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Very interesting article, I had heard of lean through a this american life podcast, as well as nyccnc as tester points out (as I said, no-it-all 😉). One thing to bear in mind is that at this stage we are not a medium company, but rather a small one with aspirations. Moreover, we are a small company, with aspirations, squatting in the workshop of two other small companies so comparing us to serrota at this stage is a bit premature.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there isn't a team of people for this batch, there is me and Caren, so thumb twiddling is unlikely to happen. Part of the reason for building this batch is that we want to really get an idea for what's involved in building this specific frame, what's going to cause issues etc...
I had an interesting chat with one of the guys from shand, who basically confirmed all the points in the article, and they moved from the batch/stock model to lean building as orders came in about a tear ago and haven't gone back.
Finally, with what we know now, it does beg the question if it was such a great method and serrota was doing so well, why did it all go wrong. I doubt it was method of production, but its always more important to know about businesses that fail, rather than business that succeed.
Tldr: in the long term this model is something we want to emulate, but for a few reasons we will be building in batches for the first few months.
I'm going to see if @velocio minds turning this into a current projects thread now, and I'll update with all the ways our well laid out plans go to shit. It will probably be something I do....