Gemba Academy

Quick Changeover and SMED for the Office

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2007

A reader named Sonu read the article Kaizen is Like Climbing a Mountain: Drive Stakes in Along the Way. She asked, “Can single-minute exchange of dies concept be used in the office?” Yes! Since SMED or single-minute exchang

LSSA Carnival: 1

By Ron Pereira - March 8th, 2007

There was some awesome blogging this week. I especially liked Jon Miller’s take on standing in the circle. I nearly fell off my chair laughing at the story Kevin, of Evolving Excellence, had today regarding the heavy heads of consult

LSSA Site Update

By Ron Pereira - March 7th, 2007

I started this blog January 15, 2007 and didn’t know what to expect. I must confess and admit I am really enjoying myself. I have met so many cool people via email and have uncovered this underground movement of Lean and Six Sigma bl

The 5 Why Questions, Like All Roads, Lead to Rome

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2007

Today Patrick Shumaker from Gemba forwarded a great example of asking “Why?” persistently until the root cause is found. Why are U.S. standard railroad gages 4 feet 8.5 inches? Rome. You can find the full story on this bull

Regression – Part 3

By Ron Pereira - March 6th, 2007

This evening we will wrap up our discussion of regression. So far we have discussed what regression is and a few ways to determine whether our model is significant. Next up I want to discuss something called the least squares method an

Build a Workplace You Can Be Proud Of

By Jon Miller - March 6th, 2007

People talk about pride. It’s a funny thing. I’ve never seen a “pride” poster in a factory or workplace that had their 5S down, good visual management in place and smiling employees. Maybe they 5S-ed the pride p

Regression – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2007

Last night we began our discussion on regression. Tonight, I want to talk about a few more things related to this topic. As I was thinking of what to write I realized how difficult it is to explain these topics without a flip chart! Th

Give Me 60 Minutes and I’ll Give You a Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2007

That’s 60 minutes from everyone in supervisory position and above, at least once every three weeks, forever. If that’s too much to ask, save yourself two minutes and stop reading now. There’s something called “s

Regression – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2007

After posting my recent blog on hypothesis testing I received a request to write about regression in a similar manner. As I am always focused on the “voice of the customer” I will take on regression tonight. This will be part

How Do You Sustain Improvement?

By Jon Miller - March 3rd, 2007

“How do you sustain improvement?” This is one of the most common questions posed to us about kaizen and Lean. I used to think this question required a thoughtful pause and a serious three-part reply. But lately I ask “

Lean Culture in a Temporary Workforce

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2007

Can you have Lean manufacturing without Lean enterprise? Can you have Lean enterprise without a Lean culture? Can you have Lean culture without a motivated shop floor? All of the trappings of operational excellence such as one piece fl

The Tipping Point

By Ron Pereira - March 1st, 2007

The blog”scribbit” is one of the coolest, non CIPish, blogs I have ever come across. This blogger has some serious skills. She recently posted a blog about an excellent book I highly recommend you read – The Tipping P

Teaching our Kids

By Ron Pereira - March 1st, 2007

I am of the opinion that the US education system needs some major work. Today, in our public school system we push students through with little regard to what their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes are. I once heard (from som

Top 5 Things I’ve Never Heard from a Kaizen Team Member

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2007

#5. “I’m surprised at how little we got done in four and a half days.” #4. “I have no concerns about these results being sustained.” #3. “Everything went as planned.” #2. “There’s n

Construction Industry Uses LSS

By Ron Pereira - February 28th, 2007

I came across this article and while it doesn’t go into great detail it talks about how LSS was taught to home builders during the final days of a workshop. It is always encouraging to me when I see and hear of other industries u

How Much Should We Pay for Kaizen Ideas?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2007

“How much should we pay for kaizen ideas?” This is a question we often hear during a kaizen class. The type of kaizen we are talking about here is the everyone-everyday kind, otherwise known as the soikufu system in Japanes

Hypothesis Testing

By Ron Pereira - February 27th, 2007

One of my favorite statistical tools is hypothesis testing. We can use hypothesis testing for many purposes. For example, we would use the popular 2-sample t-test when we have two samples of variable data and want to understand if they

Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2007

Today’s article in the Lexington Herald-Leader made my day a little bit better. The Scott County Way: Educators take a page from ‘The Toyota Way’ to boost curriculums: It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corpor

Lean Six Sigma Hot Sports Opinions

By Ron Pereira - February 26th, 2007

It seems “Lean Six Sigma” has been on the minds of some bloggers lately. There was a great discussion over at the Gemba Research blog here. I saw Rob commented on the topic here. Last, but certainly not least, the folks at the Scra

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2007

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today’s Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a

Talking with Toyota’s Chief

By Ron Pereira - February 24th, 2007

Business Week recently interviewed Toyota’s chief, Katsuaki Watanabe. They discussed hot topics such as how Toyota is battling the “big company” disease, quality issues, and the potential backlash in America as they close in on G

Once a Month Cooking – Lean or Not?

By Ron Pereira - February 23rd, 2007

A few posts ago I went on about my Sensei wife. I told you how she was teaching my kids about lean concepts, etc. Well, I must be fair and balanced with my blogging and need to confess something to you all. Tonight, my beautiful wife i

The Seven Habits of Toyota People

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2007

The harder Toyota’s overwhelming success becomes to ignore, the more books and articles are written about what makes them great. Many say the same thing, but in different ways. I’ve just started flipping through a Japanese

The New Savior of the Free World – MVT

By Ron Pereira - February 22nd, 2007

Matt, a reader of this blog, sent me this article tonight and while I was not going to comment until I studied this more I decided what the heck… tap dancing makes for boring blogs. I’m letting it fly!A company that calls itself Qu

Value Stream Mapping Confusion

By Ron Pereira - February 21st, 2007

When drawing value stream maps there can be confusion regarding the different “times” that are measured and, in some cases, calculated. I recently came up against this myself and thus want to share some tips with you all. Cycle Tim

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