Happy 11th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com!

Yet another year has passed, and AllAboutLean.com is now eleven years old! Every year I am surprised that I again managed to write and publish 52 blog posts, one for every week. And, by writing I mean actually writing, not just AI-generated text garbage. This is now the 579th post on this site! Since day one my goal has been to spread knowledge of lean, and based on the success of AllAboutLean.com, it seems to be working :).

Awards

My site has been honored again to receive a prestigious award. The Process Excellence Network (PEX) has included me in their list of 25 operational excellence thought leaders to follow in 2024! The 25 people listed were then selected based on a number of factors including experience, achievements in their sector, awards, and public profile. Many thanks to the Process Excellence Network for the honor!

Publications

I also got a few publications done or in the pipeline. I published the Ukrainian translation of All About Pull Production thanks to Serhii Komberianov from the Lean Institute Ukraine. Unfortunately, Amazon does not support ebooks in Ukrainian, only paperbacks, and hence it is for Ukranian standards still a pricey book. Luckily, with my permission, Serhii also published the book in Ukraine, which at 500₴ (ca. EUR 10) is a lot cheaper than what I can do with print-on-demand on Amazon. I hope this book helps Ukraine!

A Polish translation of All About Pull Production, translated and published by Lean Systems Poland, is also ready for publishing and will premiere on September 21, 2024 during the conference of the Polish Lean Management Association SLMP. A Chinese translation, thanks to  涛杰 华 (Taojie) and Xie Xuan, is also almost ready. It will be published within Mainland China by China Machine Press, and outside of China by myself. A Turkish translation, thanks to Caner Akıncı from Üretmer, Turkey, is still in the works. See my list of translations for all available and upcoming translations.

I also published my Collected Blog Posts of AllAboutLean.com 2023. This has all my blog posts of last year in one book. You could buy this in print on Amazon, but you could also buy the much cheaper ebook on Amazon for the price of a cup of coffee. Or, if it is too much coffee, you can also download it here on my blog for FREE as a PDF or for FREE as an EPUB EBook. Since my blog is free, I make my collected blog post books also available for free. Only the print version costs some money. See my list of collected blog posts books for more on this and previous issues.

I also updated, revised, and significantly expanded my German manufacturing fundamentals textbook that I use for my classes at my university. Fertigungstechnik für Führungskräfte is now available in the 4th edition. Since we restructured our classes, I had to add a lot of content on product design and quality management. I hope it helps my students (to pass my exam?).

But the book that I’m really looking forward to and which hopefully will come out later in 2024 is my new book, All About Work Standards: Writing, Training, and Maintaining Work Standards, Toyota Standard Work, and Leader Standard Work for Continuous Improvement and Kaizen. I’m currently in the last phases of editing and revisions before it goes to proofreading. With over 120 images, it details how to use work standards. It looks at what the difference to the confusingly named standard work is. It removes the bedazzling and looks at the useful core of leader standard work. All of this with many examples and useful tips. I hope this book will help the lean and manufacturing communities as much or even more than my highly successful book on pull production. If it helps, All About Work Standards has much fewer equations and much simpler math…

Another book that’s in the pipeline is also actually ready to be published…but I’m waiting to get the copyright from my publisher back. I updated my manufacturing history book “Faster, Better, Cheaper” in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond, to a second edition re-titled MAKE: Faster, Better, and Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing, from the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond. This was my first book, published in 2016, and I revised and updated it. However, due to copyright issues I’m not sure when I will be able to publish this book. :(. The only thing I can do is show you the new cover draft here as a teaser.

Most Popular Posts

As I do every year, here are the top ten posts looked at in the last 12 months. There continues to be a lot of interest in the Toyota KPI Dashboard, with five out of seven posts making it into the top ten. (Albeit I am a bit sad that the all-important KPI dashboard topic of safety made it only to 14th place. At least it is more important than cost on 20th place). The Toyota Standard Work Combination Table is also quite prominent, and will also be featured in my upcoming book on work standards, as will be the Toyota Practical Problem Solving, which also made it on the top ten list.

1. Toyota Practical Problem Solving (PPS)—Introduction
2. The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Human Resources
3. The Kingman Formula – Variation, Utilization, and Lead Time
4. Glossary of Lean Production Related Terms
5. The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Production Plan
6. Toyota Standard Work – Part 2: Standard Work Combination Table
7. The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Quality
8. Hoshin Kanri – Part 4: The X-Matrix?
9. The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Productivity
10. The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Overview

Consulting

The AALean GmbH that my brother and I started last year to teach, coach, and consult is also doing well. We are active on multiple continents, doing anything from fundamentals and advanced trainings to coaching of division managers and plant managers. We also create training videos, which will be available to the general public soon. It feels good to spread the knowledge of lean and operational excellence to the world. It is also great fun. And, finally, it also profitable.

Overall, it was a good, fun year with lots of writing and learning. Thank you very much, my dear readers, 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!