Lean Six Sigma Academy

My life changed – more than I could have ever imagined – Sunday evening, January 14, 2007.

You see it was on this day that I wrote my first blog article. I remember wondering if anyone would read it?

I actually just re-read that first article and had to chuckle… I mean it wasn’t the most insightful thing I’ve ever written… but, hey, it was a start!

A Brand New World

Well, as it turns out starting LSS Academy opened up a brand new world to me.

First, it’s allowed me to share my thoughts with thousands upon thousands of valued readers across the world. We now have more 9,500 subscribers to LSS Academy. Wow! That, in itself, is truly mind blowing.

Second, I have personally met many new lean and six sigma acquaintances… many of whom I now consider good friends.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

And, third, LSS Academy opened the doors to entrepreneurship in a big way as it connected me with my valued Gemba Academy business partners – Jon Miller of Gemba Panta Rei and Kevin Meyer of Evolving Excellence.

Those following this blog know that we started Gemba Academy in March of 2009. We’ve managed to steadily grow the business by reaching a wide variety of customers ranging from individuals looking to learn more about lean manufacturing to Fortune 100 companies using Gemba Academy to train thousands of employees across multiple facilities.

My Big Announcement

With this all said I’m extremely excited to announce that I’ve now wrapped up all my prior professional obligations. As such, I’m now able to focus 100% of my efforts on expanding both LSS Academy and Gemba Academy.

This means I’ll be far more consistent posting LSS Academy articles. My plan is to release new articles at least 3 times a week while also introducing additional LSS Academy authors in the future.

This also means Gemba Academy courses will be developed at a much faster pace while also allowing me and the Gemba Academy team to interact far more effectively with existing and future customers.

So, since this journey all started here on LSS Academy, I wanted you to be the first to know the news.

LSS Academy Promotion (25% off any Gemba Academy purchase)

Next, and I hate it that this is going to sound like a sales pitch, because everything I’ve written above has indeed come from the bottom of my heart…

But as small token of my deep appreciation for all LSS Academy readers, I want to extend a LSS Academy ONLY promotion for the month of September.

Simply enter the coupon code LSS as shown to the left (click to enlarge) at the checkout process for any Gemba Academy online or DVD product and you’ll receive a 25% discount.  This promotion will run through September 30, 2010.

Thank You

Finally, I want to close with one last thank you. I would have never been able to write this article without your active support of both LSS Academy and Gemba Academy.

I’m happy to announce that LSS Academy is now on LinkedIn.

We’ll obviously continue to roll strong here on the blog… but there seems to be something something special about LinkedIn when it comes to generating buzz about lean and six sigma.

So, I hope you’ll join the conversation over at the Lean Six Sigma Academy LinkedIn Group today!

There are many other outstanding LinkedIn Groups as well… just search for “lean” or “lean six sigma” and you’ll discover a lot of excellent conversation already in progress.

My article yesterday, about Yahoo! buying LSS Academy, has officially taken on legs of its own.  There were several comments to the post but even more emails, phone calls, etc.

I’ve had family members and close friends sending congrats and well wishes for the past 24 hours.

I even got a nice message from my wife curious about the acquisition since I had never mentioned it to her before.

Well, in case you didn’t actually read the whole article – most specifically the last sentence – I decided to “celebrate” April Fools day a bit yesterday… which is where that article came from!

So, no, Yahoo! didn’t buy LSS Academy.  And no, I don’t think Yahoo! is coming out with a new Productivity Suite of applications.

But there was some truth to the article… namely that I am anxious to see LSS Academy grow.  And, yes, I’m aiming to one day have 20,000 subscribers to the blog.  That’s going to be super cool!

Thanks for reading LSS Academy.  And for those that celebrate it… Happy Easter!

Fort Worth, TX – LSS Academy LLC, a leading blog focused on lean, leadership, and six sigma, today announced that it has been acquired by Yahoo, Inc.

With more than 7,000 subscribers, LSS Academy has quickly grown in popularity and reach over the past two years.

This acquisition will be a part of Yahoo’s extension of their soon to be released professional productivity suite of applications aimed at professional’s looking to improve productivity and reduce costs.

“We’re excited to continue the good work the LSS Academy team has started. The productivity niche is extremely popular and the entire Yahoo! Productivity Suite team is anxious to learn and grow along with LSS Academy,” said a senior Yahoo! representative.

“What started as a hobby has grown into something far more than I ever anticipated. I look forward to the coming years as I, along with the Yahoo! Productivity Suite team, continue to build LSS Academy. Our goal is to reach 20,000 subscribers within the next 12 months. With the help of Yahoo I’m confident we’ll achieve this,” said Ron Pereira, founder of LSS Academy LLC.

Ron Pereira will continue to write on LSS Academy while also welcoming several new bloggers to the LSS Academy family.

More details on the future of LSS Academy will be released in the coming weeks. For now, please free to scan through the archives of LSS Academy while challenging yourself as to how you could fall for such an April fools gag as this.  Admit it, I got you.

Over the last year several new lean and six sigma related blogs have appeared.  I follow most of them.   Some I like more than others… which is to be expected I guess.

Anyhow, one of the newer blogs that has definitely caught my attention is Gemba Tales, written by Mark R. Hamel.

Mark is a lean six sigma consultant, as well as author.  He definitely seems to know his stuff and I have learned a lot from him already.  In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I have enjoyed his blog more than any other over the past month.

With this said, I’d highly encourage you to check out Gemba Tales if you haven’t already while also subscribing to his RSS feed.

