Posts tagged as:

customer focus

First Steps: Build a Customer Map

09.13.2010

Lean is both an organizational journey and a personal one. Can you take 15 minutes to begin your lean journey? Or continue it? In this installment of my First Steps video series, I talk about the idea of building a customer map. Besides our external customers, there are many internal customers that we personally serve. [...]

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First Steps: Understanding Value

08.16.2010

As promised, this is our first video in the First Steps series I introduced last week. In our first video where we look for 15 minute investments in our own personal lean journeys. This installment focuses on how you can get closer to your customers inside the organization and understand value more clearly. If you [...]

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Test for Actual Use, not Intended Use

12.22.2009

When you test, what attributes are you testing for? Most testing begins with design criteria. This is reasonable to include but not the right starting point. You must develop with the user in mind. You must test with the user in mind. You must test for actual use, not just the use you intended. This [...]

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Respecting the Customer: The Foundation for Just-in-Time

11.30.2009

This is a guest post by Shawn Patterson from DTE Energy. You can learn more about Shawn from his LinkedIn profile, or as featured in Chapter 10 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. Probably the most powerful attribute of the Toyota Production System is the deeply ingrained principles underpinning all of the concepts and tools [...]

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