2024 Northeast Lean Conference Recap Summary Part 2

In a continuation of my recap from Day 1 the 2^nd day of the Northeast Lean Conference Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times did not disappoint. Andrea Haas, President at Summit Polymers, demonstrated how they used Lean Practices to Succeed in automotive industry after Tariffs, COVID labor shortages, microchip shortages, global supply chain disruptions, and inflation. They specifically focused on Jidoka, building in quality with Poka Yoke and Andon, standardized work, and kaizen to successfully navigate these uncertain times.

Cultivating a Lean Culture Through Individual Change Management

Evan McCoy, Continuous Improvement Leader at Kone, shared how to create awareness, desire, knowledge, action, and results around creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement. What can we do about the fact the 70% of change initiatives fail?

He promotes the ADKAR Framework for Change

Awareness – change begins with understanding why

Employees will want to know why? Why now? What’s Wrong?

Leaders must be ready to answer what’s changes and why, risks of not changing, what’s not changing, why now

Desire – Change involves personal decisions

Build desire and momentum by showing not telling. Focus on the small improvements. Celebrate and show recognition.

Knowledge – Change requires knowing how

Do and show rather than tell and teach. Formal training (10%), learning through experience (70%), learning through socialization (20%)

Ability – Change requires action in the right direction

People leaders must set the tone for the teams. Time is constrained resource create space and culture for improvement. Allow for experimentation and risk. Improvements must be visible and impactful.

Reinforcement – Chage must be reinforced to be sustained

Meaningful link between improvement and daily work. Simpler, easier, more efficient improvement in process. Accountability systems to reinforce. Performance measures that connect and reward and recognize by leadership and peers.

Breaking the Buy-In Barrier: Getting Lasting Senior Leadership Commitment

Melissa Lin, Associate Director Continuous Improvement at Phillips, knows about the importance of senior leadership buy-in. To be successful you need senior leadership commitment actively and visibly participating throughout the journey, building a coalition of peers, and communicating with employees.

Is the resistance directed at you or because of you or something else?

These are the most common obstacles to senior leadership buy-in, what they really mean, and how to overcome them.

Gimme the ROI – They want the facts, data, quantifiable benefits and/or risk mitigation to buy-in so you can solve that with a strong, clean A3.

I don’t see the problem – They want the facts verified with their own eyes, irrefutable evidence change is required to be convinced so bring them to the Gemba and let the problems show themselves or bring it to them in the form of spaghetti diagrams or VSMs.

This isn’t a priority for us – They want to see connection to the big picture, need help focusing on top priorities and fixing problems on their plate so use Hoshin Kanri to connect to True North and use Root Cause & 5 Whys to solve problems.

I don’t think it’ll work – They want results, proof of improvements, and one less thing to worry about so have well scoped value stream for kaizen and show respect for people.

 

Developing a Company of Problem Solvers

Edge Coble, Director of Continuous Improvement at Gemline, shared how they use Continuous Improvement Boards to develop, engage, and empower everyone into problem solvers. Continuous improvement is about seeing the problem not waste elimination. Waste is a byproduct of poor flow.

The CI Board is:

               Way to identify and resolve problems

               Aligned to corporate goals & dept KPIs

               Diversity of viewpoints, knowledge & experience

               Cross-pollination & rapid deployment of improvements

               Source of accomplishment and pride

The CI Management Model for Engagement has these leadership styles

Collaborative – CI Leadership – working together

Leave Alone – Manager not around

Authoritarian – Tell what to do

Parental – Treat as part of extended family

Continuous improvement is about spotting the disruptions in your team’s workflow, understanding why it’s happening, and determining a speedy correction.

Created an idea board in MS Planner (Teams) – see picture

 

Passing the Baton to a New Generation of Problem Solvers

Karl Wadensten, President of Vibco, was the final keynote of the conference. As Vibco celebrates its 52nd anniversary, Karl shared how embracing Lean has powered his company through challenging times and still enables them to thrive today. I’ve been to their facility several times and it is very impressive so I would recommend a visit.

The future of continuous improvement will be characterized by a more balanced approach that prioritizes job satisfaction, social responsibility, and sustainable practices alongside traditional metrics of success. Organizations that embrace this paradigm will not only enhance employee engagement and satisfaction but will also contribute positively to society an the environment.

