School of Lean

A gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. Learn what lean is, why it mat­ters, and how to lay the ground­work for a suc­cess­ful lean journey. 

5S is the first place many lean jour­neys start due to its quick and sus­tained impact on an orga­ni­za­tion. Our 5S cours­es will have you imple­ment­ing a 5S pro­gram in no time.

There are sev­en (and some­times 8) types of iden­ti­fied wastes that are keep­ing your orga­ni­za­tion from reach­ing its full poten­tial. This is not just a man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lem, all indus­tries can ben­e­fit iden­ti­fy­ing and elim­i­nat­ing wastes.

A deep under­stand­ing of Kaizen, which means to change for the bet­ter, will change the way you look at process improve­ment for­ev­er. In this course, which is also from the School of Lean, you’ll learn what Kaizen is as well as how to run a kaizen event. To be sure, con­tin­u­ous improve­ment projects don’t have to take months to com­plete. In fact, a Six Sig­ma project may include one, or more, kaizen events as the team works to improve the process.

Do you ful­ly under­stand your entire pro­duc­tion process from end to end? The best way to get in deep to your busi­ness process’s is with a tool known as val­ue stream map­ping, or VSM for short. In these cours­es you will see how to cre­ate your own val­ue stream maps. Addi­tion­al­ly you can also expe­ri­ence sim­u­la­tions used to prove the supe­ri­or­i­ty of flow, over batch pro­duc­tion for most processes. 

Using the prin­ci­ples of lean think­ing with office process­es, knowl­edge work, and ser­vice busi­ness­es requires both an under­stand­ing of the proven meth­ods and of the unique chal­lenges involved in apply­ing them to infor­ma­tion flow. This course focus­es on putting Val­ue Stream Map­ping into con­text for ser­vice process­es by intro­duc­ing sev­er­al com­mon meth­ods, view­ing real life exam­ples, and gain­ing insight from expert teach­ers and authors.

We can say that the entire lean man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tem is a result of decades of con­tin­u­ous prob­lem solv­ing by all of the peo­ple and com­pa­nies who have con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of lean sys­tems. The Gem­ba Acad­e­my Prac­ti­cal Prob­lem Solv­ing course explains the exact 8 step prob­lem solv­ing process used by these lean exem­plars around the world. In this course you’ll learn why PDCA is much more than 4 sim­ple steps while also learn­ing how to cre­ate and use sta­tis­ti­cal tools like con­trol charts, Pare­to charts, and scat­ter plots.

The Toy­ota Kata frame­work turns sci­en­tif­ic think­ing into a prac­ti­cal skill any­one, and any orga­ni­za­tion, can learn through the delib­er­ate prac­tice of a four step learn­ing and dis­cov­ery process.

What are the activ­i­ties need­ed on a dai­ly basis to keep your lean jour­ney alive? The cours­es pre­sent­ed here will enable your orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­ers to keep the pulse of your teams through coach­ing, look for improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, com­mu­ni­cate visu­al­ly and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, go to the gemba. 

We can say that the entire lean man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tem is a result of decades of con­tin­u­ous prob­lem solv­ing by all of the peo­ple and com­pa­nies who have con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of lean sys­tems. The Gem­ba Acad­e­my Sev­en Qual­i­ty Con­trol Tools course explains the exact 7 tools used by qual­i­ty con­trol experts. No mat­ter if you work in a fac­to­ry mak­ing ​“wid­gets” or in a hos­pi­tal tak­ing care of patients, the con­cepts taught in this course will for­ev­er change the way you use sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods to ana­lyze and con­trol qual­i­ty. In this course you’ll learn the sev­en key qual­i­ty con­trol tools while also learn­ing how to cre­ate and use sta­tis­ti­cal tools like con­trol charts, Pare­to charts, and scat­ter plots.

Explore how A3 think­ing can pos­i­tive­ly impact any orga­ni­za­tion in any indus­try. View real-world case stud­ies and hear tes­ti­mo­ni­als from lead­ers that have ben­e­fit­ed from A3s.

In this course, you’ll learn how Quick Changeover, or SMED, can be used to stream­line your process­es and dras­ti­cal­ly reduce your machine changeover time. While Quick Changeover can be used in vir­tu­al­ly any indus­try, this course fea­tures cus­tom foam fab­ri­ca­tor Ram Tech­nolo­gies, which saw a 66% improve­ment after apply­ing this pow­er­ful lean tool!

