From the category archives:

lean

Run Chart

by Pete Abilla August 20, 2010
This entry is part 14 of 28 in the series Lean and Six Sigma

Run charts, also known as line graphs, display process performance over time. This post will explain “What is a Run Chart?”, show an example, and provide a video tutorial on how to create a Run Chart in Excel. Upward and downward trends, cycles, and large aberrations may be spotted and investigated further. In a run [...]

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Blendtec: Genchi Genbutsu and Visual Management

by Pete Abilla August 18, 2010

We went to Costco last weekend and there was a demonstration for Blendtec Blender – you know, those Blendtec “Will it Blend” viral videos on YouTube with that white-coat crazy scientist Blendtec founder blending everything from brooms to the iPhone. As a side-note: I met the founder and CEO of Blendtec, Tom Dickson, about 12 [...]

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Focus on the Inputs

by Pete Abilla August 17, 2010

In the April 2010 Letter to Shareholders, Jeff Bezos tells Amazon.com shareholders about their focus on inputs, the customer, and their purposeful lack of discussion around financial metrics: Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs. To be [...]

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The Lean Startup, Video Interview, Eric Ries, Part 2

by Pete Abilla August 17, 2010
This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series The Lean Startup

This is Eric Ries, explaining The Lean Startup – this is part 2. You can see Eric Ries Lean Startup Video Interview Part 1 here. In other words, how to apply Lean Thinking to entrepreneurship and to building products and launching companies that customers love.

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The Lean Startup and Customer Development

by Pete Abilla August 16, 2010
This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Book Review

Steve Blank, the author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”, explains how to effectively bring a product to market. In doing so, he applies many principles of Lean Thinking, sparking a very popular movement in the entrepreneurship and the startup world: The Lean Startup. Steve Blank argues that there are many methodologies for software [...]

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The Lean Startup, Video Interview, Eric Ries, Part 1

by Pete Abilla August 15, 2010
This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series The Lean Startup

Here’s a great interview with Eric Ries, the standard bearer for The Lean Startup Movement (leanstartup). It’s an entrepreneurial approach that applies principles of Lean Thinking to building products and launching companies that customers love.

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reCAPTCHA: A Problem, A Solution, an Innovation

by Pete Abilla August 13, 2010

reCAPTCHA is one of the most innovative ideas that I’ve ever come across. What is fascinating is that reCAPTCHA solves a real human problem in such a simple an innovative way. To some degree, Luis Von Ahn, the inventor of reCAPTCHA, followed the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) framework in Lean – without even knowing it. What if [...]

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Ride the Wave, Not the Board

by Pete Abilla August 9, 2010

I was on vacation recently and, on one of the days, we went to Lindamar Beach at Pedro Point in Pacifica.  That was the beach I went to, probably 3 out of 5 days, at 5 AM during my senior year – to surf.  Needless to say, I wasn’t at school much my senior year, [...]

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Lean and Six Sigma: PDCA and DMAIC Comparison

by Pete Abilla July 31, 2010
This entry is part 6 of 28 in the series Lean and Six Sigma

Integrating or reconciling the PDCA framework from Lean and DMAIC from Six Sigma is the topic of this post. Since both methodologies and frameworks share a common history, it is no surprise that integrating their respective frameworks was not difficult to do. Below is my attempt at exactly that. Below the PDCA and DMAIC comparison [...]

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