Gen Z has a distinctive perspective on the current workplace, influenced by their upbringing, and educational experiences which is different than other generations.

Emphasis on purpose – seeks work that aligns with their personal values and contributes positively to society.

Focus on learning and growth

Importance of mental health

Comfort with Technology

Preference for collaborative Work

Skepticism Towards traditional career paths

Job satisfaction over job security

Understanding these perspectives allow organizations to create environments that attract and retain Gen Z talent.

When the rubber hits the road. The boss is the coach. The boss is authentic. The boss shows vulnerability. The boss knows when to lead and when to follow. The boss show’s purpose and passion for his people.

The 21st Annual Northeast Lean Conference will be October 27 & 28, 2025 at the Double Tree Hotel & Conference Center in Manchester, NH.

The 2025 Northeast Lean Conference

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.

The 21st Annual Northeast Lean Conference will be October 27 & 28, 2025 at the Double Tree Hotel & Conference Center in Manchester, NH.

The 2025 Northeast Lean Conference

Join Me in Providence, RI for "Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times"

It’s my favorite time of year and I don’t mean fall which I enjoy. In a few short weeks the best of New England’s Lean Community will gather at the 20^th Annual Northeast Lean Conference. It truly is a goldmine of practical insights & inspiration for Lean practitioners - from those just starting out to seasoned leaders - through practical & engaging sessions led by fellow practitioners. This year’s conference is being held in Providence, RI on November 7^th and 8^th. The theme is something we can all relate to in any industry or service, "Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times".

Every business has faced challenges in recent years since COVID with labor shortages, electronic component shortages, global supply disruptions, and inflation for example. Being able to thrive in these uncertain times requires leadership and lean practices to overcome adversity. The agenda includes tracks for Leading to Thrive, Harnessing Employee Creativity, Leveraging Lean in Non Production Settings, and Collaborate & Standardize. The practical learning format features exceptional keynote and breakout presentations, interdepartmental panels, peer-to-peer discussions, hands-on simulations, interactive learning and sharing, and unlimited networking opportunities.

I’ve been a frequent attendee and presenter over the last 20 years. You can find many of my posts from past conferences highlighting the value GBMP brings to them. These conferences have been so invigorating, informative, and great networking opportunities. You do not want to miss this opportunity to join me and 500 passionate Lean, Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement professionals just like you.

Use discount code “Lean-Journey” to receive $150 off your registration to this year’s conference.

Register Here

2023 Northeast Lean Conference Re-cap

Last week I attended the Northeast Lean Conference in Worcester, MA. The Northeast Lean Conference was created by GBMP to provide information and inspiration to Lean practitioners - from those just starting out to seasoned Lean leaders from the manufacturing, healthcare, service and other vital industry sectors.

The theme, It’s About Time, has a double meaning:

• First, the correct use of Lean methods – from 5S to SMED to Standardized Work – absolutely reclaims and repurposes wasted time for the betterment of customers, employees, and the company.  Provide employees with these methods and watch the creativity surge.
• Second, there has never been a better time than today when so many organizations regardless of industry share a common motivation:  How to satisfy increased customer demand in the face of scarce resources?  Doesn’t that sound like Lean?  It’s about time for management to make a visible commitment to continuous improvement.

Andrew Koenig, CEO of City Furniture, kicked off the conference with message about Lean implementation with heart. Andrew’s lean journey started in college with a trip to Toyota in Japan. He implemented Lean throughout all departments in a retail company by creating a culture of mutual trust and respect, teamwork, and a deep sense of urgency to continuously improve. As a result, they have seen many major breakthroughs in turnover reduction, operational process improvement, customer experience, safety, associate satisfaction, strategic planning, and finance. We need to focus on people and teamwork – not just problem solving. “You need to have strong mutual respect among all the associates, so they feel no fear in offering ideas and highlighting problems,” Andrew explained. “Every day, we are pulling problems out of our associates, and leaders, working together to solve them.” For strategic planning purposes, Andrew has a catchphrase: Bottom Up, Top Down, Closed Loop. “We are trying to get everyone in the entire company to participate in our strategic planning processes, give us their ideas, and share that with the senior team, who then share that with me. What I learned from Toyota is that you need to get everyone engaged in improving the business."

