Meet-up: Evolving Excellence's Kevin Meyer

Today, I am pleased to Meet-up with Kevin Meyer of LeanCEO.com and Evolving Excellence.  I have been following Kevin since my early years as he was one of the first online Lean resources. Kevin is extremely talented and creative as seen from his successful various business endeavors. You probably don't even realize the influence Kevin has had on your journey but I think if you look you will find you have used some of his resources.


The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

1. Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Kevin Meyer, and for the past seven years I have been president of Specialty Silicone Fabricators, a 400-person multi-site contract manufacturer of medical device components. After getting my chemical engineering degree from Rensselaer, I made light bulbs for Sylvania for several years, then medical products with Abbott for over a decade, telecom photonics for Newport, and started and sold my own contract manufacturing company.

On the side I run a lean knowledgebase, LeanCEO.com, and blog at Evolving Excellence. I’m a partner in Gemba Academy, which now provides online lean training to over 1,000 customers worldwide. I’m also a partner in another technology company outside of the lean space, and sit on the boards of two other tech companies.

Somehow I find the time to do some consulting, primarily focused on executive level lean leadership. I also consult with venture capital groups that need to understand the value in potential investment opportunities that include manufacturing operations. I’ve found VCs to be surprisingly open to non-traditional valuation methods.

With my wife Kim I live in Morro Bay, California, a small fishing village on the central coast, surrounded by over 220 wineries. For well over a decade I’ve succeeded at an annual goal to visit two new countries and learn something radically new each year.

2. How and when did you learn Lean?
My first experience with lean, although I didn’t know it yet, was with Sylvania in the mid-80s. We had just received our first contract to supply auto headlights to Toyota and had shipped over the first 100,000 units. A few weeks later we got a call that there was a major quality problem, and several folks went to Japan in response. On the Toyota conference table were five defective units. We discussed the problems, then asked for the rest of the defective units so we could analyze them. The Toyota folks looked at us funny then explained that those five were the defective units, and the quality level was unacceptable. We changed our underwear and flew home to a new reality.

In 1997, about seven years into my career with Abbott Laboratories, I was offered the opportunity to move to Salt Lake City to run the company’s largest molding facility. What they didn’t tell me was that this was a 24/7/365 operation, with every machine running, and they were still several weeks late delivering to multiple downstream assembly plants. So how do you catch up? The pressure was on.

I began to poke around at the early internet and discovered the Toyota Production System, lean, and The Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Thanks to the likes of Dave Hogg, Doc Hall, and Dan McDonnell I learned about several lean concepts, with quick changeover being the key to turning around our molding operation. Within six months we were caught up, and after a year we were actually getting rid of old, unnecessary equipment even though our demand continued to grow.

Since then I’ve been able to leverage lean to make significant improvements in many other operations. My knowledge of lean continues to grow thanks to knowing several people in the lean world, serving on the board of directors of AME for many years, visiting lean companies around the world, and especially by being able to try new ideas and concepts in the companies I’ve been part of.

3. How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
As I was learning about lean in 1997 I began to capture a list of online resources on my computer. Colleagues at my company soon asked for that list, and then some colleagues outside of the company. I created Superfactory.com to hold those resources, which soon grew to become one of the largest lean resource sites. In 2004 I started the Evolving Excellence blog, and I continue to post a couple times a week. As I moved into more general management and executive roles I began to explore how lean could be applied to leadership – therefore I also shifted the Superfactory.com knowledgebase into LeanCEO.com, broadening the focus onto lean leadership.

Bill Waddell and I wrote Evolving Excellence – the book – in 2007. I am currently writing a book on how personal and professional leadership can be transformed by lean and zen principles. It’s a bit of a struggle as the unnecessary wordiness of most business texts, and the publishing business itself, flies in the face of the principles I’m promoting.

4. What does Lean mean to you?
I am definitely not a lean “purist” – I believe lean does and must evolve from the teachings of Woollard, Ford, Shingo, and Ohno. This puts me at odds with many in the lean community who argue vociferously whenever someone violates some principle apparently carved in stone and ensconced in Japan. Such argument is, ironically, a waste in itself.

My experience in the real world – running multiple manufacturing facilities and even companies – has taught me that every situation is unique even if the underlying issues have the same common roots. The core philosophy of lean – specifying and optimizing value from the perspective of the customer and leveraging people – remains relatively constant, as do the fundamental tools. But new ideas and new perspectives continue to present themselves. Just as lean teaches us to challenge perspectives and the status quo, philosophies and tools, including lean, should also always be challenged. And someday there will be something new.

