Gemba Academy

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 8: Limited Volume Production is to Produce at Low Cost

By Jon Miller - September 30th, 2005

The title for this chapter is awkward in English. It comes from the problem of trying to translate the nuances of Japanese words that have the same sounds but different meaning due to an intentional replacement of one of the kanji (Chi

Virtual JKE – Final Entry

By Jon Miller - September 29th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Confucius “Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve seen ’til you get back home.” –Luke Frida

Virtual JKE Day Five

By Jon Miller - September 28th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America As someone who only recently joined the consulting world after 25 years directing manufacturing, assembly, and distribution operations, I can say with absolute conviction that I have never seen a lean ass

Virtual JKE Day Four

By Jon Miller - September 27th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America It is Wednesday night in Tokyo, after another long day on the Gemba Research JKE tour. Today we visited Hokuetsu Industries, which owns about 10% of the global market for industrial air compressors and ha

Sitting Work vs. Standing Work in a Lean Manufacturing Workplace

By Jon Miller - September 27th, 2005

I recently spent 3 days standing on the shop floor while leading a training event for future kaizen facilitators. I spent probably 8.5 hours per day standing, 60 minutes sitting (lunch, breaks), and 30 minutes walking around the 100 sq

Virtual JKE Day Three

By Jon Miller - September 26th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America Day three on the Gemba road was long, hot, and fascinating. We were on our way to catch the bullet train for Denso before 7:00. On the way, we took the usual opportunity to go over what we would be seeing

Virtual JKE Part Two

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2005

Kent Bradley VP, North America Day 2, the first real day of our Gemba Research Japan Kaikaku Experience tour. “Going to the gemba” is the whole point of this tour – to be the best requires going to see the best. Today

Virtual JKE

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2005

A key aspect of our work here at Gemba is the Japan Kaikaku Experience. We take business leaders to Japan to see the world’s best practitioners of lean. This week, Kent Bradley, on his second tour of Japan, will share his experie

Postal Service Provides Model for Lean Government

By Jon Miller - September 10th, 2005

It would be easy to point out how non-Lean the U.S. government has been at city, state and federal levels these last few weeks. We’ve seen examples of lack of decision making, poor logistics, lack of alignment of goals, poor comm

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 7: Don’t Fear Opportunity Losses

By Jon Miller - September 4th, 2005

While the point of this chapter is clear (see the title) it is not as well illustrated by examples as some of the previous chapters. The message here supports the message of the following chapter on limited volume production. Taiichi O

Effective ERP Implementation

By Jon Miller - August 29th, 2005

I recently read about a Japanese company called OKI Electronics that went through implementing a new ERP system. They had a few good rules that I thought were quite smart and something I think all of us can learn from. ERP Implementati

Work Content for Line Leads

By Jon Miller - August 28th, 2005

A line lead (or team leader) is defined as a leader of 5- 6 people in an area. There’s a lot of discussion on what a good line lead is. What is a good mix of work content for line leads? One school of thought is that the lead sho

Strong Supervision: The Key to Long-term Kaizen

By Jon Miller - August 27th, 2005

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Tom Berghan, Lean Manager at Genie Industries. He is an avid student of the Toyota Production System and is always good for practical insights into ground-level Lean implementation. Tom observed that as

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 6: The Blind Spot in Cost Calculation

By Jon Miller - August 25th, 2005

Let’s start off with a bit of background on the Toyota Production System (TPS) and what has come to be called Lean manufacturing in the West. One of the pillars of TPS as envisioned and developed by Kiichiro Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno,

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 5: Misconceptions Hidden within Common Sense

By Jon Miller - August 20th, 2005

This is a short chapter. The chapter seems to act as a thematic bridge. Taiichi Ohno begins by talking about the importance of making a mindset shift in order to achieve breakthrough kaizen results, and ends the chapter by talking abou

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 4: Go See What Didn’t Work with Your Own Eyes

By Jon Miller - August 15th, 2005

Taiichi Ohno starts this chapter by pointing out that it’s relatively easy to convince the people on the Gemba (factory floor) by having them try the new way and see that is better than another way, but that this is harder to con

Wipro Studies TPS to Achieve Lean Transactions

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2005

I was very excited about an article in Business Week titled “Taking a Page from Toyota’s Playbook” on how Indian info tech companies are adopting the Toyota model. As an example, Wipro visited a Toyota factory to stud

Mr. Toyota Goes to Washington

By Jon Miller - August 11th, 2005

The August 12, 2005 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Toyota Lobbies to Avoid Blame Amid U.S. Auto Industry Woes” explains how Toyota is adding a sixth lobbyist in Washington D.C. in an effort to avoid being bashed

Three Useful Phrases for Kaizen

By Jon Miller - August 8th, 2005

Finding myself in challenging discussions while coaching “change adverse” individuals from time to time, I try to make myself humble and ask “What would sensei do in this situation?” I cycle through the words an

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 3: Misconceptions Reduce Productivity

By Jon Miller - August 5th, 2005

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno illustrates the idea that “misconceptions reduce productivity” by telling several stories from the Gemba at Toyota. The point Ohno makes in this chapter is that demonstrating the superiority of

Developing Team Leaders through Kaizen

By Jon Miller - August 1st, 2005

Many companies ask some variation of the question. “Why aren’t we seeing bottom line results after the kaizen event improvements?” There is more than one answer, but I recently came across a good illustration of one t

Notes from the Field: Implementation and Continuity Safety Nets

By Jon Miller - July 26th, 2005

Change is hard. What a cliche. But it has achieved its high rank in the pantheon of “cliche-dom” because its underlying reality is so very common. A fact multiplied many-fold during virtually any serious kaizen event. Cold

Lean Healthcare: Increase Value or Reduce Waste?

By Jon Miller - July 25th, 2005

Today I had the opportunity to address the general session of the 43rd annual conference of the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management. There were about 1,500 people in the audience, perhaps 1,000 Materials Mana

Kaizen in the Naval Air Command

By Jon Miller - July 23rd, 2005

The U.S. Armed Forces have been using a combination of quality improvement tools and methods for many years. Recently many bases, depots and command centers have been using Lean manufacturing and six sigma tools and principles very eff

What About the 8th Waste?

By Jon Miller - July 14th, 2005

When learning to implement Lean manufacturing or Lean office principles one of the essentials is to develop a deep understanding of the 7 types of waste. Many people start working with the tools right away, value stream mapping or doin

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