Gemba Academy

Kaizen Means Thinking “Now Things are the Worst Ever”

By Jon Miller - January 6th, 2006

There has been a lot of discussion about “failing to become Lean” on blogs, in newsgroups and in books lately. Reading press releases and financial statements of many less-than-truly-Lean companies, they would like the anal

Happy New Year, and Genchi Gembutsu

By Jon Miller - January 3rd, 2006

I don’t mean to be lazy about crafting a New Year’s message, but once again the good people at Toyota have made my job easy. This is the first New Year for Mr. Watanabe as Toyota’s new President. In a memo titled New

Business Process Outsourcing, Meet Value Engineering

By Jon Miller - January 2nd, 2006

There’s a good article today in The Hindu Business Line that talks about how BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) firms in India are using kaizen, six sigma, Lean transactions and value engineering to streamline its already lowest-

Crossing the Chasm of Lean Transformation, Part 2

By Jon Miller - December 31st, 2005

Should the “wrong” approached be replaced by a path more closely following the one Toyota has taken? The “Training Within Industry” modeled approach to developing people and Toyota’s hyper cost-focused man

Crossing the Chasm of Lean Transformation, Part 1

By Jon Miller - December 30th, 2005

A friend of mine who is a VP of Operations at a Midwestern hospital asked me two questions a few days ago. The first was “What is the percentage of Lean implementations that fail?” This is a loaded question, and not one for

How to Kaizen Boxing Day

By Jon Miller - December 26th, 2005

One of the greatest evils that kaizen and Lean manufacturing attempts to eliminate is overproduction, one of the 7 wastes. Overproduction hides true capacity, exacerbates quality problems, builds inventory, and generally amplifies the

Are they Nuts? Lean Team Shouts “Do It First and Think Later”

By Jon Miller - December 23rd, 2005

Edson Oda Senior Operations Consultant It was funny to see some puzzled faces and hear some comments and jokes from those who had seen the NEC Lean manufacturing slogan or heard the Lean team shout loudly ‘Faço, Faço, Faço Já

Lean Engineering and Taking Down the Walls

By Jon Miller - December 22nd, 2005

Earlier this week I visited a customer who is just starting out with their Lean transformation. They are an engineering firm. They have toured another one of our clients who has succeeded in implementing Lean in their transactional are

Faça Primeiro e Pense Depois: What I Learned from Japan in Brazil

By Jon Miller - December 20th, 2005

Edson Oda Senior Operations Consultant On the Evolving Excellence blog today Bill Waddell admits he doesn’t speak Japanese, warns against drowning your Lean efforts with Japanese lessons, and takes on the Japanese for not being curio

I’ll Have Some Innovation Please, but Hold the Kaizen

By Jon Miller - December 19th, 2005

Predictability can be a good thing or a bad thing. A friend of mine named John Cass is a guru in the areas of PR and corporate blogging. John pushed my buttons by pointing me at an article by Knowledge@Wharton from the Wharton School o

Dueling Views on Role of Kaizen Events for Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - December 18th, 2005

Dueling views on the role of kaizen events in a Lean transformation were expressed in the latest SME Lean newsletter. George Koenigsaecker makes an attempt at answering the question Why aren’t there more lean successes? I just fi

The Cheerful Delusion of the Kaizen Mind

By Jon Miller - December 16th, 2005

The December 16, 2005 USA Today article titled Optimism Puts Rose-colored Tint in Glasses of Top Execs is an interesting study on strength and weakness of top executives, particularly their sometimes delusional optimism. The main point

A3 Report Title: 189 Apologies

By Jon Miller - December 14th, 2005

We don’t manufacture automobiles, but I know a bit about how it must feel when automobile companies issue a recall and have to ask many thousands of customers to bring in their vehicles to fix a flaw they have discovered. We found ou

Heads Firmly in Sand, Motor City Chairmen Speak Out

By Jon Miller - December 13th, 2005

General Motors Chairman Rick Wagoner asks why U.S. automobile manufacturers are doing so poorly when foreign ones are doing so well in the December 6, 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial A Portrait of My Industry. “Despite public

This Blog Has Been Kaizened to Accept Your Comments!

By Jon Miller - December 12th, 2005

We have upgraded our blogging platform! You are now invited to join the discussion about kaizen, Lean manufacturing and continuous improvement on our blog. You can post your comments in the field directly below each article. We look fo

Lean Food Service in Korea Factory Cafeteria

By Jon Miller - December 11th, 2005

I’ve been a fan of Korean food for a long time, but now I’m also a fan of Korean kitchenware. I’ve always thought the steel chopsticks were particularly a good idea. Here’s my dinner on a washable, reusable dinner tray

The Kaizen Cops Clobber Government Waste in Kenya

By Jon Miller - December 2nd, 2005

I’ve been chuckling quielty to myself for the past couple of days over an article I read. Now that I have internet access, I’d like share it with you. The Kenya News Agency headline screams

Run Faster, Team

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2005

There’s a great day-after-Thanksgiving Day piece on Joe Ely’s Learning About Lean blog. I missed the sports action over the weekend but Joe caught an American football coach’s half-time strategy for doing better in th

Gemba Keiei Chapter 12: Agricultural People Like Inventory

By Jon Miller - November 25th, 2005

Taiichi Ohno makes an interesting connection between the Japanese as historically an agricultural people and the fact that Japanese manufacturers seem to like inventory. Farmers growing rice are at the mercy of the weather. There are d

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 2

By Jon Miller - November 24th, 2005

Why do organizations fail to invest sufficiently in their people? The term Human Capital was introduced over 40 year ago by University of Chicago Professor Gary Becker. Human capital are the assets a person owns in for form of job skil

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 1

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2005

Triangulation is a process by which you figure out where you are by checking three points or positions. Triangulation can be used to study a phenomenon by comparing three (or more) types of points of view or data sources. Three things

The Perils of Not Going “Genchi, Gembutsu” (On Site, With the Actual Things)

By Jon Miller - November 21st, 2005

I take a lot of people from many companies to Japan to see lean organizations, such as the Toyota Motor Corporation. One of the themes you see and hear in Toyota is the idea of Genchi (actual place) and Gembutsu (actual things). Toyota

Time for an Ohno Prize?

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2005

Bill Waddell asks readers to help him out in answering the question “Why should anyone apply for the Shingo Prize?” in a recent blog entry. Bill points out that now bankrupt Delphi spent around $300,000 to win Shingo Prizes

Eric’s Japan Lean Benchmarking Trip, 3

By Jon Miller - November 16th, 2005

This is the third and final installation of Eric’s report from his Lean manufacturing benchmarking trip to Japan in October. “Omron Taiyo manufactures electronic parts and employs the handicapped. Omron Taiyo produces vario

Peter Pan, Kaizen and Joseph Lieberman

By Jon Miller - November 15th, 2005

An article in today’s New Britain Herald brightened what was otherwise a rainy, jet-lagged winter day here in the Puget Sound. Connecticut is a hotbed of Lean manufacturing and kaizen activity. Many clients of the Shingijutsu con

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