Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/20  Remastered July 2021 The LeanBlog Podcast is back with episode #20, our guest is Kevin Meyer, the founder of Superfactory Ventures, which can be found at Superfactory.com. You may know Kevin from his popular blog, Evolving Excellence. We'll be talking about a number of lean topics including his upcoming panel moderation at the Kellogg Manufacturing Business Conference, being held in Evanston IL in May. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog Podcast main page. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #20 1:30 How Kevin got started with Lean 3:00 About the Evolving Excellence Blog 5:00 Blogging as a learning experience 6:00 Kevin will be speaking at Northwestern University, moderating a panel discussion on in-sourcing on on-shoring at their Manufacturing Business Conference 6:20 Companies that have been able to build manufacturing competencies in the U.S., rather than running overseas, looking at total cost, rather than just labor cost 8:00 The conference is May 12, open to registration by the public (main conference page) 8:15 A list of companies Kevin has talked about on the blog 9:10 How can we spread the word and fight the perception that you can't do manufacturing here? 9:45 Kevin's example of a custom ski manufacturer who imports very small quantities from China rather than doing it here 10:30 Danaher as a good example of lean and U.S. competitiveness 10:50 American Leather, building furniture here in Texas 12:20 Kevin's example of Avery Dennison 13:30 Are retailers encouraging lean practices or pushing suppliers overseas? 14:30 Are there some valid reasons for building in China? 15:40 Kevin's example of American Apparel 16:30 New Zealand manufacturing and off-shoring pressures 17:30 Kevin talks about lean and the value of experience in the workforce, Whirlpool example of moving to Mexico and throwing away that experience 20:30 The book from the blog, written by Kevin and Bill Waddell : Evolving Excellence: Thoughts on Lean Enterprise Leadership

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/19 Remastered June 2021 Episode #19 of the Lean Blog Podcast brings the return of Jim Womack. Jim was sitting in Melbourne Australia, where he had been speaking about lean healthcare, a topic that we will discuss in a future podcast. In this podcast, we talk about Jim's reflections on the book The Machine That Changed the World and its recent reissuing by the publisher (with updates). In the podcast, Jim not only talks about Toyota's success, but ways in which Toyota could fail or falter in the future. This is the first part of our discussion, I will release the second part in the upcoming weeks. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog Podcast main page. Earlier podcasts with Jim can be found here (#12) and here (#13). Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #19 1:30 Jim's thoughts on “Machine,” written about “why the teams [GM, Ford, Chrysler] can't win the away games” 1:55 The book before “Machine” was “The Future of the Automobile” (1984) 2:15 The job of “Machine” was to describe a complete business system… “the biggest disappointment… was to have people tell me it was a great book about factories.” 3:00 “You get the feeling that a lot of people read the book, but just that one chapter [on manufacturing].” 3:50 Probably about a million copies sold so far 4:00 The publisher said that 2007 is the year when Toyota is probably going to pass GM, so why don't we re-issue it? 4:20 The new subtitle is “Why Toyota Won” 4:45 “We've learned a lot since then… some of what we told you in the book is not exactly right, so we're thinking of it not exactly as a product recall, but as a model line enhancement. This is what might have been the 1991 model if we had done annual model changes.” 5:30 Is there risk of a backlash with Toyota becoming #1? Jim talks about “ways in which Toyota could lose,” starting with manufacturing 10:50 “They could go native” 10:05 How Toyota could lose with the product development system (book by Al Ward) 10:40 The Jeff Liker book on product development (“they are complements to each other,” Jim says): The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology 14:30 How Toyota could fail with their dealer system 15:45 Jim's essay on farmers and hunters 22:40 GM and the X-cars (info here and here) 24:10 Jim asks, “Can Toyota screw up? For the short term, the answer is no, for the long term, absolutely!” 24:30 “Most any other company would be fat, dumb, and happy.” 24:50 What about the excuses the Big 3 make about currency factors, etc.? 25:30 How the Big 3 are like the Detroit Lions