In this course we cov­er, in great detail, the 4 types of Stan­dard Work that apply to any type of work or indus­try. You see, con­trary to what some think… Stan­dard Work applies to any type of activ­i­ty no mat­ter if you pro­duce wid­gets in a fac­to­ry or do so-called cre­ative work in an office environment.

In this course focused on Built in Qual­i­ty (BIQ) Chris Schrandt — a for­mer Qual­i­ty Engi­neer­ing Man­ag­er at the Toy­ota George­town, KY plant — deliv­ers a live work­shop to a room full of lean thinkers at the Peter­bilt Man­u­fac­tur­ing Facility.

In this course, which was filmed in front of a live audi­ence, Mike Wrob­lews­ki a senior con­sul­tant for the Kaizen Insti­tute, dis­cuss­es 3P (Pro­duc­tion Prepa­ra­tion Process) as it relates to the design of a new health­care facil­i­ty such as a hospital.

In this course focused on intro­duc­ing the pow­er­ful top­ic of kan­ban, Ron Pereira explains what kan­ban are and how to imple­ment some of the most pop­u­lar kan­ban sys­tems into a pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment. You’ll also receive access to kan­ban cal­cu­la­tors that make the some­times intim­i­dat­ing math involved sim­ple and easy to han­dle. Final­ly, Ron will explain what needs to be in place to ensure kan­ban suc­cess as well as the 6 rules to fol­low to ensure your kan­ban sys­tem not only sur­vives but thrives over time.

If you’re famil­iar with Lean, you know that reduc­ing waste is a big part of this method­ol­o­gy. Total Pro­duc­tive Main­te­nance (TPM) aims to reduce loss­es and waste relat­ed to the con­di­tion and main­te­nance of pro­duc­tion equip­ment. TPM is a method for achiev­ing max­i­mum equip­ment effec­tive­ness that pro­vides work­ers with a frame­work for effi­cient­ly car­ing for the equip­ment they use, which reduces the costs asso­ci­at­ed with repairs and replace­ments and elim­i­nates down­time. Gem­ba Academy’s Total Pro­duc­tive Main­te­nance cours­es explain TPM’s core fun­da­men­tals, ben­e­fits, and what you lose when you don’t make main­te­nance a priority.

While the tools of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment are obvi­ous­ly impor­tant, one thing is cer­tain. If we, as con­tin­u­ous improve­ment lead­ers, fail to respect, effec­tive­ly moti­vate, and pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence those around us we will nev­er cre­ate strong cul­tures of kaizen. As such, dur­ing this course we will explore the human side of lean in great detail.

In this course, you’ll learn about gem­ba kaizen and lean from the leg­endary Mr. Masaa­ki Imai. Mr. Imai’s pow­er­ful way of explain­ing con­cepts and the sto­ries he’s gath­ered over the years make his pre­sen­ta­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly engaging.

A method of devel­op­ing and deploy­ing strat­e­gy or pol­i­cy, hoshin focus­es and aligns the orga­ni­za­tion on a few vital ​“break­through” objec­tives. The objec­tives and means to achieve the objec­tives are cas­cad­ed down through the entire orga­ni­za­tion through a down-up-down process known as catch ball. The actions, plans, and progress are visu­al­ized using linked A3 reports and/​or X‑matrices. The process is self-cor­rect­ing and encour­ages orga­ni­za­tion­al learn­ing and con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the plan­ning process itself.

Train­ing With­in Indus­try, or TWI for short, is a set of three hands-on, ​“go to gem­ba” style train­ing method­olo­gies devel­oped by the Unit­ed States TWI Ser­vice at the begin­ning of World War II. These three meth­ods are Job Instruc­tion (JI), Job Rela­tions (JR) and Job Meth­ods (JM).

The best way to learn is by doing. Sim­u­la­tions allow you to demon­strate lean con­cepts to your teams in a hands-on way, increas­ing under­stand­ing and also key ben­e­fits. It’s not enough to just watch our sim­u­la­tions, to tru­ly under­stand is to run these sim­u­la­tions your­self with your teams.

When imple­ment­ing Lean, you may find that your account­ing prac­tices no longer line up with your busi­ness objec­tives. Our Lean Account­ing cours­es will show you how to line up your Lean activ­i­ties with your Accounting.