Melinda Mante, GBMP Lean Consultant, showcased a set of practical habits you can immediately implement to inspire action from her experience at Intel. There are 3 leadership actions:

• Set direction – challenge the status quo
• Show the way – go first, learn, and demonstrate
• Support – enable, encourage, and care

There is approximately 4000 weeks to live on average. Every day matters. At work its’ much less. Set aside time on calendar for these leadership elements.

Tom Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Operations at Ruger, ended the first day share their journey to develop a Lean New Product Development process.

Highlights included:

• Dedicated formal project management is very important – Obeya Room co-located teams
• Simultaneous product & process development (Single Thought Flow) “Tatakidai” = chopping block, rapid prototyping
• Virtual Obeya Room – COVID pushed this idea but still very effective for dispersed teams
• Leaders Genba with Lean NPD Team – Servant Leadership
• Focus on Lean Thinking – PDCA, 8 wastes for NPD, Mura, Muri
• Standard Work – the one best way to do something

Billy Taylor, Founder and CEO of LinkedXL, got day 2 going by sharing three key principles: Deliberate Clarity, Deliberate Ownership, and Deliberate Practice to achieve success in any organization. Billy says “Winning is not everything, how you win is everything.” Most people don’t know if they are winning and many leaders only know at end of month. If you make people visible, hhey will make you valuable.

From his book “The Winning Link” Billy outlines how we win:

• Deliberate Clarity - You can not manage a secret, Define Winning
• 10ft and 10sec rule – ask people close to board what the board means to them
• What is your leadership standard – What you tolerate, you cannot change
• Walk by and not say anything and then that is new standard
• Deliberate Ownership
• Strategy + Execution = Results
• In the absence of ownership comes blame
• Celebrate the red so you can harvest the green
• Deliberate Practice – Daily Management Process, Let’s people know if we are winning or losing.
• Enables problem solving, drives ownership
• Physical Safety is needed
• Take action
• Be hard on the process so you can lead easy on the people
• Trust
• Earning the Right to Change
• Create a safe environment for change
• Behaviors are visible, Mindsets are hidden
• Critical to measure what matters…Everything that matters cannot be measured?

Allan Robinson, Professor at UMass Isenberg School of Management, discussed strategies for managing change. It is said that 70-80% of change initiatives fail because:

• Poor execution of the chosen change methodology
• Current methods require time, effort, and patience
• They require extremely strong leadership

Most methods (from the 1940s) don’t incorporate modern understanding in continuous improvement, innovation, and lean. The limitations of traditional approaches to management of change:

Perhaps our management approach makes a difference: How can we make our organizations more adaptable to change. A big part of the answer emerges from feedback loops and dependencies discovered more recently by the lean, continuous improvement, and innovation communities. Front-line driven important is a powerful way to make your organization is more adaptable.

80% of organization’s improvement potential is from front-line ideas

Frontline driven improvement is very sensitive to poor leadership and misalignment, so it forces managers and leaders to significantly change their behavior, and address misalignments that are normally ignored. It cannot happen without also getting high levels of trust and respect between management and the front lines. It cultivates a culture of constant improvement and problem-solving.

Helen Zak, Director of Research at The Shingo Institute, closed out the conference with tips, words of wisdom, and learning from 38 years as a change agent. Helen’s Top 5:

• It’s All About Time – the most valuable resource on the planet
• Psychological Safety – free from fear of acknowledging problems and comfortable tackling problems
• Team Sport – transformation requires alignment and teamwork
• Dissatisfaction with status quo – good enough is not enough
• People Development – lean leader’s job is to develop people

There were many other great presentations, but this is a brief highlight. Mark your calendars for next year’s conference Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times in Providence, RI November 7-8, 2024.

Northeast Lean Conference 2022 Re-cap

This past week I was fortunate to be able to attend one of my favorite annual activities, the Northeast Lean Conference. The theme of the conference this year was centered around amplifying lean, the collaborative effect. I presented with a colleague on collaboration within new product development at the conference. I’ll get to that in a moment but for now I want to take the opportunity to share some insights from my experience at the conference that we can all learn and reflect on.

