Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond Keith Champion on the Lucid (Motors) Production System
Senior Manager, Lucid - Formerly Toyota & Tesla
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/410
My guest for Episode #410 of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast is Keith Champion, Senior Manager ofOperational Excellence at Lucid Motors, a new entrant in the electric vehicle marketplace, with their Lucid Air luxury sedan hitting the market very soon.
Keith worked for Toyota for more than 17 years (thanks to fellow Toyota alum and previous podcast guest Tim Turner for making the connection). As Keith talks about in the episode, he started as a Team Member at Toyota Georgetown, progressing his career to Team Leader, Group Leader, and other roles. He then spent nine years working for Tesla Motors. Keith then joined Lucid in 2019 -- BTW, the CEO of Lucid, Peter Rawlinson, was previously Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla and Chief Engineer of the Model S.
Topics and questions in today's episode (and related links):
- What's your Lean / TPS origin story? It sort of starts before Toyota
- What happens when you "pull the andon cord" at Toyota?
- How is Lucid trying to build the culture right the first time?
- What is the leadership team like at Lucid?
- Is there a management "philosophy" as Toyota might talk about?
- What are the core values of Lucid Motors?
- What's the biggest operations (and supply chain) challenge related to starting a new factory in Arizona?
- How do you build for scalability?
- How important is it to have "built in quality" for a luxury vehicle (or any car)?
- What is an empowering continuous improvement program? Not just suggestions, but implement...
- What are the five key goals and metrics that are used throughout the factory?
- Lucid article (and video) about General Assembly
- A look at the paint shop
The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity and healthcare industries. Learn more.
This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.