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/18  Remastered July 2021 Here is Episode #18 of the LeanBlog Podcast. My guest today is Eric Christiansen, the President of a translation services company, OmniLingua (more can be found here on their philosophy as a company, being a self-described “Deming Company.”) I was interested in talking with Eric about what it means to be a “Deming Company” and about their implementation of “wiki” tools (ala Wikipedia) for managing their standard work and process documentation. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #18 1:30 Introducing Eric and his company 3:15 What does it mean to be a “Deming company?” 3:40 The Deming System of Profound Knowledge 4:00 The owner of OmniLingua had worked directly with Deming and appreciated the people aspects of his philosophy, how do you treat people with respect? 4:40 Has the annual review been abolished? Sales commissions were abolished, as well as production bonus plans. OmniLingua has a company-wide profit sharing plan instead. 5:15 More examples of the Deming philosophy in day-to-day life, including long-term sole-source supplier relationships 7:00 Is there still internal competition? 7:45 “Are we hiring salespeople who can't sell?” by not having commissions 8:40 How have lean methods evolved at OmniLingua? 10:15 Standard work within the company and the evolution into the use of “Wiki” technology for standard work 13:30 How they modified the process to allow some additional revision and ownership control (after an ISO audit) 15:00 How did it work when everybody had access to modify the standard work documentation? 17:00 How many people have access to the different standard work documents? 19:00 With a Word-document based standard work, people wanted to fancy them up, Wiki keeps people focused on the content 21:30 Deployment started last November (2005)

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/17 Remastered July 2021 LeanBlog Podcast #17 is a discussion with a good friend of the Lean Blog, David Meier, a former Toyota Georgetown Group Leader, founder of Lean Associates, and the co-author of the excellent book, The Toyota Way Fieldbook, and the upcoming Toyota Talent, due out in April (both co-authored with Jeff Liker, check out my Podcasts with him here and here). In this podcast, we talk about David's recent first hand experiences with factories in China. Are there labor shortages? Is there a lot of waste in Chinese factories? Do the Chinese have good management skills at this point? What lean methods did David see in China? We'll cover all this and more. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #17 2:00 Overall, pretty surprised, Chinese factories are in good condition, but there are some real labor shortages growing, intense cost pressures from other countries (India, Vietnam, Turkey, etc.) 3:00 Lots of struggles from the supply chain side and total cost, “China isn't as great a deal as they anticipated in the beginning” (inbound supply chains) 4:00 “One company had 160% turnover last year” 4:15 Local management isn't that strong, so companies bring in their own management(which is costly to bring in foreigners) 4:45 David was frustrated to see the same challenges and problems in China that are typical here, including the “kaizen blitz” mindset (companies aren't getting long-term satisfaction or a sustainable process) 5:50 Saw one company (a clothing manufacturer in China) that took “one piece flow” to such an extreme that it was costing them in other ways, companies are missing the point of what Lean really is 6:30 More on the single piece flow situation – are you implementing single piece flow or are you improving performance? 10:00 What about Chinese factories and their metrics and goals? David was surprised to hear how everyone was focused on efficiency and labor cost 11:00 David saw a lot of Non Value Added activity (20-30% of people's activity) because ofthe way work was structured 11:40 “Big shortage of Industrial Engineers in China” 12:45 Chinese managers learn “mass production management” or lean management methods? 13:45 “I didn't see any factories that would be a model of lean” and David was visiting companies who had expressed some interest in being lean 14:15 What lean methods did David see at Chinese factories? 15:20 David says there is a general lack of understanding about how to use “Value Stream Mapping” 17:15 David and Jeff Liker are working on a new book about systems and how to develop the system properly, how to use the system (such as Kanban) to drive continuous improvement 17:45 An earlier new book, “Toyota Talent” is coming out in April 18:30 After the Fieldbook, David and Jeff realized there were some topics they could really expand on, Toyota Talent, lean systems, and problem solving. 20:15 A preview of Toyota Talent... didn't see much “Standardized Work” in China, the depth of lean there isn't as great as in the U.S. The book looks at how you break down jobs and train people. 22:00 People look at Toyota and assume that standardized work only applies in repetitive, highly cyclical jobs (but Toyota has a lot of jobs that don't fit that mold) 24:30 David comparing the high turnover in China with the high turnover in fast food and how McDonald's simplifies things, uses standard work, makes it visual, etc. But why do they accept the turnover? 25:45 The NPR piece on In-N-Out Burger and how they value employees. 26:45 David points out how you have to look at total cost, not just the low hourly labor cost 27:30 Is everything going to inevitably move to China? We're trying to compete against that with Lean, reducing costs through Lean methods and improved/faster response.

