First Post of the Lean Is Good Blog

My name is Bruce Baker.  I have done stuff related to lean, continuous improvement, and six sigma since the late 90’s.  I have done these things in three different organizations, all large organizations ranging from $2 billion to $ 20 billion annual sales.  That tells you where I am coming from.  I look forward to reading comments.  I will be moderating them (at first anyway – because I have no idea what to expect.)  I hope you enjoy the blog.  You can read a little bit more about me here.

I would like to thank all the people on my blogroll.  I probably wouldn’t be giving this a try if I hadn’t gained huge amounts of knowledge from these people, some for several years now.  This is an attempt (might end up being a really bad one – we’ll see) to “pay forward” as Woody Hayes (and others) would have said (here and here).

I am doing this on the cheap (at wordpress for free to start).  Here are some of the other tools used in producing this blog:

1. Ubuntu - a linux based OS.  It is free.  It will breath new life into your older, wheezy Windows machine.  I just upgraded to 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
2. huddle - an on line collaboration website that I am using to develop post ideas with some people who I am trying to coerce, bully, blackmail, convince to post because they have important thoughts and ideas to share.
3. FeedDemon - an RSS reader for my windows box that I will use to catch comments.  It will sync with Google Reader.
4. Google Reader – an online RSS reader also to catch comments.
5. Firefox - A free browser that I use on both my linux and Windows machines.  This is where I actually type and format this stuff.
6. OpenOffice – the free and open productivity suite – a free and open source suite of programs that includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, a database, and more.