Gemba Academy

A Sense of Urgency Like Smokey & the Bandit

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2004

On a recent trip to Brazil, I had the opportunity to visit a 270-employee automotive components manufacturer that is doing Lean. I was very impressed by the openness to change and the energy I felt among both the management and workfor

Gemba Keiei, Chapter 1: The Wise Mend their Ways

By Jon Miller - November 22nd, 2004

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by saying that he doesn’t believe it’s easy to influence people on the Gemba to change. In order to get people to do kaizen, you need to convince them and help them understand. How are people

The Trap of Managing by Computer Screens

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2004

One of the things that I notice when I go to offices in the US is walls everywhere and a computer screen at each desk. I recently lead a group of clients to Japan to visit a Toyota group company office that had taken the principles of

TPM Metrics & Financial Impact

By Jon Miller - November 17th, 2004

What metrics are available when utilizing TPM to show the financial impact of your program? During a recent kaizen event, we reviewed the TPM program for one of our clients. The Operations Manager raised a good question regarding TPM m

VP of Lean Enterprise Plays 20 Questions with Lean Managers

By Jon Miller - November 15th, 2004

We received an odd call today at Gemba. Our Office Manager transferred the call to one of our senior consultants, saying “The person on the line wants to know about Heijunka.” The caller whom we’ll call Jay to protect

Introducing Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno

By Jon Miller - November 13th, 2004

Taiichi Ohno is one of the founders of TPS along with Shigeo Shingo and members of the Toyoda family. Three of Mr. Ohno’s major works on the Toyota Production System and kaizen have been translated into English. They are ‘T

Ownership Generates Success

By Jon Miller - November 12th, 2004

Bear McLaughlin, Operations Consultant October, 2004 During my journeys of training Office and Manufacturing Lean tools and techniques, I致e come across the same key in any business environment, OWNERSHIP, no ownership, means no succe

Where Does Lean Apply in Hospitals?

By Jon Miller - November 8th, 2004

Friday afternoon is a great time to call up customers and find out what’s on their minds. At Gemba Academy, we continue to talk with hospitals that are doing kaizen and pioneering Lean Healthcare. So last Friday, I put on the hea

Keeping Minds Nimble, Bodies Limber at Toyota

By Jon Miller - November 5th, 2004

Whenever we visit Toyota in Japan there is always at least one member of our study group who makes a comment about the pace at which the assemblers at the engine line and body assembly line work. At Takt Times of around a minute, worke

Streamlining Eye Surgery: Innovation in India

By Jon Miller - November 2nd, 2004

In the October 11, 2004 issue of BusinessWeek (The Innovation Economy issue, page 176) there was an interesting article providing an example of Lean thinking applied to healthcare. Lean Processes in Practice: Aravind Eye-Care’s H

In the News: Overproduction in Detroit

By Jon Miller - October 31st, 2004

On page one of the October 29th, 2004 Wall Street Journal there was an article titles “Big Dealers Pressure Car Makers To Cut Production: Higher Costs, Thinner Margins Are Forcing Major Sellers to Keep their Inventories Lean̶

The Power of Ideas from Everyone

By Jon Miller - October 24th, 2004

Too few companies on the Lean journey have effectively incorporated what is known as “teian” or suggestion schemes for employees’ creative ideas. Although kaizen breakthrough activity may seem more dramatic and appeal

The Toyota Job Description: Follow Standards & Find Better Ways

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2004

The Toyota managers who share their insights with us on our study missions to Japan tell us there are two things that are part of every Toyota employee’s job. They are: 1) Follow the standard 2) Find a better way Kaizen: The Powe

Selling Autonomous Maintenance to the Machine Operator

By Jon Miller - October 18th, 2004

A client of ours has recently begun implementing TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) as the natural next step in their Lean journey. Their goals were to lengthen mean time between failures (MTBF) as well as replace time spent on reactiv

One Piece Flow & Standard WIP

By Jon Miller - October 12th, 2004

I learned a lesson about how easy it is to assume people understand something that sounds simple to you. Near the end of a recent Lean study mission in Japan, one of the participants who is a Six Sigma Black Belt, a dynamic change agen

If You Want to Pull, Don’t Deliver

By Jon Miller - October 5th, 2004

We received a nugget of wisdom from Mr. Nojima of the Logistics group of Yazaki (makers of Creform and Japan’s largest privately held company) during our October study mission to Japan. Mr. Nojima made a statement that “all

Why Kaizen Teams Should Be Cross-Functional

By Jon Miller - October 1st, 2004

The rule of thumb to have a good mix of kaizen team members from different areas is: 1/3rd of the people from the area or process targeted for kaizen, 1/3rd of the people from upstream or downstream processes (customers and suppliers)

Kaizen: Start with Production or “The Office”?

By Jon Miller - September 24th, 2004

Most Lean transformations and kaizen programs start at the Gemba (workplace, actual place where value is created) which for manufacturers is the factory. A question Lean Champions often come across is “Why are we starting kaizen

Flow Counterclockwise for a Good Reason

By Jon Miller - September 23rd, 2004

I came across an interesting article while riding the bullet train in August during our last Japan Kaikaku Experience (Lean study trip). In the September 2004 issue of Wedge magazine (Vol. 16 No. 9), science writer Hideaki Fukami explo

Making Standard Work Stick

By Jon Miller - September 18th, 2004

During a recent sales presentation to a prospective client, the issue of Standardization came up. This company has multiple factories around the globe and is struggling with a lack of harmonization between them. The Challenge of Standa

Product Development Performance Metrics

By Jon Miller - September 9th, 2004

During our Japan Kaikaku Experience trip in August, we visited Omron, a manufacturer of sensors and factory automation products. They have made great strides in implementing TPS, resulting in a very Lean factory. As part of their Lean

Lean and Green

By Jon Miller - September 6th, 2004

One of the most enlightening moments in my personal journey was when I discovered the innovative approaches employed by top Lean companies in Japan to curb waste via efficient environmental management and energy conservation. We visite

Takt Time for Executives

By Jon Miller - August 19th, 2004

We recently had the opportunity to host 15 top executives from a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company for 3 days of Lean training, benchmarking tours, and strategizing. During this process, we gained insight into Takt Time. These

Extreme Programming & the Lean Office

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2004

Extreme Programming is an approach to software programming that puts two or more people in a team to work on one piece of code, at the same time, on the same computer. It might seem counterproductive to have two sets of hands and brain

Throughput, Bottlenecks, and Capacity: It’s All in the TPCBP

By Jon Miller - July 30th, 2004

One of the most under-appreciated items in the Lean tool bag is the Table of Production Capacity by Process (TPCBP, also known as Process Capacity Table). This one-pager can define the theoretical maximum output of any process by takin

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