The conference kicked off with Lee Dickenson, MD, SVP & CQO of Tufts Medicin with a discussion on collaboration in complex adaptive systems. As we have advanced in society from the concept of the master builder of the cathedral to teams of teams for the modern skyscrapers so too is the time for command-and-control styles to be over. No one person or group can know all disciplines in a business. We can break down our silos through collaborative management. We must work together for the best solutions.

Mike Holender, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt at Zoll Medical Corp discussed using A3 as a collaboration method. Our role is to improve the way we do our work as Freddy and Michael Balle illustrate in Lead with Respect with a simple formula:

A3 is a simple, one page problem solving methodology based on lean principles. It provides a structured and collaborative PDCA methodology for problem solving.

Shifting the company culture using A3 thinking starts with the vision. Here’s a roadmap to instill A3.

1. Use A3 language within existing work
2. Start writing A3s for existing work
3. Find promoters
4. Work with management to ask for A3s
5. Teach and coach on A3
6. Find more promoters
7. Continue to spread and scale (leverage promoters)

 

At Karl Storz the workplace culture has dramatically impacted employee turnover with their continuous improvement journey. Steve Escott, Sr Mgr. Warehousing & Order Fulfillment, shared their journey started with an idea board launched (from Northeast Lean presenter in 2017) to allow employees to have a voice with the company. Employees became the biggest advocate to solve problems and improve the business.

Comtran’s Lean journey transited from tools focused implementation to a strategy focused on people. They had to acknowledge the human side of change management. People development is based on the premise of what they called know, show, and grow. They built alignment to company vision/mission through individual development plans and goals. This team approach to policy deployment created collaboration from top-level business objectives to bottom-up improvement efforts.

Mike Matryn, Founder & President of SISU shared his approach to developing successful leaders and building world-class cultures. The primary purpose of management is to maximize the passion, purpose, and contribution of the people to help the organization be better every day.

Purpose – feeling connected to our vision

Passion – reason for being

Performance – accomplishing meaningful challenges

 

Mike introduced a Japanese concept called Omotenashi, which means hospitality. “Omote” means public face – an image you wish to present to outsiders. “Nashi” means nothing. Combining them means every service is from the bottom of the heart – honest, no hiding, no pretending. Omotenashi is about exceptional service and memorable experiences.

There are three elements of management for omotenashi:

·        Environment – management systems

·        Host – leaders

·        Guest – employees

3 steps to creating an Omotenashi culture:

1. Adopt a management philosophy that places people before profit and embraces the role of creating the opportunity for passion through work.
2. Design a daily management system which aligns people through strategy, encourages growth through challenge, and engages leaders as coaches.
3. Commit to a kaizen environment where each person strives to improve the organization everyday and takes pride in their accomplishments.

Bruce Watkins, President & General Manager at Karl Storz, ended the first day with discussion on bad collaboration, no collaboration, and good collaboration. We have all seen bad collaboration. The best outcomes come from collaboration and decentralized teams. Leader can inspire teams with “why” before “how or what” as Simon Sinek’s TEDtalk shows.

Build connections and collaboration in your organization changing your view to an outward mindset.

The 5 most important words are “How can I help you?”

The 2^nd day at the Northeast Lean Conference started with a wonderful presentation from Kevin Hancock, CEO of Hancock Lumber. He described how losing the partial use of his voice to a rare neurological disorder led him to a remote Indian reservation on the northern plains, where he discovered an entire community that did not feel heard. The two events combined to help Kevin realize there were lots of ways for humans to lose their authentic voice in this world. Furthermore, Kevin concludes leaders across time have done more to restrict the voices of others than to honor them.

Kevin took these understandings and developed a new leadership model designed to push power out – away from the corporate center – and give everyone in the organization a leading voice. The result was a high-performing corporate model in which business metrics soared as an outcome of a higher calling.

Leaders create change by becoming the change…

When power is dispersed in an organization, performance improves. Leadership is about giving other people a stronger voice.

There were a number of great presenters at the conference and I only shared a small sampling. Beyond the presentations there is wonderful networking opportunity with like minded practitioners across a number of industries and businesses. GBMP is already working on the next conference.

Save the Date: "It's About Time" on October 3-4, 2023 @ The DCU Center in Worcester MA.