Gemba Academy

Was Steve Jobs a Lean Thinker?

By Ron Pereira - July 29th, 2013

Can Continuous Improvement methodologies such as Lean & Six Sigma help companies innovate? Or, as some argue, does practicing continuous improvement actually stifle innovation? I’d argue authentic continuous improvement can most

Learn How I’ve Leveraged Both Lean & Six Sigma Throughout my Career

By Ron Pereira - July 23rd, 2013

I was recently interviewed by Mark Graban over at LeanBlog.org. The theme of the interview is how I’ve successfully leveraged both lean and six sigma throughout my career. Specifically Mark and I explored: What my views are on

10 Characteristics of Great Coaches & Learners

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2013

Throughout my professional career I’ve been fortunate enough to learn – and teach others – about leadership, lean, and six sigma. As I reflect back, I believe I’ve uncovered some characteristics of what makes a good coa

Contradiction in Terms? Lean Buffet

By Jon Miller - July 14th, 2013

I had the occasion to dine at the Golden Jaguar Buffet in Shanghai. Buffets are seldom the places to observe Lean practices in any way or form, but the Jaguar offered a few things of note. First, the place setting at the tables contain

Keep Calm & Improve On – Free Desktop Wallpaper

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2013

Our design team just created some pretty cool desktop wallpaper with the words: Keep Calm & Improve On! If you like it, and want to use it as a friendly reminder to “improve on,” please feel free to download the images

Review of Conversational Capacity by Craig Weber

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2013

My latest recommended reading for people who care about getting things done is Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On (McGraw-Hill, 2013) by Craig Weber. Pressure being off

George and the Amazing One-piece Flow Meal Truck

By Jon Miller - June 23rd, 2013

This YouTube video titled “Meals Per Hour”, tells the story of volunteers applying kaizen to improve the delivery of meals to Superstorm Sandy victims. Toyota volunteers teach food bank staff how to improve through focused,

5 Powerful Techniques for Dealing with Setbacks or Total Failure

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2013

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right. -Henry Ford It’s 9:25 PM on a Friday night and I’m currently sitting in the Seattle Tacoma airport due to my flight being delayed. Latest estimates have me arriving home in Dall

Review of Perfecting Patient Journeys

By Jon Miller - May 13th, 2013

Perfecting Patient Journeys by Judy Worth, Tom Shuker, Beau Keyte, Karl Ohaus, Jim Luckman, David Verble, Kirk Paluska, Todd Nickel and Sam Watson is the latest in a series of practical workbooks from the Lean Enterprise Institute. Thi

How Do You Document Your Processes?

By Ron Pereira - May 13th, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly doing our best to “practice what we teach.” Now, to be honest, we’re far from perfect (who is?) but we’re always trying to find better ways to take care of our customers and develop better pr

Going to Gemba vs. Statistical Analysis

By Ron Pereira - May 6th, 2013

Early in my professional career I worked as a Process Engineer at Nokia (in their mobile phone division). I had many responsibilities but, ultimately, my most important job centered on ensuring all of the equipment was producing cell p

Is it Worth the Time to Kaizen This?

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2013

If you have ever wondered, “is it worth the time to kaizen this?” here is your guide to answer that question. It’s from a strictly mathematical point of view, and keep in mind this is assuming five-year payback, so ad

Knee Jerk Statistics

By Ron Pereira - April 29th, 2013

The folks over at Minitab recently wrote an excellent article about how a Six Sigma practitioner leveraged binary logistic regression analysis in order to better understand why associates at a manufacturing plant were quitting. What th

Net Nonsense

By Kevin Meyer - April 25th, 2013

A few months ago I told you how, in my past life as president of a medical device company, I had two reliable leading indicators of a potential customer relationship. Basically if the customer demanded automatic annual price decrease

The Problem with A3 Reports

By Ron Pereira - April 22nd, 2013

The A3 report may be one of the most misunderstood lean thinking tools of our time. Why do I say this? Simple. It’s Just a Piece of Paper The A3 report, in and of itself, is nothing more than a piece of paper. But, for some reaso

How to Not Become Handcuffed by Lean & Six Sigma Tools

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2013

I’ve been coaching a Gemba Academy customer through the use of some specific tools. This individual works in a MRO environment meaning he deals with very high mix and low volume. This person is struggling to understand how to cre

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Stamping Out Taxi Sheep Abandonment

By Jon Miller - April 11th, 2013

It’s good to see the transportation authorities finally doing something about the problem of sheep abandonment in taxis. Hopefully this will put an end to the awkwardness of having to hand a lamb to the driver and explain that it

Lean Office Tip: Learn How to Dramatically Improve Document Creation Efficiency

By Ron Pereira - April 2nd, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly trying to practice what we teach by improving the way we do our daily work. Our Customer Service team, which is lead by Elaine Cressionnie, receives and sends hundreds of emails each week. Many of th

The Three Rules for Rules

By Jon Miller - March 8th, 2013

Many individuals view rules, standards, and policies as constricting, even at the mere mention of them. It is true that rules which are inadequately designed and implemented can be restrictive. Nevertheless, a complete absence of rules

Heard on the Gemba: We Are Great Problem Solvers, But…

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2013

I recently heard from a Gemba conversation: “We are great problem solvers, but the same problems keep coming back.” Mastering Root Causes: Lessons from Toyota When the countermeasures are off target, the problems reo

Exterior of a Costco Wholesale warehouse

Lean Leadership Lessons from Costco Wholesale

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2013

While shopping through the cavernous aisles of my local Costco, my mind started to think about the lean leadership lessons to be had. Costco Wholesale is the third largest retailer in the United States with 2012 sales of $87 billion an

Thomas Huxley Quotes on Managing by Fact

By Jon Miller - February 13th, 2013

Management by fact is a key guiding principle of kaizen and lean thinking. By gathering facts and evidence people are able to communicate realities, define problems, and convert them into opportunities to improve the situation. Many of

Kaizen, Japan and Achilles’ Heel in Reverse

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2013

The article Kaizen – the Achilles heel of Japan on a blog titled “On the Surface – Logical thinking in an everyday world” (which I suspect may be a title attempting irony but at two posts it is too early to tell

Introducing the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2013

For the past 6 months I, along with my Gemba Academy colleagues, have been extremely busy developing what we now call the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma. I’m obviously extremely biased… but I have to confess… I’m quite happy

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Labeling Confusion

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2013

A label is a visual control that should clarify, not confuse. Here is an ambiguous visual control, its intentions good but lost in translation. Does metal stand in an airport even need a label? Perhaps. There is not much else that one

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