Gemba Academy

A3 Report Title: PICK UP YOUR TOYS!!

By Jon Miller - April 16th, 2007

I need some parenting help. As the A3 report below will show, our young kids are slow at picking up their toys. The older one is old enough to slow down on purpose and play games with us, and the younger one is young enough or has the

A Real Invisibility Cloak – Mass Producers Dream!

By Ron Pereira - April 16th, 2007

Check out this article: A real invisibility cloak is in our grasp. If scientists figure this out think of all the tricks mass producers can do with their piles of inventory! They can hide them with their invisible cloak and then whip t

Taguchi Loss Function

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2007

Saying the words “Genichi Taguchi” to a hard core “western statistician” may get you some dirty looks. Actually, some of these crazy statisticians may want to strike you for saying this person’s name. Why the hate you may ask

Span – GE’s Variation Weapon

By Ron Pereira - April 12th, 2007

GE is arguably one of the best examples of Six Sigma excellence today. An often heard phrase is, “Motorola invented Six Sigma and GE perfected it.”A slick “variation weapon” GE has developed is called Span. I have never worked

Playing Fast – American Football and Lean

By Ron Pereira - April 11th, 2007

I am a big, OK fanatical, Ohio State University football (American football) fan. I grew up in Ohio and as my Mom says, “You can take the boy out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the boy.” I grew up watching Ohio State pla

Review of The Elegant Solution by Matthew E. May

By Jon Miller - April 11th, 2007

The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation by Matthew E. May is a book about many good ideas. It adds relevant and interesting accounts of the author’s eight years working closely alongside Toyota peopl

What I Learned Today of Value

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2007

See it through. Delay if you must, but don’t retreat. Follow up until you get an answer, good or bad. Check again. Get it done. Only then, start the next thing.

Sorry So Grumpy Lately

By Ron Pereira - April 10th, 2007

I did some hansei today on my drive home from work and realized I have been too grumpy lately. I jumped all over the airlines industry… then went after some software folks… and then tonight I had prepared to pummel a

Jidoka – The Forgotten Pillar

By Ron Pereira - April 9th, 2007

In the Toyota Production System house there are two pillars. The one pillar most of the books are written about is JIT. You know all the fun stuff about one piece flow and pull. But there is an entire other pillar that, in my opinion

A Fairly Lean Healthcare Experience

By Jon Miller - April 9th, 2007

I hope everyone who celebrates Easter had a good Easter Sunday, and those of you who don’t also had a good weekend. Thanks to a culture change in my throat brought on by some visiting Streptococcus, I didn’t have a good wee

The Airline Companies Amaze Me

By Ron Pereira - April 8th, 2007

In Lean and Six Sigma we speak about the importance of understanding value from the perspective of the customer. If you miss this all the Kanban and Control Charts in the world won’t help you. Most of the airline companies in

Happy Easter!

By Ron Pereira - April 7th, 2007

I, along with my family, wish you a safe and happy Easter. I hope you are able to enjoy some time off with friends and loved ones.

Layoffs, Strategy and the Bimodal Hump

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2007

If you haven’t exercised your neck muscles lately, read the first few paragraphs of the article Short-Circuited: Cutting Jobs as Corporate Strategy and shake your head in disbelief as you scratch Circuit City off of your shopping

Un-Lean Lean Companies

By Ron Pereira - April 6th, 2007

I recently purchased some Value Stream Mapping software and got a kick out the experience. Here I was buying software to help me battle waste and inefficiency, right? Well I go to this company’s website and click “buy now” next t

Superfactory Training

By Ron Pereira - April 5th, 2007

I recently came across a news article about our friends over at the Superfactory. It seems they have recently launched some elearning and the prices are very affordable compared to some elearning I have seen from others. Upon further e

How to Get What You Want in Four Easy Steps

By Jon Miller - April 5th, 2007

About 20 years ago in a catchy pop song Joe Jackson said “You can’t get what you want till you know what you want.” I didn’t think much about those words at the time, but these words seem to contain deeper wisdom as the years g

Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED)

By Ron Pereira - April 4th, 2007

One of the core principles to making a Lean system work is Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED). You may also hear it referred to as “Quick Changeover” especially in western companies. Common Misconceptions Contrary to what some t

How to Achieve Zero Defects

By Ron Pereira - April 3rd, 2007

A few days ago my friend Jon Miller posted an interesting blog where the discussion was how to achieve zero defects. A few of my favorite bloggers, John Hunter and Pete Abilla, posted comments to Jon’s blog so I will not repe

Skill Matrix Tutorial, Part 1

By Jon Miller - April 2nd, 2007

We receive a lot of questions on this blog about something called the Skill Matrix and how to use it. It seems to be an area of high interest so I will write about it more regularly. The Skill Matrix is a very useful visual management

Bloggers Unite in Keller Texas

By Ron Pereira - April 1st, 2007

Since starting Lean Six Sigma Academy I have been fortunate enough to form many new friends. Perhaps the most interesting friendship I have made is with one of the “giants” of the Lean blogosphere, Mark Graban. Mark and I live in t

Is Zero Defects Possible?

By Jon Miller - April 1st, 2007

Sonu asked: “Is zero defects possible? If so, what are the steps. We are dealing with around 300 parameters each having minimum 25 to 30 parameters to be met. We find it difficult to maintain zero defect for all parameters. Any t

Textron Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - March 30th, 2007

I recently came across this article written about the Six Sigma program at Textron. In the article Bob Zimering, a Textron Master Black Belt, discusses Six Sigma at Textron and responds to some of its critics. When discussing th

How Not to Screw up Pluses and Deltas

By Ron Pereira - March 29th, 2007

An extremely powerful, yet often misused, tool is pluses and deltas. I say misused since 9 out of 10 people I know (including MANY consultants) do not know how to do them properly. What are Pluses and Deltas? The easiest way to do plus

The Largest Room in the World

By Jon Miller - March 29th, 2007

What is the largest room in the world? I just heard this yesterday. Any guesses? Think about it. Or give a hint to other readers if you know the answer. I’m not telling.

Why So Much Confusion About Kanban?

By Jon Miller - March 28th, 2007

I had a very interesting conversation today with a friend who is a manager spearheading a Lean effort at a local facotry. His latest focus is on connecting the metal forming operations with the assembly operations using kanban. He obse

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