My guest for Podcast #181 is a good friend, Ron Pereira of Gemba Academy, an outstanding provider of online Lean (and now Six Sigma) education. You might also know Ron from his blog posts (and now, also, a podcast) at LSSacademy.com. I was recently a guest on episode #8 of his podcast series. Ron was also the guest host for episode #143 of my podcast, where he interviewed me with follow up questions from a webinar I did for Gemba Academy on SPC. Before I moved to San Antonio, Ron and used to live just about five miles apart in Keller, Texas and would meet for coffee regularly... but, today, we are talking via Skype. We're talking about his background with both Six Sigma and Lean and about how these methods can be used together. Ron tells a story about a time he used statistical methods to solve something that might have been difficult with standard Lean approaches. For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/181 Conflict of interest disclosure: Gemba Academy is a formal partner of KaiNexus, a technology company I work with and have an ownership stake in. I have received a free subscription to the Gemba Academy training classes.  Please leave a comment and join the discussion about the podcast episode. For earlier episodes of the Lean Blog Podcast, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. You can also listen to streaming episodes of the podcast via Stitcher: http://landing.stitcher.com/?vurl=leanblog If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.