Blogs

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The Sweet Spot

The Brady Bunch is a font of life lessons from the importance of compromise to why you should never lie to your parents to ... uh ... never...

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: Presenting a Lean-designed, 3,300-square-foot home

“Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by the Sea.'" We can thank Jessica Simpson for...

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction = Thinking Outside The Box!

Every builder wants to have outstanding customer satisfaction, right? Our research shows that to accomplish the highest customer...

The Lean Builder

Lean Building Blog: What Lean isn’t

During an orientation recently with a room full of suppliers and trades for one of our “LeanPlan Workout” implementations, I was interrupted...

Quality Management

Ensuring that lean and six sigma projects are successful

The Lean Enterprise Institute surveys show that 36% of companies attempting lean give up the efforts. Customer Relationship Magazine cites...

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: Authentic elevations and the salesperson’s story

I had the pleasure of meeting and having dinner with Charlie Scott the other night. Charlie owns a very successful national consulting...

Builders

Lean Building Blog: Some of my best friends are architects and engineers — really!

They say a writer never “makes it” until he gets hate mail. In at least four blog posts this year, I have expressed my frustrations with...

Quality Management

Do you care as a leader?

A key aspect of quality management is the importance we place on employees, valuing people. We spend a significant amount of time and money...

The Sweet Spot

Does your social media policy violate labor laws?

For the last couple of years I've been speaking to groups of remodelers about crafting a social media strategy for their firms and one of...

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction: IQ Versus EQ in Home Building

Home building is an extremely complicated business and as such requires very intelligent people and systems. Think about it for a second. ...

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: A quick kitchen idea - the 'upholstered' pantry

With Costco, Sam's Club and all the other "buy in bulk" stores out there today pantries are becoming larger and larger. Builders are...

The Sweet Spot

Book Review: 100 Best Kitchens & Dining Rooms

The 100 Best Kitchens & Dining Rooms This new book from Beta-Plus is a nice collection of design ideas, but definitely more of the...

Quality Management

Innovation and creative problem solving

Being creative and innovative is something that is widely touted, but how do we actually do it? This may be needed for a particular issue...

The Sweet Spot

Watchdog: Government's 'Hardest Hit' Housing Program Falling Short

Excuse me if you've heard this before ... In what we can't exactly call a surprise, another government program aimed at helping underwater...

The Lean Builder

Lean Building Blog: What to Read on Lean

Today, a sharp young guy named Ryan wrote to me after seeing a Keynote Presentation I did at the recent BuilderExchange meeting in Las Vegas...

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: The Lean 2,400-square-foot chameleon plan

My Aunt Janice (rest her soul) gave amazing Christmas gifts when I was a kid. One of my favorites was “Hugo the man with a thousand faces.”...

Quality Management

Has risk management become a higher priority for you?

A Risk Management Benchmarking Survey in 2010 showed that 65% of businesses conduct no form of risk analysis prior to making major corporate...

Customer Satisfaction

Home Building's Most Mismanaged Asset - Customers

A builder would never build, merchandise, and maintain a model without staffing it, would they? Of course not - this would be abuse of an...

The Sweet Spot

Success through collaboration

When you look at your trade contractors, your suppliers, product distributors, what do you see? Are they a line item, an expense, a...

The Lean Builder

Lean Building Blog: Who has the edge on innovation?

Last fall the president of one of America’s “Top 10” builders who I have known for years corralled me at a conference. Because I travel this...

Quality Management

Rework—What It Is and Ways to Avoid It

Rework is a common cause of schedule creep and cost overruns. Here's how to know what failures trigger rework so you can avoid them

two construction workers remeasuring wall

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: One small item that can save you $100 per house

I catch myself from time to time spending money on things that I just don’t need to. Whether it’s the cool action video I think I will...

The Lean Builder

Lean Building Blog: Should the National Housing Quality Award survive?

The NAHB in conjunction with Professional Builder Magazine launched the National Housing Quality Award (NHQA) in 1993 to encourage and...

Quality Management

Flat empowered organizational structures

Flat, team based and empowered organizations have the potential to out-perform tall hierarchical organizations in most every competitive...

Lean Design

Lean Design Blog: Elevations – what's in a name?

Why bother naming your houses? It would be a whole lot easier and more efficient to identify your homes by their square footage. It could...

Home Builders Institute's Schools to Skills Grant Application Open Through December

As Mortgage Rates Rise, Buyers Lose Purchasing Power

Renters Are Choosing Single-Family Homes for These Features