Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year!
And if you haven’t already heard it, I’d recommend you check out “Gemba Clause” over at the Lean Blog! Enjoy and God Bless!
Let’s Get Social
December 21, 2010 By 2 Comments
The fact you’re reading this blog means you likely “get” the whole social media thing more than the average person.
As such, I wanted to share the different ways you can follow the comings and goings of LSS Academy and Gemba Academy.
Facebook Fan Page
We’ve recently started a Gemba Academy Facebook fan page where we’ll post updates on what we’re up to while also giving “sneak peaks” to videos of new courses. For example, we just posted the first video of our new Standard Work course to the page.
We’ll also offer discount codes from time to time so head on over, press the thumbs up Like button, and you’ll be able to follow us from your personal Facebook page.
Head to our Facebook fan page here.
Next, we have a LinkedIn page where people can post their thoughts and ideas related to lean and six sigma. For example, a recent thread is focused on folks explaining how they first learned about lean and six sigma.
Head to our LinkedIn page here.
YouTube
Since Gemba Academy provides online and DVD based lean training it only makes sense to have a YouTube page… and we do! So, if you’d like to stay on top of new lean training videos be sure to follow us on YouTube.
Head to our YouTube fan page here.
Finally, we also have a Twitter account where we post links to articles and such. Twitter is also an excellent way to follow other lean thinkers. And since your limited to 140 characters per update it doesn’t take long to skim through a bunch of updates.
Head to our Twitter page here.
What’s your Favorite?
So these are a few ways you can follow us outside of this blog. What is your favorite social media outlet? Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, or something else?
Vote “YES” for the American Innovator
December 13, 2010 By 3 Comments
Paul Akers and Jon Lussier are lean thinking business leaders I admire immensely.
For the past year they have brought their energy and enthusiasm for lean and business to the AM radio show called The American Innovator.
This show runs weekly on Saturdays at 8AM PST and takes a lot of work. Paul Akers and Jon Lussier would like to hear the voice of the customer, the listener, the members of the lean community – you – on whether they should run the show for another year.
I personally believe the show has important contributions to make as we all work to spread lean thinking ideas to the rest of the world. If you agree, please take the time to vote “yes” via one of these three ways to keep the show on the air:
- SMS or call Jon Lussier at +1-360-961-1000
- Send an e-mail to paul at FastCap dot com
- Facebook: Click the “Like” button with the thumbs up besides The American Innovator at the top of the page
The voting has started, and continues through the month of December. Let’s see if we can get at least 1,000 “yes” votes for keeping The American Innovator on the air.
Hoshin Kanri: Steel, Needles, Tubes, and Logic
December 6, 2010 By 7 Comments
Hoshin Kanri. Have you heard of it? If you’ve been around the lean world you likely have.
Well, over the coming weeks I plan to cover the highlights of what hoshin kanri is and how you and your organization might best leverage it.
In this first article I want to break the words – hoshin kanri – down a bit. And before I do I must confess… I do have a secret weapon that has armed me with the knowledge I am about to share. His name is Brad Schmidt.
Brad is my friend and business partner. Brad also runs the Gemba Research Japan office where he lives. Brad was educated and grew up in Japan and, as such, is fluent in Japanese.
And as it turns out, during the taping of Gemba Academy’s Lean Lingo course, Brad broke down the characters of this mysterious word. And in doing so, really opened my eyes to what this word means.
High Level Definition
At a high level, the words ho-shin can be translated as direction while kan-ri can be described as management.
Put another way, one could say hoshin kanri means “direction management” or something similar.
Now, if you’ve read a book or two you likely knew this. So let’s dig a little deeper.
Direction & Compass
When we look a little closer at the Japanese characters that make up hoshin we learn that the first character, we call ho, means direction.
The second character, we call shin, can mean compass… or even more accurately steel and needle. So, imagine a needle on a compass pointing the way to the promised land.
Tube & Logic
Now, up to this point Brad hadn’t said anything I hadn’t heard of before… that soon changed when he discussed the characters that made up the word kanri.
The first set of characters for the word kan, means tube. In fact, Brad explained that the sewer pipes in Japan are called kan as “things” pass through this type of tube.
The last character that makes up the word ri means logic.
So, kanri literally means tube logic. In other words we’re pushing logic through a tube! Neat, huh?
Stay tuned
Over the next few weeks I plan to write some additional articles on what hoshin kanri means to me and how I have personally used it.
What about you?
What about you? Have you used hoshin kanri before? If so, how did it work out for you?