Brad Schmidt, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Gem­ba Japan, explains the roots of sev­er­al of the most pop­u­lar lean terms. As you’ll soon real­ize, Brad loves to talk, smile, and have fun. And the fact he speaks and writes Japan­ese def­i­nite­ly helps!

The Gem­ba Glos­sary series pro­vides a very short descrip­tion, his­to­ry, and appli­ca­tion of key lean concepts.

Gem­ba Acad­e­my con­tin­ues to grow its library of Lean and Six Sig­ma learn­ing resources every day. Along with our brand new videos, we also have a rich archive of con­tent fea­tur­ing con­cepts that are as rel­e­vant today as they were in the ear­ly days of lean. Orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced by the Kaizen Insti­tute, we are delight­ed to share with you this video series on kaizen and Just-in-Time production.

Prac­tic­ing Agile involves iden­ti­fy­ing cus­tomer needs and devel­op­ing solu­tions through col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts by cross-func­tion­al teams. Orig­i­nat­ing in soft­ware devel­op­ment, Agile is now wide­ly-rec­og­nized as an effec­tive approach to project man­age­ment of all kinds. The ben­e­fits of incor­po­rat­ing Agile into your man­age­ment sys­tem include a more in-depth under­stand­ing of your work­flow, the abil­i­ty to respond and adapt to change quick­ly, and an over­all inten­si­fied focus on deliv­er­ing val­ue to your cus­tomers. In these cours­es you’ll learn the foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of Agile, the pos­i­tive effect it can have on your process­es, and how to deploy it with­in your organization.

Total Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment (TQM) is an orga­ni­za­tion-wide, strate­gic, cus­tomer-focused and team-based approach to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. Learn how to devel­op the knowl­edge and skills for prob­lem solv­ing and qual­i­ty improve­ment as well as how to plan, sup­port, eval­u­ate, and get start­ed with TQM activities.

Man­ag­ing vir­tu­al or remote work pos­es both unique advan­tages and chal­lenges. Suc­ceed­ing in a vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment requires more than using dig­i­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and video­con­fer­enc­ing. Learn the proven tools, prac­tices, and steps for adopt­ing a vir­tu­al man­age­ment system.

Going through cycles of build­ing and resolv­ing cre­ative ten­sion is a key part of build­ing what Peter Sen­ge calls per­son­al mas­tery in his book ​“The Fifth Dis­ci­pline.” Under­stand how peo­ple learn by set­ting and striv­ing toward goals, and how indi­vid­u­als, lead­ers, and orga­ni­za­tions can make use of this practice.

Fault Tree Analy­sis is a top-down, deduc­tive approach to under­stand­ing how a series of low­er-lev­el events can result in an unde­sired event, acci­dent, or equip­ment fail­ure. This dia­gram uses a set of sym­bols to rep­re­sent for­mal log­ic and to assign prob­a­bil­i­ties. Per­form­ing Fault Tree Analy­sis helps us to under­stand how spe­cif­ic sys­tems can fail, assign risk rates, and iden­ti­fy the best ways to reduce these risks.

Brain­storm­ing is a struc­tured process for gen­er­at­ing ideas. Although indi­vid­u­als may brain­storm on their own, it’s typ­i­cal­ly a process that involves group dis­cus­sion. Learn the five rules of effec­tive brain­storm­ing, the facilitator’s role, and how to use sup­port­ing tech­niques such as the affin­i­ty dia­gram, PICK chart, and N/3 mul­ti-vot­ing as part of your brain­storm­ing session.

All orga­ni­za­tions need effec­tive ways to train new employ­ees, become more flex­i­ble in respond­ing to chang­ing cus­tomer demands, estab­lish suc­ces­sion plans, and improve team­work. Cross-train­ing is a proven prac­tice used to achieve these things and more. Learn the pre­req­ui­sites, tools, and tech­niques for using cross-train­ing to devel­op a mul­ti-skilled workforce

Every work­place comes with haz­ards. Bowtie Analy­sis is a pow­er­ful risk analy­sis tool used to iden­ti­fy, eval­u­ate, and address spe­cif­ic haz­ards with­in your orga­ni­za­tion, whether that be a chem­i­cal spill on a fac­to­ry floor or a med­ical error in a hos­pi­tal. Learn how this tool, which com­bines fea­tures of Fault Tree Analy­sis and Event Analy­sis, can shed light on all kinds of poten­tial issues and how you can inter­vene before these risks cause real damage.

