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Thought I’d give a shout-out today to a local Pella business, Vermeer Manufacturing, which is celebrating its 60th Anniversary of being in business this year.  There is all kinds of Vermeer celebration-related activity going on around town right now, and I also stumbled upon this article about their 60 years in business.
Vermeer probably became famous […]

Rob Tracy at Intek Plastics (one of my customers) has written this excellent synopsis on Driving Lean through Your Supply Chain.  Aside from discussing how the breakdown of your supply chain can negatively impact you and your customers and including a supplier checklist for your use, he also talks about the incorrect assumption that going […]

Surprisingly great example of how to treat customers (thanks to Evolving Excellence)…surprising because it is coming out of the airline industry.  Some true servant leadership is being displayed by United Airlines captain Denny Flanagan.  Imagine being stuck at the airport and having the captain buy you lunch?  (insert your own joke about pigs flying here).
An […]

Seth Godin posted that on his blog today.  It may become my new mantra.  When I first started Lean Technologies, I was nervous talking to people because of how small we were (are).  Eventually I realized how smallness is part of my advantage.  In fact, it was the "largeness" of other software companies that got […]

I suffer from a problem.  I love learning.  And I love learning about anything.  Which puts me in the over-used category of "jack of all trades, master of none."  My knowledge probably generally goes very wide instead of deep.  At least not as deep as I would like.
I love programming and solving peoples’ problems with […]

David Armano has an excellent post on "micro-interactions" with customers on his blog.  I am often amazed how companies and/or people do not realize the impact their encounter with you, even a small encounter, will have on gaining your trust for further interactions.
My friend recently took a coupon to a franchise restaurant to buy his […]

Kevin Meyer over at Evolving Excellence has a new post regarding the strength of manufacturing in the U.S.  He has blogged about this before and "debunked" many of the myths about "declining" manufacturing before, but this time he does it again in response to an op-ed piece by the Washington Post.  Good stuff!

I just received an email in my inbox regarding a (complimentary) magazine subscription that states:
You have been part of a select group of senior IT professionals who rely on [Magazine Name] to bring them 50 issues per year loaded with unique editorial and in-depth analysis for business technology buyers.

Okay, so how big is a "select […]

Getting closer to my mantra instead of my mission statement.  Guy Kawasaki often espouses the importance of having a mantra instead of a mission statement, and so does Andy Stanley.  For the longest time I struggled to put into a brief mantra what it was that I was really setting out to do.  I’m trying to […]

Seth Godin has it right on this recent post.
"The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (Zagats) and wines (Parker) and gas mileage (the EPA).  People notice a number, and they work to improve it."

Lean practitioners have been quoting Taiichi Ohno for quite some time, […]