A Lean Journey: 2024 Northeast Lean Conference Recap Summary

This year’s Northeast Lean Conference marks a number of milestones in Lean as the conference celebrates its 20th Anniversary. It also marks the 25^th Anniversary of Toast Kaizen Video and the 35^th Anniversary of the book the Machine the Changed the World. LEAN in conference name is an acronym for Lead Enable and Nurture. The theme this year was about “Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times” which we can all certainly relate to in some way.

“So, You’ve Read 10 Books About Lean and Now You’re Really Confused? Been There.”

The conference got started with a key note from Brad Cairns, Lean pioneer and entrepreneur, talked about his life long journey. He started like many did consuming many books on the subject. He read the Lean Turn Around by Art Byrne and started down Lean Journey. Learned he couldn’t transform people so he hired lean consultant named Jim Lewis, Quantum Lean. Read The Toyota Way and many other books. . Learned from Paul Akers at FastCap, Kaas Tailor, Michael Althoff at YelloTools, and other great practitioners. He created Kaizenify.app to bring shopfloor tools to you. He pays it forward through sharing lesson podcasts, youtube, etc.

He shared 4 lessons not learned in books that you should take note of:

1) Preparation – You need to know where are you going and where you are starting from. You need to know when you’ve made improvements. The P&L is a poor measuring tool because it last month, last quarter, last year. Measure forward looking tools (over the line chart, throughput $/labor hrs, pieces/day)

2) Internal people – You can’t transform donkeys into racehorses.

3) You - Good speech from Jocko Willink. You can improve from suffering.

4) External People – If you make the change everything will change. Are your advisors helping you? Lean is for 2% of the world. Go Hard of Go Home. You pick your hard. Are the people you spend the most time with boat ankers or propellers? Sometimes you need a kick in the butt or shove in the right direction.

How Do You Create A Lean Culture? Art Knows

Art Byrne, Wiremold CEO, (where I worked) shares how to Create a Lean Culture from his newest book “Lean Turnaround Answer Book”. Most significant steps are below:

1. If given the option no one will choose to do Lean. Communicate about the change to Lean (what, why, when, how) and what’s in it for them. Let them know they will not lose their jobs due to improvement. Everything must change. You can’t have a lean culture without a Lean enterprise involving every part of the business. Sales & Marketing – level load orders, Accounting/Finance – standard cost accounting incentives all things we try to get rid of in lean, IT/Human Resources – hire for lean. Lean is not a cost reduction program.

2. Lean can not be managed; it must be led. The leader must be an expert. You can not delegate a Lean conversion. The leader must be hands on in the Gemba. Leaders should do 12 1-week Kaizens per year to learn about Lean.

2. Requires a new mindset focused on your processes not results. A company is nothing but these 3 things: A group of people, a bunch of processes, delivering value to a set of customers.

Set Operational Excellence Goals – What are we Trying to Do Here?

Wiremold examples:

100% On Time Customer Service

50% reduction in Defects (every year)

20% productivity gain (every year)

20X inventory Turns

5S and visual Control Everywhere

3. Change Structure – Most companies are organized functionally. Align your structure with value streams and move the equipment.

4. Kaizen, Kaizen, Kaizen

Create Kaizen Promotion Office. Kaizen includes everyone. Culture changes through kaizen.

5. State your Core Values: People, Customers, Kaizen

Live by the lean fundamentals

Work to takt time

One piece flow

Standard work

Pull system

Learn by doing = culture change

5. State the Behavior you expect

Respect others

Tell the truth

Be fair

Try new ideas

Ask why

Keep your promises

Do your share

6. Eliminate the Bad Actors

7. Share the Wealth

Profit sharing

401k match

Suggestion program

8. Run the company on Operational Excellence Goals. Most run on make the month. It takes 2 weeks to close the books then you look back at things you can’t do anything about. Look forward not backwards.

Deploy the Op Ex Goals to the team leaders, review progress weekly, ask what kaizen are you planning next week, and look forward not backward.

“If you don’t try something, no knowledge can visit you.”

The Five Factors of Managing Change

Lara Laskowski and Arturo Sanchez from IDEXX understand that 50-70% of change initiatives result in failure but they people they have something in common. Their organization has a cure for false starts, limited change, frustration, and very likely another failure. They created a model for Productive Change involving Vision, Skills, Incentive, Resources, and Action Plans.

Vision – You need a clearly defined vision, problem statement with who, what, when, where, and why.

Skills – Need SME of the process, create robust training plan with standards

Incentive – What motivates people to take action, WIFM

Resources – Data needed, software used, people in process, and budget

Action Plans – Need robust action plan to implement improvements with ownership.

When elements of the formula are missing you can end up with confusion, anxiety, limited change, frustration, and false starts.

The Magic of Change Mindset with Magician Zane Black

Brad Morrow, The Wizard of Lean, had a wonderfully engaging presentation to view ourselves as powerful change agents, embrace risks, and adopt a new view on failure.

There’re three mindsets:

Empowered Mind: Sense of empowerment means you need to take risk. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Risk-Taking Mind: The only way to expand your comfort zone is through discomfort. Embrace fear.

Fear acronym = False, Evidence, Appearing, Real

Failure Embracing Mind: Why do we fall? So, we can learn to pick ourselves up.

Fail acronym = First Attempt in Learning

Failure is not your last chapter.

If I am Empowered “What Will You Do Next?”

Wiring the Winning Organization

The final keynote of the day was from Steve Spear who has written Creating High Velocity Organizations and Wiring the Winning Organization. 25 years ago, he wrote “Decoding the DNA the Toyota Production System” which noted Toyota had created a community of scientists within their organization.

If everything’s the same (resources between car companies) but the outcomes the only thing different then it’s the management system. They create conditions to solve really hard problems. As leaders we are responsible for people solving problems. Shape the problem-solving space to move from danger zone to winning zone.

There are 3 ways:

1) Slowification – Make problem solving easier to do.

2) Simplification – Make problems easier to solve.

3) Amplification – Make problems more obvious that need solving

How do we create processes and procedures that allow for problem solving. 5S, 1 piece flow, Jidoka, and Andon are examples of tools that move problems from the danger zone to the winning zone.

I’ll share some additional highlights from my 2^nd day at the conference in my next post.