At the 2011 ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference, one of the featured speakers was Ari Weinzweig, CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Mich. The Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB) has annual sales approaching $40 million. ZingTrain, a consulting and training company that shares Zingerman’s approach to business with like-minded organizations from around the world, and offers a variety of management training seminars in Ann Arbor, as well as customized workshops and presentations at client sites.

Fellow Lean Blogger, Mark Graban wrote a recap  Management Lessons from Zingerman’s CEO Ari Weinzweig of Ari’s talk. I encourage you to read it. What I wanted to share was my personal experience of Zingerman’s Deli. Besides the great food and great service and catalog littered with special gifts and even more unique food, Zingerman left a special mark on a venture into the retail business that my wife and I did for six years. It was Ari’s book,Zingerman’s Guide to Giving Great Service, that provided our outline for the service that we would provide and train our staff. Below is a mind map of the initial outline that I constructed from the book.The second mind-map is what I would call an ad-hoc representation of the Zingerman’s PDCA  cycle: Define, Teach, Live, Measure, Reward. I find the Zingerman model an excellent guideline for our and other retail operations. In fact, very few things are difficult to do, it is just a matter of doing it. 

P.S. I was unable to attend this conference as I was on the other side of the county in Orlando at the ISO9000 Lean and Six Sigma Conference.

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