Gemba Academy

For Built-In Quality, Simple Is Best

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2006

As part of our Lean manufacturing benchmarking trip we visited a bus manufacturing plant in Japan with a group of aerospace executives on February 27, 2006. We spent 6 hours observing their Lean manufacturing operation in action. We as

The Takt Time for Your Question is 42 Seconds

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2006

An interesting blurb in The Detroit News today titled For Toyota Briefing, Timing’s Everything gives an example how at Toyota “… the renowned Toyota Production System is not limited to making production leaner and mor

How Exactly Does Toyota Put People on the Balance Sheet as Assets?

By Jon Miller - March 2nd, 2006

Toyota executives are heard to say that “we put people on the balance sheet as assets” but I had taken this figuratively not literally (philosophy rather than accounting practice). At the moment I have no concrete evidence

Put People on the Balance Sheet

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2006

According to a Trackback at the end of Bill Waddell’s latest inspiring post full of big ideas, there are only 27 hits on Google for the phrase Put People on the Balance Sheet. We’ll I’m adding #28. Thanks to the Flyin

Gemba Keiei Chapter 13: Improve Productivity Even with Reduced Volumes

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2006

Taiichi Ohno pulls a lesson for Lean manufacturing out of the rice farming situation in the early 1980s in Japan. The government of Japan paid farmers to decrease the area used to cultivate rice in order to limit overproduction of rice

Work Hard, Complain, and Do Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 23rd, 2006

The Director of Human Resources for one of our clients had an “ah-ha” moment about her role in supporting Lean manufacturing and how to combine kaizen with respect for people. After we benchmarked a company effectively involving ev

Better Safety and Ergonomics through Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2006

How does kaizen improve safety and ergonomics? A February 21, 2006 article in Occupational Hazards titled Using Kaizen to Improve Safety and Ergonomics gives a good illustration. Citing a need for speedy resolution of safety issues and

Why GM and Ford Can’t Embrace the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - February 16th, 2006

Who says they can’t? Dr. James Womack that’s who, in his Wall Street Journal article this week, titled Why Toyota Won. I enjoyed the article. The kaizen mindset I’ve been trained in forced me to think, “Very goo

Experience Kaikaku, Day 5: What I Learned about Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 10th, 2006

The reason we call this trip the Japan Kaikaku Experience is because this learning experience takes place in Japan and because a “kaikaku” or “transformation” happens in people’s heads by the end of the we

Experience Kaikaku, Day 4: The KTC Way

By Jon Miller - February 9th, 2006

One of the highlights of this Japan Kaikaku Experience trip was the visit to KTC. This company has more than 40 years of history making strong, high quality hand tools. They supply tire wrenches for new Toyota cars and they also make t

Experience Kaikaku, Day 3: The Thinking Behind TPS

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2006

Toyota posted a 34% rise in third-quarter net profit, clearing $3.34 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2005. This hit the news just about as we were finishing our tours of Toyota Kamigo and Tsutsumi plants. It’s easy to copy what

Experience Kaikaku, Day 2: Fun with Pipes & Joints

By Jon Miller - February 7th, 2006

In the Japan Kaikaku Experience, we emphasize practical fun! We delve into the types of pipes and joints used in construction. As an example, we showcase a parts-picking station with sensors, demonstrating pokayoke (mistake-proofing) i

Experience Kaikaku, Day 1: The Airport

By Jon Miller - February 5th, 2006

This week I will be blogging from Japan. Internet access providing, I hope to be sharing bits of wisdom we gain each day with you on what is now our 17th Japan Kaikaku Experience trip. So far I have mostly spent time between the airpor

Minding the Length of a Toy Duck’s Neck

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2006

On the front page of the January 27, 2006 Wall Street Journal there was an article titled In Tot TV Shows, Money is in the Toys. I’m always delighted to find lessons about Lean manufacturing in unexpected places. The article told

Chief Quality Officer of GE: Six Sigma is Dead

By Jon Miller - January 25th, 2006

The January 30, 2006 BusinessWeek article titled Would You Recommend Us? introduces something called “net promoter” scores being used by GE Healthcare to measure customer loyalty. Simplified, it’s a metric based on ho

Lean Office “Open Room” Foils Unethical Recruiter

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2006

At Gemba we do our best to practice what we preach. This means that we turn our Lean tools inwards on ourselves and work hard to develop a kaizen culture. One of the most visible ways we do this is through our “open office”. There

We Don’t Need a Big Culture Change at Ford. No Wait, Yes We Do!

By Jon Miller - January 23rd, 2006

The Ford Motor Company presented their restructuring plan called “The Way Forward” today. Ford is planning to shake things up. In CEO Bill Ford, Jr’s words: “Here is what we will not stand for: incremental chang

The “Lean Manufacturing Push” at Chrysler

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2006

Selling Lean manufacturing to the world isn’t easy with headlines like Chrysler Cuts Trade Workers: In Lean Manufacturing Push, Automaker Also is Reducing Number of Job Classifications at Plants. Chrysler must be getting public r

Reflecting on Toyota’s 2,411,117 Recalls in 2005

By Jon Miller - January 20th, 2006

That’s quite a big number. It’s actually more vehicles than Toyota sold in the U.S. in 2005. It’s more than double the number for 2004. It’s not as many as some other car companies, but far from zero defects. A

How to Give Lean Manufacturing a Bad Name

By Jon Miller - January 18th, 2006

One way that is almost guaranteed to stop a Lean manufacturing effort in its tracks is for management to announce that Lean manufacturing will be used to eliminate jobs. It’s hard to believe that anyone still does this, but the p

Pandemic Preparation: Just in Time or Just in Case?

By Jon Miller - January 16th, 2006

In a January 12, 2006 Wall Street Journal article (which you can also find on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette) titled Just-in-Time Inventories Make U.S. Vulnerable in a Pandemic raises a question that is very common to organizations first

Hope for Lean at Local Government Levels

By Jon Miller - January 12th, 2006

A posting on the Evolving Excellence blog titled Putting Perfume on a Pig paints a grim picture how a panel of some of the so-called best minds brought together by the U.S. Department of Commerce think of U.S. manufacturing. Making thi

Respect for People? Labor Unrest at Toyota Kirloskar

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2006

There has been labor unrest at the Toyota Kirloskar joint venture in Bidadi, India over the last week. Indian business news has covered these events, but there has been very little mention of it in American or Japanese news. On January

American Workers Embrace Kaizen Culture at NUMMI

By Jon Miller - January 10th, 2006

Here is a link to an excellent article from September 2005 in the Manufacturing Engineering magazine about the GM-Toyota 50/50 joint venture NUMMI. In this excerpt form the article one of the team members who later became a team leader

Pit Crew Kaizen

By Jon Miller - January 9th, 2006

One of the aims of a Lean business model based on the Toyota Production System is to deliver products and services just in time, or exactly what the customer needs, when the customers needs it and in the exact amount they need. Product

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