens Against Virtually Everything You can likely name one or two CAVE people right away. In my experience there is no easy way to deal with them. They ar

Lean Manufacturing: A Five-Year Fix?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2007

On the way to the gemba this morning I heard the NPR report on American suit manufacturer Joseph Abboud on the rental car radio. Here is the transcript on the NPR website, titled Suit Maker Goes ‘Lean’ to Keep Jobs in U.S.

ideas-domino

Japan Kaikaku Experience Field Report, January 2007

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2007

Recap of Our Recent Japan Kaikaku Experience-By Brad Schmidt Toyota’s Innovation: Toyota showcased an impressive update. They’ve introduced full kitting on specific sections of their assembly line. Kit carts follow the car

Cupholders

By Ron Pereira - January 22nd, 2007

In my recent Lean Lunch blog I referenced the Kano Model. I received some questions on what this model was all about so thought I would shed some light on it this evening. By the way, if there is a topic you would like me to discuss pl

Motorola misses Badly

By Ron Pereira - January 20th, 2007

I just read an article stating that Motorola, the #2 maker of cell phones in the world, is preparing to cut 3,500 jobs. Motorola reported a 48% drop in fourth-quarter profit as margins in its handset business collapsed. Folks, 48% is a

TPS Kids

By Jon Miller - January 20th, 2007

Modern marketing gurus will tell you that in order to build customer loyalty you need customers to develop a deep, emotional attachment to the brand. One of the ways this is done is by telling engaging stories about the brand. Toyota s

Lean Lunch

By Ron Pereira - January 19th, 2007

This is a picture of the taco salad I had for lunch today. OK, so “lean” in the truest sense may be a bit of an oxymoron since there was probably enough calories in this meal to last me a few days but I digress. Anyhow, I am always

Toyota Owes Grandpa Ford

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2007

Earlier this month the Lean Insider attempted to answer the question Which Lean Book is Right for My Boss? These folks ought to have the answer, since Productivity Press has published the lion’s share of important books on what w

Six Sigma and JIT

By Ron Pereira - January 18th, 2007

I recently saw a question posted on the iSixSigma forum that went something like this, “How can Six Sigma enhance the just in time process?” I thought this was a great question and will offer my two cents on the topic this evening.

Why Not Chase the Rabbit?

By Jon Miller - January 17th, 2007

This is a question I have most often heard from European engineers, or from people in other countries who are working with extremely high volume light assembly operations, usually following some teaching about just in time production o

How Can They Not Change?

By Jon Miller - January 16th, 2007

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has been placing advance orders for Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, coming out in March 2007. Here is a sneak preview from the book, a short passage from Chapter 37: Follow the D

The Heated Law of Dispersion

By Ron Pereira - January 16th, 2007

One debate that often arises amongst my Six Sigma cohorts is when to use the standard deviation of a dataset and when we should use another measure of dispersion, namely the range. Descriptive Statistics Overview Let’s take a quick r

Process Map Diagram

Process Mapping – Lean or Six Sigma Tool?

By Ron Pereira - January 16th, 2007

If someone walked up to your this morning at the coffee machine and asked you, “Is process mapping a Lean or Six Sigma tool?” what would you say? This may seem like a trivial question but I dare say it is not. Poka-Yoke is a Six S

Does Lean Manufacturing = The Toyota Production System?

By Jon Miller - January 15th, 2007

There is a very interesting discussion over at the Lean blog today in the post To Merge or Not To Merge…Lean & TPS. There were nine reader comments as of tonight, with many good viewpoints on the question of whether the arti

About Us

By Ron Pereira - January 15th, 2007

Hi there, my name is Ron and this blog is my attempt at explaining how I believe Lean and Six Sigma can and should work together in harmony. Contrary to the name of this blog I don’t believe it’s optimal to merge Lean and Six S

Creating Synergy with Lean and Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 15th, 2007

From Wikipedia: Synergy or synergism (from the Greek synergos, συνεργός meaning working together, circa 1660) refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater

Lean or Six Sigma?

By Ron Pereira - January 14th, 2007

This is my first official blog. I have long been impressed with the blogs of people like Jon Miller from Gemba Research and have finally decided to throw my hat into the blog ring. I thought I would focus my first blog on the topic of

Giving A Shout Out to a Few Gemba Bloggers

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2007

I would like to recognize a few fellow bloggers who consistently share genuine events and lessons from Lean manufacturing experiences on their gemba. Mike Wroblewski has promised to return to more active blogging with a post last week.

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 4: It’s a Race to Get People to Think

By Jon Miller - January 10th, 2007

I came across a new quote from Taiichi Ohno recently. It was in Japanese, and may not be new to the world, but I can’t recall seeing it in English before. I think it nicely captures the idea of kaizen and respect for people, whic

When Times Are Tough, Do You Make Better Decisions?

By Jon Miller - January 8th, 2007

I heard this in a meeting today “When times are tough you make better decisions.” I wonder if this is true. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and this means something similar. A common Toyota saying is 「�

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