It has been ten years since I started this blog. When I first posted on September 1, 2013, I never though that it would go on this long. But it has. Now there are 525 blog posts (or 663 if you include the Chinese and German translations) and a total of 765 000 words with (mostly?) high-quality content on lean manufacturing and related topics. Time to look back and also to celebrate!
Awards
The main award was not for my blog, but for my book All About Pull Production. This work received the prestigious Shingo Publication Award! Excellent! The book is also selling well.
The book also made it on the list of the Top 10 Books on Lean Management, Lean Production, And Toyota History by Katie Andersson. Many thanks, Katie!
And, last but not least, one of my other books, Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond, made it onto the Umbrex Best Books on the Manufacturing Industry list. I am actually working on a revised and updated version, hopefully to be published in 2024.
Publications
There are also even more translations of my book All About Pull Production now. Besides the English, German, Spanish (thanks to Jorge Valle from Lean Transforma), and Brazilian Portuguese (thanks to Wellington Batista do DataLEAN) translations, the book was also translated into Italian (thanks to Roberto Ronzani and Sabrina Ramin from the Istituto Lean Management) and French (thanks to Laurence Drabik and Pierre Jannez from Operae Partners) last year. A Ukrainian translation is in the works (thanks to Serhii Komberianov from the Lean Institute Ukraine), the Chinese edition is almost complete (thanks to 涛杰 华 (Taojie) and Xie Xuan) albeit it may take eighteen more months for the actual publishing process in China), and a Polish translation may be started soon (thanks to Jakub Kocjan from Lean Systems).
Most Popular Posts
As I do every year, here are the top ten posts. There continues to be a lot of interest in Amazon and its technology. The second most popular post is an older post on lean in the Japanese toilet, which is definitely a fun read! But the number one spot is on the difference between the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing—a very recent post but with a lot of comments both here and on LinkedIn.
- Toyota Standard Work – Part 2: Standard Work Combination Table
- The Inner Workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers – Part 3
- What Is Ikigai?
- The Amazon Robotics Family: Kiva, Pegasus, Xanthus, and more…
- The Inner Workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers – Part 4
- Line Layout Strategies – Part 2: I-, U-, S-, and L-Lines
- Hoshin Kanri – Part 4: The X-Matrix?
- Different Ways to Do Kaizen
- Tales from Japan – Lean in the Japanese Public Toilet
- The Difference between the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing
Incorporation
Since the requests I receive for consulting and training are continuously increasing, I got together with my business partner and started the AALean GmbH. I am in the progress of transferring the brand AllAboutLean and the blog to this newly created company. Business is doing well, and even though we are barely two months old we have been active in the USA, Dubai, Spain, and Germany so far. More activities are upcoming, like a slight redesign of the blog (no worries, the content will stay free!). There are also plans to publish more videos to our AllAboutLean.com YouTube Channel. The impressum and privacy policy will soon be updated to reflect this.
Organizational
There were also some organizational changes. For one, I quit Twitter nine months ago. Not that I was very active, but I published my blog posts also on Twitter. However, I always had the feeling that there are more bots than humans on there. In any case, the increasingly strange behavior of Elon Musk turned me off Twitter. Since then he has continued his eccentric behavior, and Twitter is now “X.” I guess you could say that “Twitter is now my eX” and I clicked the Twitter symbol “X” in the upper right corner of my browser. I guess being a billionaire can do weird things to your character.
I also started to use AI for some illustrations. In particular I used DALL·E for some eye candy images. As they are created by an AI and not a human, they are also in public domain. I also started to use ChatGPT, but NOT to write my blog posts! The quality of ChatGPT is not too bad, but definitely not good enough for my own standards. But I find it helpful in structuring and giving ideas… which of course I always verify beforehand and divide the good from the bad before including them in my posts. Again, I want to emphasize that I still write all blog posts myself! As of now, I think I can still do a much better job on this than an AI. But I am not sure if you ask me again in twenty years.
I am also in the process of removing the popular Jetpack plugin from my blog. This program has become too intrusive, and may clash with German privacy regulations. But, since it is so deeply ingrained in many WordPress sites, it is not easy to simply rip it out. It is a work in progress, but I do put in the effort to protect your privacy.
Overall, it has been another fun year with lots of good feedback from you, dear readers. I also got a very nice AllAboutLean Birthday cake from my niece for my own birthday! So, thank you very much for continuing to frequent my site and for reading my works. Now, go out, keep on reading, implement what you read and organize your industry!
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Congratulations on the blog and all other related endeavors, you are always a very interesting read!
Congratulations! It’s fantastic that we can enjoy all the knowledge you’re sharing on the blog. We’re very grateful for all the time you dedicate to elaborating the content. Have a nice day!
Congratulations Professor Roser and many thanks to sharing your knowledge and Lean experiences with us. I feel particularly happy to contribute with your work, translating your book All About Pull Production to Portuguese. Count on me always you need.
Congratulations to such an impressive work!
Congratulations! It is great endeavor to share the knowledge gained with the world and guiding them to be a better person, better performer, builder of quality product or service etc. Very few have such a quality. Let the Almighty give you strength and time to share many more good things to us all.
Hi Chris,
Congratulations on completing a decade of dedicated efforts in propagating ‘Lean concepts and sharing your knowledge, experience with millions of practitioners.
Your stamina is sustaining this mission and commitment to churn out 500 plus blogposts is mind blowing.
Wishing you several more years of blogging.
Regards,
B. Jayaraman
Chris – you should be extremely proud of yourself for generating and posting these “All About Lean” monthly articles. I have enjoyed the tremendous knowledge transfer and have also shared the TPS based articles to many of my work colleagues and students. Please keep up the great work, and congratulations on 10 Years All About Lean!
Happy anniversary, Christoph! You have shared, and continue to do so, a wealth of experience and knowledge and the words you have put to pen have not gone noticed and appreciated by the Lean and continuous improvement global community. Thank you for the generosity and commitment to help individuals and organisations continue to strive to be the best they can be. The next five to ten years will bear witness to tremendous change and Lean thinking will play an important role in the design of the future across all sectors. Warmest wishes from me and the team at RPM-Academy in Ottawa, Canada.
Congratulations Dr. Roser! Your blog has been a beacon for lean practitioners. Your book is the best practical book ever written on Pull Production.
Congratulations and looking forward to the next 500!! 🙂
Happy Anniversary
Congratulations to you. We have learnt much knowledge about lean production. Hope you can continue to do it for the next ten years and will be better and better .
Congratulations for this anniversary. All the best for you and your initiatives in the future.
Happy 10th birthday and we all get a lots from your insights not only on doing things but everything
Many thanks to all of you for the kind words. Writing is so much more fun if there are people reading it! Please keep on reading! 🙂
Thanks, Christoph! I thoroughly appreciate reading your posts. Your dedication is admirable, and I wish you immense success with AALean GmbH. Greatings from Mannheim