Work­ing in a flow deliv­ers ben­e­fits in terms of speed, qual­i­ty, safe­ty, cost, and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. Cre­at­ing flow requires con­nect­ing process­es and link­ing them close­ly togeth­er. Often this takes the form of a cell. Learn the prac­ti­cal steps and prin­ci­ples that guide us through the study of our prod­ucts, process­es, equip­ment, mate­ri­als, and peo­ple when design­ing a cell.

As orga­ni­za­tions take steps toward achiev­ing con­tin­u­ous flow, it’s com­mon for one or more sup­port­ing sys­tems to strug­gle. A typ­i­cal prob­lem is that mate­r­i­al han­dling and sup­ply process­es can’t keep up with the faster pace of one-piece flow. In oth­er words, we need to build a sys­tem of inter­nal logis­tics that enables con­tin­u­ous flow.

Qual­i­ty Func­tion Deploy­ment (QFD) is a struc­tured approach for trans­lat­ing cus­tomer needs into tech­ni­cal require­ments. QFD has great sig­nif­i­cance in mod­ern prod­uct devel­op­ment because of rapid­ly chang­ing tech­nolo­gies and cus­tomer needs. Cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fy­ing cus­tomer needs is para­mount to our abil­i­ty to design prod­ucts and ser­vices that meet these needs. By doing this, QFD plays a key role in sup­port­ing an orga­ni­za­tion’s design and devel­op­ment efforts. Learn how the dia­gram known as the House of Qual­i­ty cre­ates a visu­al frame­work for link­ing cus­tomer needs with design spec­i­fi­ca­tions, best prac­tices for col­lect­ing Voice of the Cus­tomer data, prac­tices for eval­u­at­ing, rank­ing, and pri­or­i­tiz­ing tech­ni­cal require­ments, and more.

A key role of a facil­i­ta­tor is to help par­tic­i­pants of meet­ings, work­shops, con­fer­ences, or oth­er events meet cer­tain objec­tives with­in a set amount of time. Facil­i­ta­tion skills and prac­tices help engage peo­ple in change, improve­ment, or inno­va­tion activ­i­ties. Learn what a facil­i­ta­tor is and is not, how they facil­i­tate dif­fer­ent types of activ­i­ties, and the sev­en key facil­i­ta­tion skills.

Change man­age­ment offers a struc­tured process for plan­ning, prepar­ing, imple­ment­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing suc­cess­ful change in an orga­ni­za­tion. Learn the sev­en com­mon rea­sons that change efforts fail, proven frame­works for avoid­ing these fail­ure modes, and how to form and oper­ate a steer­ing com­mit­tee that is able to man­age risk, engage stake­hold­ers, and mon­i­tor the progress of a change initiative.

Work­ing as a team helps peo­ple achieve much more than they can as indi­vid­u­als. Becom­ing a high-per­for­mance team requires care­ful plan­ning, sup­port, and lead­er­ship. Learn the roles, respon­si­bil­i­ties, skills, and prac­tices that enable lead­ers to guide teams to success

There are many prob­lem-solv­ing approach­es. The 3C method (Con­cern, Cause, Coun­ter­mea­sure) offers a sim­ple but effec­tive way for teams to get start­ed with prob­lem-solv­ing in their dai­ly work. Learn about the 3C for­mat, how it’s used, and guide­lines that teams can follow.

This com­pre­hen­sive course on Fail­ure Mode and Effects Analy­sis (FMEA) cov­ers essen­tial method­olo­gies for iden­ti­fy­ing and mit­i­gat­ing poten­tial fail­ures in prod­ucts and processes.

The 8D prob­lem-solv­ing process was estab­lished in the ear­ly 1980s by the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny with the goal of stan­dard­iz­ing and improv­ing prob­lem-solv­ing capa­bil­i­ties in their sup­ply chain. Launched under the name of ​“Team Ori­ent­ed Prob­lem-Solv­ing Using the Eight Dis­ci­plines,” it’s com­mon­ly prac­ticed as 8D. Learn how to form teams, con­tain prob­lems, scope projects, iden­ti­fy root caus­es, imple­ment cor­rec­tive actions and pre­ven­tive mea­sures, and rec­og­nize the team’s success.