Gemba Academy

The Winning Link with Billy Taylor

By Ron Pereira - November 6th, 2020

Gemba Academy is entering the “live stream” movement. We’ve obviously had some experience with video based learning over the years and we’ve also done many webinars which, technically, is a streaming event. Bu

Learning from the Scientific Skepticism of the Amazing Randi

By Jon Miller - October 26th, 2020

Growing up in Japan in the 1970s, I was exposed to a lot of entertainment about supernatural or extraordinary phenomena. In books and on TV, there were what seemed at the time like serious investigations of UFOs, ghosts, ESP and crypto

Stop Being the Expert and Be a Coach

By Steve Kane - October 23rd, 2020

I wrote the article below a few years ago and wanted to revisit it and include some thoughts on how this relates to coaching. “If I am wiser. . . it is because I know that I do not know.” ~ Socrates Is it possible that expe

Queues These Days as Reminders of Little’s Law

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2020

I’ve never been fond of queues. It’s not so much the standing and waiting that bothers me. Instead, it’s the reminder that queue exists because there is an imperfection in the process that prevents smooth flow. Of cou

Lean Lessons from Soviet Supermarket Failures

By Jon Miller - October 12th, 2020

I came across the story of How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War while catching up on past episodes of the Freakonomics Radio podcast. It tells of the role the American supermarket played in the downfall of communism in t

Time to Stop

By Kevin Meyer - October 9th, 2020

As we approach the arbitrary end of the year, many organizations are beginning the planning cycle for next year. Part of that process should be identifying what projects and activities should be stopped, for several reasons – p

The Many Methods of Business Process Mapping

By Jon Miller - October 5th, 2020

One of our content goals for the year is to make our learning library more useful for knowledge workers. To this end, we are in the process of building the Business Process Mapping course. What’s in the Business Process Mapping C

Focus on What you Plan to Do (Not What You Want to Get Done)

By Ron Pereira - October 2nd, 2020

Yesterday, during a coaching call with Allen, one of our Black Belt candidates, I had an interesting conversation. Allen asked how to best plan out the next 5 business days and if I had any recommendations on what he should get done.

The Loopy Guide to Getting Started with Lean

By Jon Miller - September 28th, 2020

We often hear the question, “Where do I get started?” from people new to lean, continuous improvement or operational excellence. A simple, universal answer continues to evade us. The answer is rather situational. It depends

5 Tips for Choosing a Lean Certification Course

By Steve Kane - September 25th, 2020

There are many Lean certification courses available from a wide variety of organizations. Choosing the right one to suit your specific needs can be a bit tricky. Here are some tips and considerations to help you find the right one for

The Five-minute Morale and Productivity Booster

By Jon Miller - September 21st, 2020

We love to hear from our customers at Gemba Academy. Sometimes it’s about things we can do better. Customer requests for new topics for our learning library are an important input to our plans. Perhaps the best is hearing about o

COLLECT Questions for Better Gemba Walks

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2020

The purpose of gemba walks is to demonstrate respect for the people who do the work, collect information, and promote actions that continuously improve processes and shape organizational culture. People accomplish this by going to the

Infographic: 5 Best Practices for Online Learning

By Kevin Meyer - September 12th, 2020

Gemba Academy’s latest infographic on “5 Best Practices for Online Learning” is now available! The image is below, or you can download it on our Resources page. The other infographics on Best Practices for Remote

The Stabilizing Foundation of Values

By Kevin Meyer - September 11th, 2020

We’re living through some crazy times and dealing with issues that were not anticipated during planning sessions. Every day we’re confronted with new information, new analyses of facts and opinions, creating new decisions

How to Build High-Performance Teams through Lean Practices

By Jon Miller - September 7th, 2020

Teams are a well-established feature of how we manage, accomplish and improve our work. Yet too often teams at work are no more than a near-random collection of people. If we were building a high-performance car, we would never do so w

What Is a Transactional Value Stream Map?

By Ron Pereira - September 4th, 2020

We’ve recently released “phase 1” of a new Business Process Mapping series. Two additional phases will be added in the coming weeks. In phase 1 we explore the topic of transactional value stream mapping. In this

Akio Toyoda’s Take on TPS

By Jon Miller - August 31st, 2020

One might think that Toyota, after more than fifty years of developing, working within, and refining the Toyota Production System, wouldn’t need to run training courses on TPS for managers. And yet recently Toyota has started a s

Platforms for Online Lean and Six Sigma Training

By Kevin Meyer - August 28th, 2020

Over the last decade, Gemba Academy’s online library has grown to nearly 2,000 lean and six sigma training videos. These are organized into three general categories: the School of Lean, School of Six Sigma, and our unique Gemba

Repainting the Wood Steps of Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - August 17th, 2020

Summer is a great time for home improvement projects. This week I crossed off another one off of my list. The paint on one of the back staircases was worn and peeling. It was in dire in need of repair. At five feet wide, three feet tal

Leveraging the Solitude of Leadership

By Kevin Meyer - August 14th, 2020

I’ve long relished intentional periods of solitude to reflect and renew. I’ll often take advantage of the six mile stretch of beach between Morro Bay’s [hopefully] extinct volcano a couple blocks from my house and t

Better Business Processes through ECRSA

By Jon Miller - August 10th, 2020

I came across my old friend Ecrsa while working on some teaching videos for our Business Process Mapping. She’s actually an industrial engineering acronym, ECRS. It stands for Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify, with the a

What Is a Lean Daily Management System?

By Ron Pereira - August 7th, 2020

If you’ve been practicing lean for any amount of time you’ve likely heard about gemba walks, leader standard work, and obeya. To be sure, as individual lean tools and concepts they’re powerful. But, when you combine

What’s in the Continuous Improvement Attic?

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2020

Whether we’re talking about houses, management systems, or vacation plans, it’s almost always a good idea to build from the foundation up. Even when we think we already have a firm foundation, it’s worth checking befo

Where to Start with the Daily Management System?

By Jon Miller - July 27th, 2020

Where do we start? This is one of the most common questions people ask throughout the continuous improvement journey. This is true not only at the very beginning but also at various stages. The word “continuous” is misleadi

Team Learning vs. Individual Learning

By Steve Kane - July 24th, 2020

Gemba Academy has been helping people gain proficiency in Lean and Six Sigma through Green Belt and Black Belt certification courses for several years. These certification courses have always included one-on-one coaching via phone or v

Gemba Academy Blog

Blog Archive