Learn by Doing with Gemba Academy

AAM’s Story

As a recip­i­ent of the high­ly regard­ed Shin­go Award, Amer­i­can Axle & Man­u­fac­tur­ing (AAM) has a cul­tur­al val­ue of lean in every process. They saw a need to devel­op an inter­nal lean train­ing pro­gram for both busi­ness, and man­u­fac­tur­ing asso­ciates. They turned to Gem­ba Acad­e­my to imple­ment train­ing on lean con­cepts such as stan­dard work, process map­ping, and prob­lem-solv­ing. After each course, each per­son must out­line an action plan on a process that they are famil­iar with and have some con­trol over. This gives the learn­ers hands-on prac­tice with the con­cept and gets them start­ed on real-world improve­ments. The improve­ments made then get rec­og­nized through­out the com­pa­ny on their intranet por­tal giv­ing full cred­it to the teams for their hard work.

Through these train­ing ini­tia­tives, AAM has reduced process times, imple­ment­ed stan­dard­ized work instruc­tions, and has enjoyed a mea­sur­able improve­ment in the com­plete­ness and accu­ra­cy of infor­ma­tion flow.