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Lean Consumption: Provide What is Wanted Where it is Wanted

by Pete Abilla on July 1, 2010

lean consumption credit card industry

The fourth principle in Lean Consumption (or Lean for Service Operations is1: Provide exactly what the customer wants, where it is wanted This principle rests on the notion of convenience and price. Based on experience, we pay a lot for convenience. But, the Lean for Service Operations mindset takes a different route. It is possible [...]

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Lean Consumption: Provide Exactly What the Customer Wants

by Pete Abilla on June 30, 2010

what a customer wants

The third principle in Lean Consumption (or Lean for Service Operations is 1: Provide exactly what the customer wants This principle rests on the notion of Pull. Rather than relying on large, expensive, centralized forecasting systems (which are almost always wrong), Lean for Service Operations looks at the situation with a rapid and frequent replenishment [...]

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Lean Consumption: Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

by Pete Abilla on June 29, 2010

The second principle in Lean Consumption (or Lean for Service Operations is1: Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time Obvious at first glance, but what seems obvious to us or common sense is surprisingly not common practice at all. Indeed, a good majority of my posts are actually a look at waiting or queueing. Why? Because it [...]

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Using 5 Whys to Write Customer Support Help Pages

by Pete Abilla on June 28, 2010

Customer Support Help Pages is a self-service method for the customer to resolve his or her own concern without having to chat with a customer service agent, call customer service, or email customer support. Sometimes, self-help methods are not very helpful. But, one way to make them more helpful than they are is to apply [...]

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Bathroom Cleanliness as Indicator of Company Conditions

by Pete Abilla on June 27, 2010

A dirty restroom delivers a message of respect.  A dirty restroom is a top-level indicator for what is important to a company and can give us an indication of the condition of the rest of the company – even financial, employee morale, market conditions. Yes, I’m claiming something big.  Let me explain. For example, Restroom [...]

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Genchi Genbutsu: Go and See, Part 2

by Pete Abilla on June 26, 2010

Being abstracted from the real thing leads to poor decisions. As leaders, we lead, we teach, and we make decisions. But in doing so, we need help to sharpen our judgment so that we can learn to make better decisions. The first aspect I outlined in my first article on Genchi Genbutsu is that: Genchi [...]

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Process Improvement as Entropy Management

by Pete Abilla on June 25, 2010

entropy in slotting and warehouse operations

The ambition for most process engineers, interaction designers, and just plain, smart, business people is to create the perfect flow — whether it is flow of material in a supply chain, flow of information in a network, flow of patients in an emergency room, flow of user gestures in a software environment, or flow of [...]

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iPhone 4, iOS 4.0: Scare Away The Customer

by Pete Abilla on June 24, 2010

Apple makes beautiful devices.  But, the message for the iPhone 4 update is so scary that it erased any giddyness I might have had for the device: Updating to iOS 4.0 will delete all media, including iTunes Store purchases. To preserve your media, apply this update on the computer where you sync music, videos, and [...]

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