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/16 Remastered July 2021 LeanBlog Podcast #16 is the first part of two with Jim Baran, the Owner of Value Stream Leadership, a leading recruiting firm that specializes in Lean talent. I've known Jim for a few years now and he's helped me and some colleagues in the past. He's a great recruiter who really takes some interest in you and your career. If you're looking to make a career change or if you're looking for lean talent, I can personally recommend him. In our discussion, we talk about the state of the job market for folks with lean experience and what helps a lean candidate stand out in the marketplace. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #16 1:30 About Jim, his background with lean, about his firm 2:50 What does it mean, “retained search firm”? 4:40 Jim's firm defines lean as “Toyota Way leadership” — Toyota Production System AND the Toyota Product Development System 5:00 How is the job market for lean talent, generally speaking? 6:30 People “used to hire forktruck operators out of Toyota” because they thought they knew the secret sauce 7:40 Jim Womack's email about the end of “the lean tool age” 8:00 How do you consider someone's individual or local lean accomplishments versus a good candidate having been in a prototypical lean company? 9:30 What are Jim's 5 profiles for excellent lean candidates? 10:30 Been in the Toyota Product Development System market very heavily lately, the talent with experience there has been slim 12:30 The market for lean in services areas 16:00 What about recruitment for executive level positions? 21:45 Harder to find people who can use lean to drive growth or revenue rather than only reducing costs/waste

Show notes: https://leanblog.org/15 Remastered July 2021  eanBlog Podcast #15 is a new discussion with a previous Podcast guest, Jim Huntzinger. Last time, we talked about the Lean Accounting Summit. This time, we're talking about the renaissance of the “Training Within Industry” program. We'll talk about the origins of this program, the impact it had on Toyota and the Toyota Production System, and why the program is being bought back in the United States and in lean circles. Jim is also organizing a Training Within Industry Summit, June 5-6 of 2007. Check the Show Notes, down below, for more links to TWI resources and information. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #15 Background: Copies of the original TWI manuals Background: Wikipedia page on TWI 2:30 Background of the TWI program prior to the U.S. entry into WWII 3:15 How did TWI get promoted in Japan during the U.S. occupation? 4:15 How did TWI get incorporated into the Toyota Production System? “It is an excellent industrial training program on its own” but Toyota also built upon the system 6:00 What were some of the motivations behind TWI? What did they hope to achieve? 7:15 What are the different components of the TWI approach… Job Methods and Job Instruction, the focus on training people HOW to train, etc. 9:15 At Toyota, Ohno thought “Job Methods” was a little too “point focused” and he wanted to look more at the “value stream” 9:45 “Job Relations” focuses on how to be a supervisor, how to drive kaizen, etc. 11:00 How did TWI get “rediscovered” recently? Mentioned in the book Becoming Lean: Inside Stories of U.S. Manufacturers 13:45 What are the unique things Toyota was able to do with the TWI program? 14:15 TWI was focused on training NEW employees, how does TWI apply when you have long time employees who never had standard work or standard methods? 15:45 Toyota still uses Job Instruction today for training their experienced people 16:15 TWI says you have to “get the employee motivated to learn” – how do you do this? 17:45 Why did American companies move away from TWI after the war? 19:00 Early challenges with getting management focused on sustaining TWI methods 19:30 To learn more about TWI: Training Within Industry: The Foundation Of Lean (Don Dinero, history of TWI) The Twi Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors (Bob Wrona, hos to use TWI today) Jim's article “The Roots of Lean” Plenty of articles and references through Google

