The research and development team created a product that they thought would change the ceiling grid market. The bad news is that it was hard to produce and no one bought it. The good news is that it lead to future innovations that the market loved.
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During our benchmarking tour of our European plants, we met hourly operators who were so engaged in their work that they had process understanding that rivaled one of our highest level scientists. And, they wanted to know more!
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Kaizen is messy. It should be so accessible that anyone can do it. So, I use a phrase that I was taught many years ago, to make it okay to try and fail and learn quickly. The phrase? Butt Ugly by Friday!
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I used to think customer acquisition was the most difficult and challenging aspect of my business. Once I realized customer retention is top priority, it changed my perspective and approach.
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Kaizen events can be life-changing for team members. This is the story of Steve, who grew so much during the week that his co-workers almost didn’t recognize him.
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After many years, I was able to influence my number one client to take their Gemba walk to the next level of performance. When the hourly production operator stood up and gave his perspective, it changed the mind set of the leadership team.
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I often meet people who are interested in the work I do, and sometimes, these conversations turn into future business opportunities. One statement I hear quite frequently goes something like this: “I see you’ve made great strides working with manufacturers in [insert industry here]. But we’re different, so I want to know what experience you have in my industry.”
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I’m passionate about helping teams improve the reliability of their processes, using basic yet effective techniques to immediately boost the performance of their manufacturing lines. The best part is that the team can see and feel the results, and the techniques I teach are easy to learn and transferable to other lines and processes within the facility.
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I was in Florida, working with a residential building products manufacturer on our second Kaizen event together. This time, we focused on improving materials delivery to the production lines. The tasks were challenging, physically demanding, and slow, leading to high turnover in the material handling position.
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As a Kaizen Ninja, I like to believe I can help any team solve any problem. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t—but believing it was causing me to dilute my message to my target audience. Let’s face it: no one believes you can be all things to all people.
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Problems are everywhere. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and give up, thinking there are more problems than solutions. While it’s true we can’t solve everything—and some things are simply out of our control—my advice is to focus on the problems you can solve and be willing to experiment until you get the results you’re looking for.
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