What would Dr. Deming think of the new Lean Math

When was the last time you had a discussion about designs with more than one blocking variable, such as a Latin Square Design? Or maybe, a midnight discussion on empirical modeling or factorial designs at two levels? Those were the days.

Recent publications, spurred by Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, are Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience and Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster. They dive into the world of Lean Metrics or so they say. In all fairness, they do an excellent job presenting basic measurements that can be utilized by the modern day entrepreneur. I recommend both books and think they add good insight for the targeted audience.

Recently on the Business901 Podcast, The Wisdom of Brian Joiner, I had the please of interviewing Brian Joiner, a Dr. Deming protégé and a disciple of George Box. George Edward Pelham Box FRS is a statistician, who has worked in the areas of quality control, time-series analysis, design of experiments, and Bayesian inference.  His name is associated with results in statistics such as Box–Jenkins models, Box–Cox transformations, Box–Behnken designs, and others. Box wrote “essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” in his book on response surface methodology with Norman R. Draper. George also schooled Bill Hunter another fabled statistician and father of John Hunter, a recent podcast guest and writer of the Deming Blog. These people understood metrics.

There seems to be a distance between what many of us may consider Lean Metrics and Lean Startup Metrics. They both have their place, and it does just depend on what you need at the moment. Neither can replace the other. However, a new blog, Lean Math has come to my attention that may provide the bridge between these two areas. The blog is authored by a group of Lean Practitioners to include another former podcast guest, Mark R. Hamel. Mark is a lean implementation consultant, Shingo Award-winning author Kaizen Event Fieldbook, and founder of the Gemba Tales blog.

An introductory video from Lean Math Blog co-founder Mark R. Hamel. The video briefly discusses the launch of LeanMath.com, the co-founders, forthcoming book to be published by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, site topics, and related social media.

I think you will enjoy Lean Math and definitely once you are past the entrepreneurial stages. Even though Dr. Deming preferred, you do not have to be a statistician to utilize Lean Metrics. However, you made need to learn a little Lean Math along the way.

Transcription of Mark’s podcast: Sustaining your Kaizen Event Ebook

Podcast: How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully

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