In this week's edition of 5 Questions we meet Jon Miller of Gemba Research.
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1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?
I am one of the founders of Gemba Research. I do some consulting, some writing and like many small business owners have may hand in too many parts of the business. As one of the leaders of a global TPS consultancy almost everything I do is lean-oriented, but how I go about doing these things is far from lean.
2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?
In 1993 I began working as a Japanese-English interpreter for United Technologies. They were using consultants from the Shingijutsu company. I had no prior exposure to kaizen or manufacturing so it was a great learning experience. What got me into this? I'm not sure passion is the right word. Curiosity perhaps. The thinking process that allows us to solve any problem is what interests me, as well as the reasons why humans don't make better use of it.
3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?
It's science. It's practical, not axiomatic. It works. It can't fail if you keep trying and learning.
4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?
It's hard to say which aspect is the most unrecognized. I would say that the majority of people only see the tip of the iceberg. The visible systems and tools operating in a factory for example are supported by systems, practices and values within supporting functions. Some of these are being written about as "Toyota __" or "Lean __" but the lean lens distorts things. Right now people are just trying to catalog all things lean from end to end in the enterprise, to understand how the tools apply to R&D, sales, etc. and what sub-systems and behaviors are necessary to make them work. But for the most part all of these systems already exit in practice within companies today, or have within the last 50 years. We're rediscovering what we've lost. So the most important question that we're not asking might be "Why did we forget so much about lean, and how can we prevent it from happening again?"
5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?
What I call "Lean Not Manufacturing". Helping people apply these principles and ways of thinking to the more than 80% of the world economy that is not manufacturing. The trick will be to do this without losing too much in the translation. A lot of people, even those convicted of lean in manufacturing, don't truly believe that it applies just as well to the creative process or to work dealing only with information. The two poles at the moment are an attempt at rigid application of manufacturing style kaizen and lean, which usually causes backlash, or loosing it up too much compromising a lot, allowing a lot of non-essential things to get in under the lean umbrella, reducing its effectiveness. It would be a lot easier if we could stop calling it lean and understand that it's all about serving others, developing people, and solving problems.