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/14 Remastered July 2021 LeanBlog Podcast #14 is a discussion with Dave Gleditsch, the Chief Technology Officer for Pelion Systems, a leading provider of software for lean manufacturing applications. I first met Dave after I read his Industry Week columns and traded some emails with him. He has a great background in manufacturing and lean, so I think he has an interesting perspective to share on lean and technology. Don't worry, this podcast isn't a sales pitch for Pelion's software. I think you'll enjoy the discussion. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #14 2:00 What prompted you to write your first column? 2:30 The real issue was a poor definition of what lean really is, lean has some very concrete things for improving and innovating. 3:30 It's not just cost cutting, it's about maximizing customer value with the minimum required resources. 4:20 At American Standard, lean helped save the company, but it also became a platform for growth 5:00 Do traditionally cost driven people automatically focus on lean as only a cost cutting tool? 6:00 In the boardrooms, the real cost is gross margin expansion — impacting the top line AND the bottom line (lean and six sigma are great tools for that). You can't just cut costs on the path to growth. 7:00 How first introduced to lean concepts? 9:20 Had a lot of lean experience at HP in the 1980's, worked with Shingo, Hall, Schonberger, etc. Had to try to interpret the original Shingo “Green Book.” (A Study of the Toyota Production System from an Industrial Engineering Viewpoint) 10:40 Hall's book Zero Inventories 11:00 Dave working with Shigeo Shingo 12:00 More about Dave's experiences with lean at American Standard 15:20 What is Pelion Systems? What services and technology do they offer? 18:40 Pelion had the first web kanban portal 19:10 What business problem is Pelion helping to solve? 20:45 Can technology help speed up or further a culture change? 24:00 You have to look at more than manufacturing, but also at how different parts of the companies work together. 25:20 What about The Toyota Way principle about technology? “Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.” What about the anti-technology bias that tends to exist in the lean world? 30:15 What about companies who have been burned by ERP or technology promises in the past? Does that make it challenging for a software company today? What about technology vendors who seem to promise a “silver bullet” solution for manufacturers? 35:00 Is the software industry learning from past rollout mistakes? Are companies using the technology evolving? 35:25 How Pelion operates with a clear customer charter, business case, etc.

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/13 Remastered June 2021 LeanBlog Podcast #13 brings us part 2 of our discussion with James P. Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute, the author of many books including the classic (published 10 years ago) Lean Thinking and the more recent Lean Solutions. Part 1 can be found here. In the second podcast, Jim discusses the state of manufacturing in China, including some factors to consider when competing with China, or setting up shop in China. Jim talks about the tradeoffs between manufacturing for export versus manufacturing in China for the local market. Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #13 1:00 Are Chinese companies focusing on the short term, as they transition to market practices, or can they focus on the long term? 2:10 How Chinese companies are often getting rid of headcount as fast as they can, as opposed to being rewarded for finding something for people to do 3:20 “Had two years to become a modern mass producer”   4:00 Smart ones are building for the long term and for the Chinese domestic market 4:37 “If you're just coming in as an exporter, a lot of things could happen,” referring to instability or political risk over time with China 5:00 “Iron rice bowl” — the idea that your job came with housing, education etc., a social control mechanism, everything came with your job… “the last thing you want to do is get anybody upset at Widget Factory #9.” 6:00 The amount of dislocation in people's lives in China 7:00 What about “sweatshop” conditions alleged at the iPod factory? 7:30 Womack says the plants run by multinationals are, generally, run right (for safety, cleanliness, etc.)… “they don't know how to run a sweatshop” 8:30 “Corner cutting doesn't really save you any money… stupid meanness.” Those factories not directly run by multinationals might be tempted to cut corners because they just don't know any better 9:50 “… what kind of doorknobs are you?” 10:10 What if we had a campaign to enforce safe work practices? Cost might actually go down. 10:40 Lots of people just moving material or sorting product in the Chinese pencil factory, lots of waste, “what a sad thing”… some minimal quality processes could save a lot of cost 11:30 “Quality is free, safety ought to be free, if you know what you're doing…” 12:00 Many Chinese factory managers “just don't any better, it's better here than the old factory” 12:30 What about the environment (air, water) in China? 14:45 China is facing the same demographic problems as Japan, Europe, the U.S. with a large older retired population (with the one-child policy) 16:00 Has the “lean math” that Jim talks about changed? If you're going to set up in China just for exporting back to the West, you have to really stop and evaluate the risk factors (political, etc.) 18:30 “What's wrong with Mexico? It's a truck location, not a boat location.” 19:00 What about reports of cars being imported from China? 20:30 Chinese car companies are a long way off from being able to compete here, quality wise. 23:20 There are 12 Lean Institutes around the world, “we are equal opportunity educators.”

