Lean Six Sigma Academy

Close to one year ago I started this little blog with the post Lean or Six Sigma?. Truth be told I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing (and am still learning) but knew I loved to write. I also knew I loved teaching people about lean and six sigma. So I thought… why not?

So here we are 245 posts, 547 comments, and my favorite stat 1,153 spam comments later (thank goodness for Askimet). When I first started the blog I checked my page visits and views stats daily. Same thing for my Feedburner subscriber stats. And with all this checking, yeah, I almost lost my mind.

Well you will be happy to know I have gotten over this little sickness and pretty much never check my stats.  Thus there will be no big bold statement about how many tens of thousands of visits and views I have had.  For those interested there have been tens of thousands of both from all over the world.  But in the end if this blog helped just 1 person along their journey to make things better I am happy. 

Well, to celebrate my “almost one year anniversary” I thought I would offer some of my favorite posts from each month. Some of these posts recieved lots of comments while others were just fun to write. So let’s get to it!

January 2007

• Process Mapping - Lean or Six Sigma Tool?
• The Forgotten M’s
• Control Charts - Part 3

February 2007

• Once a Month Cooking - Lean or Not?
• Hypothesis Testing
• Two Bin Kanban
• Stop the Finger Pointing!

March 2007

• Confused about Waste
• Get on your Knees
• Explaining Cp and Cpk
• Regression - Part 3

April 2007

• The Airline Companies Amaze Me
• Span – GE’s Variation Weapon
• Taguchi Loss Function
• Playing Fast – American Football and Lean
• Jidoka – The Forgotten Pillar

May 2007

• Finance 101 by Taiichi
• Misconceptions
• Repent, I mean Hansei!
• Tsurube System
• 5 Steps to Data Collection

June 2007

• Is Laying People off Really Anti-Lean?
• God called down the rain
• 10 Steps to Creating a FMEA
• How beer influenced statistics
• Why Heijunka - Part 2
• How to preach the gospel

July 2007

• Kaizen Rules – 9 & 10
• Explaining the Central Limit Theorem
• 3 Easy Steps to Becoming More Effective
• Facing the Giants

August 2007

• Transportation Muda
• Six Sigma Control Phase is Not Anti-Lean
• Descriptive Statistics - Part 2
• Learning to Swim
• Fun with Confidence Intervals - Part 2

September 2007

• Humility
• Why Flow Counter Clockwise?
• Liquor Stores and Churches
• The Bridge Builder

October 2007

• Who is your mentor?
• Leadership
• The Right Inventory is an Asset!

November 2007

• Back from the Big House
• I am Addicted to Kaizen

December 2007

• Continuous Improvement Begins with You!
• OEE – Not Just for TPM Programs!
• No Standards No Kaizen
• Be Like Tony - Smile More!

Wow!  You don’t really realize how much stuff you talk about on a blog over a year!  I can only imagine how neat this will be in 5 or 6 years.

In 2008 I am planning, what I think is, some pretty cool stuff.  I will probably aim to post 2 to 3 times per week instead of the daily posting I attempted to do early on.  That is just too tough with a demanding job and a wife and 3 kiddos.  Plus I began to feel pressure to post something - even if it was some news story 4 other bloggers already commented on - which ultimately hurt my creativity.  A little hansei helped me figure this out.

I am also planning to venture into new territories with the blog… it’s not podcasting or free downloads in case that is your guess.  You will just have to stay tuned to see what the surprise is.  I am pretty excited about it. 

Until then, thanks for reading my blog in 2007.  I wish you all the best - personally and professionally - in 2008!

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