Gemba Academy

Six Sigma Control Phase is Not Anti-Lean

By Ron Pereira - August 16th, 2007

Last night I posted a question and now realize I was a bit too vague. This question was brought on due to a recent conversation I had with someone who asked me if I thought the “control” phase in the six sigma DMAIC road

45 Ways to Strengthen Kaizen Habits

By Jon Miller - August 16th, 2007

I have a suspicion that personal productivity bloggers are actually moonlighting Lean people. The 27 great tips to keep your life organized at Zen Habits contain advice familiar to us as one piece flow, bias for action, “zeroR

Is the Six Sigma Control Phase Anti-Lean?

By Ron Pereira - August 15th, 2007

Here is a question for you. Do you feel the Six Sigma “control” phase, the last in the DMAIC roadmap, is anti-lean in any manner? I will share my thoughts soon but am interested in hearing what others think first.

Road Trips, Bad Directions & Going to Gemba

By Jon Miller - August 15th, 2007

Thanks for telling us your lean failure stories, Andrea, Allison and Brad. You are all winners. E-mail or call us us with your mailing address and we’ll send you a prize. Speaking of things that can ruin a road trip as well as a

Totally Swamped

By Ron Pereira - August 14th, 2007

I am totally swamped this week with training a room full of folks about six sigma. Anyhow I am totally exhausted right now… was planning on starting an MSA (measurement systems analysis) series but will need to hold off for a w

5S Know How from the Last Century

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2007

We are going through a fairly thorough 5S exercise of our server. Just over 22GB of files were red tagged last week. Of the few items that were salvaged from the red tag folder was a series of notes by Brad Schmidt, President of Gemba

CEO Of Toy Manufacturing Company Commits Suicide

By Ron Pereira - August 13th, 2007

Today I read an article over on Industry Week that troubled me for much of the day. Most of us have heard of all the recent issues coming out of China related to quality and safety. One of the major stories was related to the paint

A Bureaucracy Which Enables Kaizen

By Jon Miller - August 12th, 2007

The organizational characteristics of the Toyota Production System have been described as the combination of rigid and scripted rules with a high degree of flexibility to respond and change as needed. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. The

Words from a Motley Fool Genius

By Ron Pereira - August 12th, 2007

I have not blogged on the whole Nardelli taking over Chrysler topic mainly because so many people already have and I have grown bored of the topic… that was until I read this article on The Motley Fool. The article takes the m

Learning to Swim

By Ron Pereira - August 10th, 2007

My 2.5 year old daughter hit a major milestone last night. She swam by herself with no life jacket. She and her older sister (5 years old) took swim lessons earlier in the summer. My 5 year old caught on during the lessons and w

Newt Gingrich Wants to Kaizen the U.S.A.

By Jon Miller - August 10th, 2007

Newt Gingrich wants to kaizen the U.S.A. He talks of “a world that works, and a world that doesn’t” using the example of FedEx versus the U.S. Federal Government in this video clip on Youtube. In an August 7, 2007 spe

Toyota Production System Applied to Software Development

By Jon Miller - August 8th, 2007

Some of the most interesting insights into the Toyota Production System come from the experiences people have with implementing the TPS outside of manufacturing. Whether it is in schools, hospitals, or software development firms, the c

Cooking up a Profit

By Ron Pereira - August 8th, 2007

No, this post is not about corporate fraud or funny accounting. Instead it is about a neat story I just read in the Columbus Dispatch (Go Bucks, beat scUM). The article is about Kahiki Foods, one of the largest Asian-frozen-food ma

Three Key Points to Kaizen Your Communication

By Jon Miller - August 7th, 2007

How well do you communicate what is truly important to your peers and to the people you teach? How often do you say “These three points are important. Write them down”? Here are three key points to effective communication:

7 Ways to Reduce Cost

By Ron Pereira - August 7th, 2007

I finished the book Gemba Kaizen by Masaaki Imai. It was quite good and I highly recommend it. It is chalk full of excellent tips like 7 ways to reduce costs in gemba (as Mr. Imai phrases it). They are: Improve Quality: Imai

Tell Us Your Lean Failure Stories

By Jon Miller - August 6th, 2007

Recently one of our consultants came back from a sales call having received the question from our prospective client “When has your firm failed in consulting engagements? Tell us your Lean failure stories.” Not having serve

The Big 200!

By Ron Pereira - August 6th, 2007

Yesterday I posted my 200th article on the blog! Also, today we received our 400th comment on the blog. Now many of these comments are from me responding to others (like the actual 400th comment) but hey who is counting! I have t

Chrysler’s (Lean?) Six Sigma Future

By Jon Miller - August 5th, 2007

The Chrysler Corporation has a new CEO, Bob Nardelli. Nardelli Picked to Run Chrysler in Industry Shift, the August 6th, Wall Street Journal reports. Mr. Nardelli was most recently in the news for bringing a controversial combativeness

Bad Metrics in a Hair Salon?

By Ron Pereira - August 5th, 2007

I got my haircut yesterday. I am cheap and like the $12 action at Great Clips right up the street. They do a good job so I can’t see paying $35 (or more) for some overpriced version of the same thing. As the stylist was bring

God’s Country

By Ron Pereira - August 5th, 2007

As I previously explained my family and I took a roadtrip the last few weeks. We drove from Keller, Texas to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We traveled through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota on our wa

Transportation Muda

By Ron Pereira - August 4th, 2007

We spent the last few weeks in Canada visiting family. We had an awesome trip. As we were driving from Texas (yes driving with 3 kids more than 2400 miles) I had my eyes peeled for some good lean or six sigma topics. While drivin

New & Improved Free Skill Matrix Template (v. 7.31.07)

By Jon Miller - July 31st, 2007

New and improved free skill matrix template: these are beautiful words to the ears of a Lean thinker. Thanks to the Excel skills of our Lean office guru Marcie MacRae, we have “the kaizen of the month for July 2007” at Gemb

Is IT the Key to Improving Healthcare Quality and Efficiency?

By Jon Miller - July 30th, 2007

Is IT the key to improving healthcare quality and efficiency? The majority of healthcare opinion leaders seem to think so. The findings from the Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Opinion Leaders Survey appeared in the July 30 edition

Facing the Giants

By Ron Pereira - July 30th, 2007

I recently watched the movie Facing the Giants and it made me rethink some things related to lean and six sigma. For those not familiar with the movie, Facing the Giants is a Christian based movie about an American football coach who g

Why Is Your Lean Effort Failing?

By Jon Miller - July 29th, 2007

The Lean Blog is always a good place for insights and discussion on why Lean efforts struggle or fail. Previous discussions have delved into Lean efforts that are in fact LAME. Mark Graban wrote about the survey format of the Lean Inst

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