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AllAboutLean.com Website Relaunch

November 12, 2025November 11, 2025 by Christoph Roser

If you are a regular visitor on my site, you may have noticed that it looks a bit different. Yes, we did a major restructuring of the website and a website relaunch. Most importantly, the blog with over 640 blog posts is still there, and also right there on the front page. But we did significantly expand the additional offerings around the blog.

As mentioned in the last birthday post, the growing demand for consulting and training support inspired Jochen and me to start a lean consulting and training company. We now offer these services directly through our blog. Hence, this blog post is about the changes in the website and the new offers in training, consulting, coaching, and more.

Happy 12th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com!

November 4, 2025September 1, 2025 by Christoph Roser

Yet another year has passed, and AllAboutLean.com is now twelve years old! 630 posts of lean content in English, plus selected blog posts translated into Chinese (thanks to Xie Xuan) and German (myself)! Time to celebrate again! Like every year I am surprised that again I managed to generate a (high-quality?) blog post every week for the last 52 weeks. I also managed to visit a few conferences again.

Happy 11th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com!

November 2, 2025September 1, 2024 by Christoph Roser

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 🙂 .

Happy 10th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com

November 12, 2025September 1, 2023 by Christoph Roser

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!

KUKA FAMULUS Turns 50—The First Modern Industrial Robot

August 21, 2025May 16, 2023 by Christoph Roser

Fifty years ago, the FAMULUS industrial robot was introduced by the German machine tool maker KUKA. This articulate-arm kinematics industrial robot with six axes was the first of many modern industrial robots. This design is nowadays still the most common type of industrial robot.

SMED 2.0—A Changeover for the Changeover

August 21, 2025April 25, 2023 by Christoph Roser

Mechanical Engineer Technician Checking And Inspecting Machine

Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) to reduce and shorten changeover times is one of the best-known methods in lean manufacturing. However, the original steps as shown by Shingo have, in my view, potential for improvement. Hence, I restructured the changeover workshop based on my experience with SMED to make it easier and more straightforward. This rework is not groundbreaking or revolutionary, but merely a few small changes to make it easier to use. As it is popular nowadays, I also added a 2.0 after SMED for my SMED 2.0.

Akio Toyoda Steps Down as Toyota CEO

August 21, 2025February 21, 2023 by Christoph Roser

Somewhat surprising to industry insiders, the CEO of Toyota Motor, Akio Toyoda, announced on January 26 his resignation, and he will step down as CEO on April 1, 2023, to become the chairman of the board. Hence, I will have a look at his impact on Toyota. However, just to be warned, if you expect glowing praise, you should look elsewhere. I believe he changed Toyota, a company I love, in a worrisome way. I am definitely not a fan of his work. Granted, being a CEO is not easy, and he did have to lead Toyota through a couple of crises (Recall,s Corona, etc.). Compared to other CEO’s, he is probably somewhere around average. But I believe he had a negative influence on the Toyota corporate culture.

The Impact of ChatGPT on the Future of Work

November 12, 2025February 7, 2023 by Christoph Roser

You may have heard of ChatGPT, the latest buzz in artificial intelligence. ChatGPT is a chatbot by OpenAI that can answer your questions and hold a conversation. And, it is very good at this. It can handle almost anything connected with text. This tool (and the many others that are likely to follow) has the ability to fundamentally change how we work. Let me show you.