“We want people to go see for themselves and come up with something new and innovative and learn from someone else, see how that could be applied to their own industry.” – Bob Petruska 
Bob Petruska of Sustain Lean Consulting was my guest this week on the podcast. We discussed his new book, Gemba Walks for Service Excellence: The Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying Service Delighters. It is heavily illustrated and includes a CD of his innovative “placemats” designed to provide stepping stones on a development path for your team to achieve a competitive advantage. An excerpt from the podcast was published last week on the Business901 Blog, Gemba Walk for Service Excellence.
I am starting to see more books being published in Lean that are not just about applying Lean to services or customer facing problems. Instead, they are starting to address that deeper understanding between Lean and Customer Involvement. We seem to be at a crossroads that Lean is moving into the consumption and demand side of the value stream. The first inroads were made by Womack and Jones in Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together. In another podcast with Dan Jones(The Future of Lean with Dan Jones) , we discussed the reason for this.
‘80% of Companies believe they deliver a Superior Service, only 8% of Customers agree.’
– Bain and Companies
Lean Service Design Trilogy: Closing the Gaps between Perception and Reality: Preview the program