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/12  Remastered June 2021 LeanBlog Podcast #12 brings us a special guest, James P. Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute, the author of many books including the classic (published 10 years ago) Lean Thinking and the more recent Lean Solutions. We ended up talking for about 40 minutes, so I'm going to split the discussion into two podcasts. In this first part, we focus more on China's adoption (or lack of adoption) of lean practices. In the second episode, Jim talks more about general trends for China and for those considering doing business in China. LeanBlog Podcast #12 Show Notes and Approximate Timeline 1:45: Womack's trips to China started in the 1980's… on his honeymoon 2:15: http://www.leanchina.org/ is the Lean Enterprise Institute in China 2:45: The Chinese have gone from being “not even mass producers” (staggering, mindboggling inefficiency) where the goal was job creation and control (20 years ago) to where now they are trying to be globally competitive in a serious way (but with a LONG history of doing things the wrong way) 4:10 :     “Management is hard” – what is modern management (or even lean management) for the Chinese? 5:00: Chinese learned management from multinationals, entrepreneurs (including “Andre the Pencil King”) 6:00: No real Toyota presence in China (other than a few joint ventures) 6:30: Any evidence of lean practices or lean thinking in China's shopfloors? 8:00  :     333Stories of waste from China 9:45: It's hard, from a cultural standpoint, for the Chinese to hear they should be like the Japanese (due to long standing animosity) 11:45: Lean can be a universal way of doing things, just as mass production can be a universal way 12:50: Does China have more hope for lean if they don't have such a long history with mass production? Womack says “why put in place the wrong thing (mass production)?” We can be General Motors or we can be Toyota… let's be Toyota. 14:30  : “They sense this low-wage thing is time limited…. They can't go on building cheap goods for Americans forever.” 17:30  : Womack's recent lean e-letter 19:10  : Wages are rising on the coast, but for commodity stuff, manufacturers will just move inland. We won't see the cost of labor really going up. The price of management is really going up though – seeing what ex-pats are being paid is putting upward pressure on management wages (folks with education) 22:30  : “I saw nobody at all working to improve the process… it looked like nothing had changed in 40 years.”Big big leap from there to everyone thinking its part of their job to improve. A complete list of Jim's books can be found here.

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/11  Remastered June 2021 Here is LeanBlog Podcast #11, once again with Norman Bodek of PCS Press and the author of many books, including Kaikaku: The Power and Magic of Lean. In this Podcast, we discuss a topic posed by a podcast listener, Bruce from Akron Ohio: how do you educate your top leadership about lean? Norman and I discuss the perspectives of CEOs and executives toward lean, change, and their organizations and some examples of lean problem solving approaches. LeanBlog Podcast #11 Show Notes and Approximate Timeline 1:20 Question from Bruce in Akron again, how do you educate your top leadership about lean? 2:00 Norman spoke at the Lean Accounting Summit, even many CFO's were asking how to get their leadership on board, as if they were powerless 3:50 Norman tells a story about a President of a $2B company asking him, “how can I get my people to deliver quality?” After two weeks in Japan, he said, “Now I understand, it's not them, it's me.” 6:15 Developing a Quality and Productivity Plan, getting input from multiple company presidents within a corporation 9:00 Building consensus among 12 company presidents 11:00 Long-term strategic plans for Japanese companies 13:30 How do we educate our top leadership? Should we buy them books like Norman's “Kaikaku“? 13:50 Norman likes to ask, “If not me, who?” Who is going to do it? How are we going to empower people to work “bottom up” If you're a middle manager, you have take charge, quit living with fear 15:30 Is the boss necessarily smarter than you?16:20 A great story about convincing a boss to NOT outsource to Asia by asking him “what do you really want?” and working toward the cost reduction targets. How many companies go to China just to join that bandwagon? 17:50 “At this rate, we'd all better learn to speak Chinese,” Norman says 18:10 Schwinn bicycle outsourced to Taiwan, then the company learned and took over design, etc. and became a big brand, Giant bicycles. They didn't need Schwinn anymore. 19:20 People at all levels of the organization point fingers up and down about why we can't do lean 20:30 The waste of not utilizing human talent, that provides the most opportunity 20:45 Why do we outsource to China before we've reduced waste and made the most of people here, instead of re-organizing our plants to avoid outsourcing? 21:40 A lot of companies say they want to empower employees, but do they know how? 23:50 Should every employee be their own boss? Norman gives an example of employees and the boss working together in a problem solving example 26:10 Norman got chewed out by a client for telling a worker what to do to solve some defects, he was told “that's not what you're here for…” It's a lesson Norman forgets sometimes, you have to ask employees, not tell. 30:30 Toyota still has a hierarchy of leadership and “bosses” within the factory, how does that fit with Norman's idea of everyone “being their own boss?” 31:30 Why are front line employees typically powerless? 33:45 Why do some bosses think that information = power, so they withhold information? 34:45 Ohno set a goal of “remove this warehouse in one year” and didn't tell people how (other than “retrain people as mechanics”), he expected them to figure out the solution