Eight weeks ago I asked “Who are you?” with the goal of learning more about who you, the readers, are. The aim was to kaizen this blog to make it more helpful in promoting kaizen – the never ending effort to make things better.

Now that the results are in, that survey is now closed. You are always invited to leave comments on this blog.

There were many suggestions on what would make the blog a more useful resource (pictures, more tips on how to make managers see the need for Lean, more in-depth on the systems that make up TPS). What we learned is that you are a diverse group with interests and knowledge levels of kaizen and Lean that span from nearly none to seasoned expert. Here is a breakdown by occupational category:

Although just 4% of respondents listed ‘student’ as profession as long as we are keeping an open mind and reading, listening and exchanging views on blogs and other venues, we are all students. The largest group at 36% included Industrial Engineers, Six Sigma Black Belts, TPM experts, lean healthcare consultants, site lean coordinators, or some combination of all of these.

One management consultant from Mexico in particular listed “sense of community (lacking in Mexico)” as one of the reasons for visiting this blog. I think this may be something somewhat lacking in the U.S. and other places as well. Separate from this blog, we will create a forum area on www.gemba.com when we launch our new site later this summer with a goal to provide an area for lean professionals to ask questions, exchange tips, etc. Watch this space for more announcements when it is built and ready.

To the Iranian student of Industrial Engineering who also works in a small factory as a production planner and is trying to combine the MRP system they use with JIT principles, best of luck my friend. Combining these two things is like mixing oil and water. If you must use MRP, try not to use it for execution of your production planning.

To those of you who requested an e-mail notification every time a new article is posted, there is which will do this automatically if you follow the instructions here under Automatic Updates.

I would like to thank the visitor from England who provided this insight into Lean banking in the UK:

"I am a clerical employee of Lloyds TSB a major UK retail bank. What follows is purely my personal perception of what the Bank is doing. Lloyds TSB has embraced the Lean principles. It is currently gradually rolling it out, though at this stage seems to be necessarily focusing on not just Lean theory in creating awareness in its staff, but paralleling Lean activity with concepts - a Visualize and Do railroad track approach - to illustrate the benefits of Lean. My perception is that the Bank has apparently committed itself to undertaking the full Lean journey. This will of course, take time to manifest itself fully but there is undoubtedly a very serious will to do this thing. From what basic information I have so far gathered in my own time, on the internet about Lean, the Concept seems to me to be the soundest yet, towards improvement of the business that I've seen introduced by the Bank in nearly a decade and I genuinely wish it success. I will be making further independent efforts in my own time to better understand what Lean really means for us all. I do though, at this early stage, have a gut feeling that we will all be better off by applying Lean to what we do, inside and outside work. At work more and more of us are beginning to use a word like Muda, with less resistance than at the start and as we all become more familiar with Lean, the Japanese words will not continue to seem so alien at all, and more importantly, they must remain the common denominator whereby all peoples can immediately know exactly what is being talked about - therefore there is no need to re-state the Lean principles in different languages to better understand them."

For those of you in England who bank with Lloyds it may be interesting to look for signs of kaizen in the near future.

To the Executive Director from a manufacturer in the UK who shared this frustration:

"We talk Lean, read the books, pick and choose and continue to measure direct labour!! The work force are confused to hell as we encourage teams to Problem Solve & "Clean & Organise" and beat them up for not delivering the labour figures tomorrow!"

You are most correct, it doesn’t have to be this complicated. We can talk more about this directly. Jon.Miller@Gemba.com, at your service.

To the Industrial Engineer and Tagalog speaker who said:

"Gemba keiei is excellent, I wish you could add Taichi Ohno's other book "Toyota Production System" in your exposition"

I agree that Gemba Keiei is excellent. Ohno’s Toyota Production System is also good, but this was actually ghost-written by Setsuo Mito of JMAM (the publisher in Japan). Mito later co-authored with Ohno Just in Time for Today and Tomorrow. Toyota Production System communicates Ohno’s ideas well but not his character and spirit, in my opinion, since the words we are reading are not his. As we find other original writings of Ohno on the subject of the Toyota Production System and kaizen, I will translate and comment on them.

To the Singhalese speaker in the Apparel industry, I thank you for your kind words and hope we can continue to contribute to your learning about Lean.

To the multi-lingual and multi-talented person who said “I’m a factory floor grunt. Apparel. I worked my way into industrial engineering. Now I write.” Please share more of your writing with us.

Many of you asked for more stories “from the road” with experiences of our consultants, and asked when the Lean Ranger would ride again. When we can get our consultants away from teaching and problem solving with clients long enough to write down their observations, we will continue to post their most interesting and useful stories here.

My most sincere thanks to everyone who reads and contributes to the discussion on Lean and kaizen.