Happy 9th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com

Yet another year has passed. AllAboutLean.com is now nine years old! I never though I would keep it up for so long, but your support and encouragement for my writing keeps me motivated. Many thanks! I am looking forward to writing many more years on the topic of lean. I also have more books planned (but this will take some time). Anyway, let’s review the year:

Books

In April 2021 I finally published my book All About Pull Production. As it turns out, it has been very well received. For example, on Amazon it has 4.9 out of 5 stars with 35 ratings, and 11 highly positive reviews. And that is without me nudging everybody to write me a review, but instead organic feedback merely based on my book 🙂 .

Since then, multiple translations have also become available, including German Alles über Verbrauchssteuerung (translated by me), Spanish Todo sobre Producción Pull (translated by Jorge Valle from Lean Transforma), and Brazilian Portuguese Tudo Sobre Produção Puxada (translated by Wellington Batista from DataLEAN). More languages are in preparation, including Chinese 关于拉动生产的一切 by Taojie and Xie Xuan, Italiano by Roberto Ronzani from the Istituto Lean Management, and French by Pierre Jannez from Operae Partners, and more.

I also published my ninth volume of Collected Blog Posts of AllAboutLean.com 2021, which you can buy on Amazon… or just download it for free on my website. I also created free EPUB eBook versions to download for all nine volumes from 2013 to 2021 in addition to the PDF versions. This is just for fun, and not intended to make money. I plan to publish the next volume for 2022 in spring 2023.

I also needed a timeout while I was pondering which fonts to use in my books, so just for fun I made a book with Font Samples. This has NOTHING to do with lean, and I did this just for myself. Buy this only if you are into fonts.

I also updated my German manufacturing fundamentals textbook Fertigungstechnik für Führungskräfte to its third edition. I use this book for my for my university lectures. In the US, it is common to force students to buy overpriced textbooks. I don’t want to profit from my students, and hence the price is drastically reduced and the book is available almost at the printing cost.

I am also currently working on a revision of my first book Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing. Hopefully I can publish an updated version early next year, but first I need to get the rights back from the publisher. I also still have to think about the cover. So, don’t buy it yet. 🙂 On this, also see my post next week on the Cromford cotton mill, which started the industrial revolution 250 years ago.

Blog Posts

Of course, I also wrote plenty of blog posts. I publish one post per week, usually every Tuesday (unless it is an anniversary post that falls on a different day, like this one).  This has made a total of fifty-one blog posts since September 1, 2021.

But wait, there is more. I also translated some of my blog posts into German. As of now, there are eighteen posts and seven pages available also in German. But much more productive was Xie Xuan, who translated many MANY posts into Chinese. As of writing, there are seventy-five blog posts and three pages available in Chinese. Xie Xuan is also working on making them available on Weibo WeChat in China.

Most Popular Posts

As every year, here are the top ten posts:

1. The Kingman Formula – Variation, Utilization, and Lead Time
2. What Exactly Is Jidoka?
3. Toyota Standard Work – Part 2: Standard Work Combination Table
4. The Inner Workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers – Part 4
5. How Cheap Can You Make it?
6. The Inner Workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers – Part 2
7. Line Layout Strategies – Part 2: I-, U-, S-, and L-Lines
8. Production Sequences: FCFS, EDD, and Others
9. The (True) Difference Between Push and Pull
10. The Amazon Robotics Family: Kiva, Pegasus, Xanthus, and more… Usually, the difference between push and pull is the most popular post, but this year the Amazon robotics were more popular.

Organizational

There’s also stuff going on in the background. For example, I used Amazon Affiliate links, giving me a little bit of money if you click on the links of my books. However, I found out that I have to declare these links as adverting. Hence, I removed all Amazon Affiliate tags. The links are still there, and will get you to Amazon, but it is no longer an affiliate link but a normal link, and there is no cash flow involved. I don’t want to bugger you with “advertising” just to make a few cents though your click!

I also recently got early access to the AI Dall•E 2 by OpenAI. With just a few words the AI will generate quite good pictures. This may help me to illustrate my articles more. I often spend quite a bit of time looking for good images to visualize the concept, and the AI will help me…to spend my time differently looking for images. With a bit of luck, it will bring you more quirky but matching images through my blog.

In any case, go out, keep on reading, and organize your industry!