Yayyy! AllAboutLean.com is now 3 years old! Three years ago on September 1, 2013, I became a professor and wrote the first post on my blog. Now, 163 blog posts and one book later, I am still enjoying it immensely!
I feel that after three years of weekly (longer) postings, I am now no longer a newbie but a part of the established crowd. Thanks to all my readers for reading 🙂 , and time to look back at the last year!
Most Popular Posts
The most popular posts during the last 365 days are unsurprisingly mostly about hands-on topics on lean manufacturing, plus one about a major current hype in the industry. Here are the ten most popular posts on AllAboutLean.com:
- Basics of CONWIP Systems (Constant Work in Progress): How does a good pull system work for low-quantity high-variety parts? CONWIP is a good contender here.
- SMED – Creative Quick Changeover Exercises and Training: Yes, the good old SMED. What would lean be without it?
- A Critical Look at Industry 4.0: Now this is a major hype, especially in Germany. However, if you look behind the scenes, you will find not much besides flowery language. The implementation is much more difficult than the ideas behind it.
- How to Measure Cycle Times: It is surprising how much you can do wrong with such a (seemingly) simple and common measurement as the cycle time.
- Theory of Every Part Every Interval (EPEI) Leveling & Heijunka: Leveling: Very popular, often difficult, and (unfortunately) also in many instances counterproductive.
- All About Swim Lane Diagrams: The value stream map for the office 🙂
- Overview of Value Stream Mapping Symbols: The value stream map for manufacturing 🙂
- Ten Rules When to Use a FIFO, When a Supermarket – Introduction: My own research, which I haven’t seen anywhere else. Frankly, I am quite proud of it. 🙂
- The (True) Difference Between Push and Pull: This one was a bit controversial. I am still convinced that pull means an upper limit to the inventory, but there are many other opinions out there.
- How Many Kanbans? – The Kanban Formula: The most popular post is about the mathematics for the kanban formula – which is far from easy. Despite the perceived accuracy of a complex formula, the kanban formula is only marginally better than guesswork!
Selected Praise
- I really like how easily you describe Lean Management topics. This is for use one of the best Lean Management blogs for me.
- Enjoyed reading this. A crucial topic. look forward to the next installment.
- A great help – thank you, very clear explanations too.
- This is very helpful. Huge thanks to this.
- Important concept. Well explained. Well done.
- It was really wonderful reading your blog. Very nicely written !
- such an abundant shared knowledge.. I will surely share this one too . . . Thanks to this article.
- It is really interested topic. What a nice blog is that ! I should have known about it for a while!
- Your posts are of awesome quality. Thank you so much.
What Else is New?
Well, of course, my book is out. A detailed look at the history of manufacturing! If you are even remotely interested in how modern manufacturing came together, then this book is for you 😉
Roser, Christoph, 2016. “Faster, Better, Cheaper” in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond, 439 pages, 1st ed. Productivity Press.
I also greatly expanded my glossary. At the time of writing, it included 310 different terms related to Toyota and lean manufacturing. With 16,000 words, it is almost a (thin) book on its own. And, I still regularly add more terms as I come across them. If you think I miss something, let me know.
My offer to answer manufacturing-related questions also turns out to be popular, and I get regular questions from practitioners in the field. Luckily, so far I can still manage the workload. Of course, I also get tons of messages from people wanting to sell me Facebook contacts, optimize my website, and monetize my content, but those I mostly ignore.
I write AllAboutLean.com not to get rich or to make money, but to spread knowledge on lean manufacturing. Hence there is only a little and hopefully unobtrusive advertisement, although this does not even cover the running costs.
Reader Statistics
The number of clicks is (unfortunately) no longer growing exponentially. Hence, World Domination by me though exponential growth is now postponed. But I still get 1000 to 2000 page views per day (depending if you believe the WordPress or the Google statistics). Almost 1000 people subscribed my email list with updates of new posts, with more on LinkedIn and other social network sites.
What I particularly like is that less than 10 percent of the visitors leave after seeing only one page (whereas the bounce rate of comparable sites is over 50 percent). It seems AllAboutLean.com is something that is of interest. The average reader also spends almost 3 minutes on my site per visit, which is much more than other comparable blogs.
Summary
With every post I write, I learn something new. I also have lots of interactions with my readers (You! <3 <3 <3 ) on my blog and on LinkedIn. This is still the reason I write. To learn, and to get to know people in the field. I am looking forward for the future! In the meantime, go out and organize your industry!
Congrats! Great blog!
Congrats! Great blog!