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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Many of my early projects for Armstrong World Industries were at the Macon Georgia plant. This was and still is the largest ceiling plant in the world, with a capacity of over half a billion square feet of ceiling tiles produced annually.
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Sometimes, even though you know you could help a prospect, they don’t feel the same way. This is one of those stories about my inability to create alignment with a business leader.
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When I opened my business, I tried many ways to attract clients. After spending money on advertising that didn’t lead to business, I focused on delivering a great customer experience and then let my business grow organically through word of mouth and referrals. This is a slower path, but it fits my principles of how I want to conduct my business.
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On May 15, 2018, I registered Process Improvement Partners LLC as an official business. Since then, I have had so many adventures, made lots of mistakes, and hopefully learned from many of them!
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For many years, I have led, facilitated, or participated in hundreds of Kaizen events. During those events, people worked together in the same location to solve important problems. Sometimes team members travelled to the location of the event. Other times people weren’t able to travel to the event and the team carried on without identified experts. I loved the interaction and energy of those events, but wondered if there might be a way to hold an event that was as effective as putting people in the same room, but would be less difficult from a travel or logistical perspective.
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I worked more than 30 years for a multi-national company. During that time, I had the opportunity to help teams and solve problems all over the world, from the US to Europe to Asia. I worked in five distinct industries and had many roles, from engineering to operations to continuous improvement. I enjoyed most of what I did, but realized something was missing.
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Process Improvement Partners (PIP) recently conducted a free site assessment for a small electronic targeting systems company in Glen Rock, PA.
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One of the benefits of being in business for yourself is to decide what’s most important to you and then prioritize your time to let you do what you are most passionate about.
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