Happy 4th Birthday AllAboutLean.com

Aaaand another year is over. AllAboutLean is now a whopping four years old. Since I started on September 1, 2013, I’ve managed to write 213 posts on lean manufacturing, and my glossary now contains 375 terms related to lean manufacturing. Time to celebrate and to look back.

Ten Most Popular Posts

Here are the ten most clicked posts in the last twelve months. All of them describe elements from the lean toolbox that help you to improve your production system.

1. Line Layout Strategies – Part 2: I-, U-, S-, and L-Lines 4,899 Clicks
2. Evolution of Toyota Assembly Line Layout – A Visit to the Motomachi Plant 4,933 Clicks
3. Ten Rules When to Use a FIFO, When a Supermarket – Introduction 5,134 Clicks
4. The Key to Lean – Plan, Do, Check, Act! 5,523 Clicks
5. Theory of Every Part Every Interval (EPEI) Leveling & Heijunka 6,092 Clicks
6. All About Swim Lane Diagrams 6,931 Clicks
7. Overview of Value Stream Mapping Symbols 7,994 Clicks
8. How to Measure Cycle Times – Part 1 9,525 Clicks
9. How Many Kanbans? – The Kanban Formula, Part 1 10,426 Clicks
10. The (True) Difference Between Push and Pull 22,106 Clicks

Recognition

It seems AllAboutLean.com is spreading, and I have received a few awards and top rankings. Here are the lists and prizes that I know of.

Additionally, many other bloggers have translated my posts into other languages, like Czech, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. For me, this is also a compliment! (Still, if you want to translate, please ask me for permission beforehand).

BTOES Insights: Top 10 (Top 1) Operational Excellence Blog

The people from BTOES Insights made a survey of their readers for the best blogs on operational excellence. Out of over 100 blogs, AllAboutLean.com made it not only into their lists of Top 10 OpEx Blogs, but they told me that my blog was the #1 Blog according to the preference of their readers 🙂 ! Many thanks to BTOES insight for the honors!

Curious Cat: Top 10 Out of 48 Management Blogs

The highly influential blog and website Curious Cat by John Hunter maintains a list of Curious Cat Top Management Improvement Blogs. This ranking is based on different metrics like MOZ page authority and page rank, traffic rank, number of subscribers, and so on. I am immensely thrilled that AllAboutLean.com ranks number 10 out of 48 on this list, right after such long-established and respected blogs like the Curious Cat, the Deming Institute Blog, and Mark Graban’s Lean Blog. Many thanks to John for the compliments 🙂 (when John told me about the list initially, I ranked #4, but since have fallen back a few notches; I will redouble my efforts to move up again 🙂 ).

Feedback

Many of you were also nice enough to leave comments and give feedback. The #1 commented-on post by the way was When to Do Value Stream Maps (and When Not!), followed by The (True) Difference Between Push and Pull. Many thanks for the input.

I also received praise for my website. Here are a few selected comments – again, many thanks to the commenters 🙂 .

• I discovered your website through a simple Google search and bookmarked it later that day. I cannot express how helpful  your posts are to my everyday duties and how much I refer to your real-world expertise when planning changes to make our manufacturing process more Lean & efficient. Thank yo for all you do! (By email from J. F.)
• Brilliant and enjoyable website. Thanks. (Comment by Ernst Swanepoel on my post The Tale of Taylor and Gilbreth)
• Great overview, Christoph! Thank you. Nice example of historical visual management. (Comment by Greg McCarthy on my post on Visual Management)
• Thanks, Christoph, for explaining clearly and giving lots of examples so it is easier to understand. (Comment by Wilson Sitanggang on my post on Visual Management)

Translations

You may have noticed that I recently added the “Google Translate” button on the upper right of the webpage (or very bottom for mobiles). Of course, Google Translate is still rather flawed. Therefore I am happy to tell you that people all over the world have asked me for permission to translate my work into other languages.

I would like to point out especially the Czech lean blog Průmyslového Inženýrství (which means Industrial Engineering). They aim to bring lean to the Czech-speaking world and have translated with permission quite a few posts from my blog, as well as other famous lean blogs.

Omar Carrera translated my series on Employee Motivation and Lean Implementation from English into Spanish on LinkedIn: here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Valery Kazarin also translated some of my posts into Russian on his site WKazarin.ru about lean production and continuous improvements.

By the way, if you would like to translate my work, there are a few requirements (e.g.,  back-linking and acknowledging me), but usually I am pretty open to such requests. But please, do ask for permission first 🙂 .

Overall, it was a fun year, I learned a lot writing my blog, and I gained lots of good contacts all over the world (and even a few consulting leads 🙂 ). So, dear readers, keep on reading, let me know what you like (and what not), and most of all, go out and organize your industry!