I suspect 3,000 to 4,000 people will read this article within the next 24 hours.  Nothing would make me happier than each and every one of you checking out Gemba Tales while also subscribing to their RSS feed.

Also, Mark and I have exchanged some emails and I may have him convinced to do some guest blogging over here at LSS Academy!  Let’s see.

So go on now, get out of here and check out Gemba Tales. But please be sure to come back soon!

From the Lean Blogosphere to you… Merry Christmas!

Starring in this little, um, episode are the authors Evolving Excellence, Lean Blog, Lean Six Sigma Academy, shmula, and Jamie Flinchbaugh. 

Special thanks to Mark Graban for creating this fun little video…  Enjoy!

If you are reading this via email or RSS you may need to click through to the website to see this video. Trust me… you don’t want to miss it!

I recently wrote about the most read LSS Academy articles in 2009.

Now, in this post, I’d like to share with you the LSS Academy articles that garnered the most comments in 2009.

As you’ll see some of these posts are quite short in nature… but that didn’t stop you from speaking your mind!

To me, the measure of a successful blog is the number of comments it gets.   So, I definitely want to say THANK YOU for reading and most especially for joining in on the conversation.

1. The Spinning Lady (39 comments)
2. Leadership Standard Work (26 comments)
3. Level 5 Leadership (23 comments)
4. Is Pottery Barn Lean? (22 comments)
5. Bathroom Lean (22 comments)
6. Womack’s Lean versus Ohno’s TPS (22 comments)
7. Oh Snap! We Sent Bad Product to Our Customer: Fun with the Hypergeometric Distribution (21 comments)
8. Knowledge and Thinking (18 comments)
9. 7 Ways to Reduce Costs (18 comments)
10. How Do You Measure Success? (17 comments)
11. If Lean Is So Great, Why Is Toyota Struggling? (15 comments)
12. Is Economic Lot Size Dead? (15 comments)
13. You’re Late. What Do you Say? (14 comments)
14. 45 Inches and Sizers (12 comments)
15. I am sorry (12 comments)
16. The Complete Meaning of Shitsuke (12 comments)
17. My New Stand Up Desk (11 comments)
18. Simplicity (11 comments)

According to Google Analytics readers from 177 different countries and/or territories visited LSS Academy in 2009.

That is beyond humbling.

Never, in my wildest dreams, did I imagine such as thing would be possible when I sat down a few years ago and typed my very first blog post.  All I can say is THANK YOU.

In any event, I thought I would wind the year down by sharing the most read articles on the blog.

Now, to be sure, these are not necessarily the articles with the most comments… or even my favorite articles… but they were the most read (Pageviews in Google Analytics).

1. Let’s Create a Current State Value Stream Map
2. 8 Dimensions of Quality
3. 10 Steps to Creating a FMEA
4. Value Stream Mapping Overview
5. The Pugh Matrix
6. One Piece Flow versus Mass Production
7. Explaining Cp and Cpk
8. Calculating Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)
9. Let’s Create a Future State Value Stream Map!
10. 7 Practical Ways to Respect People

Again, thank you for taking the time to read and participate in the discussion here at LSS Academy.  I truly appreciate you all.

Update: To see the 18 Most Active LSS Articles in 2009 follow this link.

Jamie Flinchbaugh is not really new to the lean blogosphere as he’s been writing over on the Lean Blog and most recently on Evolving Excellence… but I am excited to see him finally start his own blog.

So, please be sure to stop by and check out what Jamie has to say… he brings a tremendous amount of wisdom to the lean world.

I remember the night well…

I was sitting on my couch half watching TV while surfing the Internet. I had just visited one of the only blogs I consistently read back in those days – Gemba Panta Rei – which as many of you know is written by one of my mentors, Jon Miller of Gemba Research.

Jon was actually working on a series of posts that really made me realize how powerful blogging could be. Here is the exact post I read that night.

Blogger Here I Come

Well, after a few moments of contemplation I decided to see how hard it would be to start my very own blog. Since I could barely spell HTML I knew I needed a simple solution.

After about 30 seconds on Google I found my way to Google’s Blogger platform. A few minutes after that the longest URL in the history of lean and six sigma blogging was born – leansixsigmaacademy at blogspot dot com. What was I thinking?

Here We Are

In any event that night started me on an amazing journey that has culminated in 401 published articles to which the coolest readers in the entire blogosphere (that would be you all) have gone onto leave 1,477 comments to.

Technically some of these comments are from me replying to comments… but hey, we do get our fair share of interaction here on LSS Academy so I am not complaining!

A Look Back

Anyhow, as a sort of walk down memory lane I thought I’d share a few articles that mean a lot to me.

In other words, these may not be the most popular or the most commented posts here at LSS Academy… instead they simply make me smile whenever I read them.

And as I’m sure you’ll soon see these articles were strongly influenced by a group of very special (little) people. Here goes.

• Riding a Bike: “When was the last time you laughed like a child after achieving something so wonderful?”
• Learning to Swim: “Finally, last night she just put her face in the water and swam. And just like that she had it.”
• A Lesson in Courage: “I couldn’t see her face… but I could hear her laughing hysterically. In fact, she made similar sounds last summer when she learned to swim.”

In closing, I’d like to thank all LSS Academy readers for your participation and encouragement over the past two years. This blog is ultimately meant for you. I’d also like to thank all of my blogging pals including Kevin, Mark, Pete, Mike, and Jon. God Bless!

Don’t Miss the Next 400

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