The Bottleneck

I met Andrew Koenig, the CEO of CITY Furniture, at a virtual Lean conference during the pandemic. We immediately hit it off, and he invited me to help strengthen the Kaizen culture at his company.

For two years, I facilitated Kaizen events on a monthly basis. It never ceased to amaze me at the number of improvements and breakthroughs that could be accomplished in a company that has been living Lean and continuous improvement for many years. More than that, the energy of team members was inspiring and infectious. I was warmly greeted by associates on every trip and many of them proudly showed off prior improvements and how they were sustaining the gains from our Kaizen events.

Do Your Due Diligence

Midway through my corporate career, I was a senior industrial engineer at Armstrong World Industries. I spent most of my time providing support to our many manufacturing facilities all over the world. I have always been fascinated by manufacturing and it never ceases to amaze me how good (and bad) decisions can immediately impact performance.

Living in the Moment

During my career, I have been fortunate to have worked all over the world. I was brought up as a “tourist.” Whenever I traveled with my family, we would do everything possible to see the sights and learn the history of the region we were visiting. Because of this, I naturally enjoyed my business travel and did my best to explore and experience the culture of any location I visited.

Getting More Than They Bargained For

My first Kaizen event with a new client in Oregon came as result of my site visit the month before. We were going to apply 5S to an area of their plant that was well behind budget. During my visit, I noticed that although prior efforts had been made to improve organization, they hadn’t stuck. With the appropriate use of Lean principles and the Wheel of Sustainability, I felt I could help them get back on track.

Lean in Action

I was Lean Champion for the Global Technology group at a ceiling tile manufacturer for six years. During that time, I was responsible to train all new employees in Lean principles and techniques as they joined our group. The goal of this training was to help them understand what we were doing and how we applied Lean to our work. My aim was to generate interest and engagement around Lean. In the early years, things didn’t always go the way I expected.

Understanding is Critical

In February 2020, Process Improvement Partners was asked to facilitate a strategic planning session in Montreal for a global consumer products company. Having facilitated multiple Kaizen events where English is not the primary language, we set about to design an event that would incorporate additional translation time and resource effort for the event. Normally, this type of session takes three days. Even though we were told that most participants were bi-lingual, we aligned with the sponsor and leader and added four hours to the event plan.

A Little Dab Will Do Ya

In 1991, I was offered a line supervisor position at Armstrong’s ceiling grid factory in Franklin Park Illinois. I had been working as a staff Industrial Engineer at Thomasville Furniture in Thomasville North Carolina, so the position would be my first operations supervisory role.

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