5. What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
Maybe it’s not the biggest myth or misconception, but not understanding or perhaps outright ignorance of the importance of the respect for people pillar of lean creates missed opportunities for most organizations on the lean journey. I believe it is also the reason for most lean failures.

Traditional financial statements account for the “cost” of people but there is no offsetting “value” – the value of experience, knowledge and creativity. This leads to crazy decisions like laying off thousands of experienced people to save a few bucks an hour on labor, while incurring supply chain, quality, and retraining costs.

By focusing on creating great people and using their ideas you can achieve incredible competitive advantage. My company successfully competes with companies in low labor “cost” countries like India and China – and we do it from what is supposedly one of the most business unfriendly states in the country. I can give you examples of many other companies doing the same, many of which are in low margin businesses. Stop complaining and start learning how to compete.

I’ve learned that the largest cost in business is not material, labor, or overhead – it’s unnecessary complexity. The key to reducing complexity is leveraging smart people who are given the right tools. I still haven’t seen a robot submit a suggestion for improvement – which is perhaps why some of the most efficient factories in the world have the lowest number of robots.

6. What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I have several ongoing lean projects, generally revolving around disseminating lean knowledge. Lean CEO continues to grow, as does Gemba Academy. I am also interested in how lean can be applied to unique industry niches, and with a couple partners am launching another startup in September to capitalize on one such opportunity.

However my strongest interest is with how lean and zen principles can dramatically transform both professional and personal leadership. The nexus is very interesting. Some of this grew out of necessity – having to juggle a bunch of projects as well as handle a difficult and chaotic family medical situation. But it also grew out of my occasional lean leadership consulting, which has almost always morphed into more of an executive coaching. Simplicity, clarity, enabling people, defined planning but living in the moment, hansei reflection.

The Importance of Networking for Learning Lean

Lean Manufacturing has been taught from practitioner to practitioner and company to company for decades. This learning and reciprocal sharing of best practices is what helps us all improve.

A network of like-minded professionals creates an opportunity for those that practice Lean, Six Sigma and other improvement philosophies to share their knowledge; and for those that are considering the methodologies to learn through questioning and relationships with practitioners. Local groups that share your interest in a particular topic, offer a great forum to learn and share information for little or no cost. Special interest groups within these groups can offer further topic specialization and can be a tremendous way to learn or be mentored.

Finding a network near you doesn’t have to be difficult. Many professional associations like the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), American Society of Quality (ASQ), and many others offer these networks. Local MEP and consultants also have a good network of connections that can help. Start by finding those networks near you and ask how you can get involved.

Now, when you are ready to visit a company willing to share it is not enough to just show up. You should go prepared to answer one of your problems. If you visit with the goal of finding a solution to a problem at your company you will be more apt to find it. Copying solutions don’t work but can help you learn a better way. Remember to “adopt then adapt” when implementing solutions. The reverse often results in a failure to implement.

Hosting a visit is equally valuable. Here are some tips I’ve learned from hosting:

Set and meet expectations. Before the day arrives, understand what the visitors want to see. Suggest what might be the best way to experience your program. Be clear about the time commitment.

Seek feedback. Using something like the “3 idea form” ask visitors to record 3 good things they will take back with them and 3 opportunities for improvement for the host site.

Allow for follow-up. Make connects, share contact info, and create an opportunity for visitors to follow-up. Inherently, once you return home to implement something you might have seen you find more questions and it can be helpful to have someone to follow-up with.

Visiting a company or hosting a visit can be a great way recognizing your achievements. It also helps reinforce your pursuit of Lean by sharing your journey with others who are on the same journey. Networking supports the continuous learning cycle we all need to feed our improvements.

The Ten Steps of Starting the Journey Towards Lean Improvement

In recent years, more companies have adopted Lean as a continuous improvement method to improve profitability, enhance customer satisfaction and maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Based on a customer-focused view, Lean can provide a strong foundation for any organization that wants to incorporate continuous improvement into its operating philosophy.

Starting the Lean journey can be difficult. It is critical to have alignment and clearly state the need for improvement from the beginning. There are ten key steps that should be taken when starting the journey towards a Lean improvement.

1. Establish a need to improve and obtain management commitment
2. Define the improvement objective
3. Identify and acquire necessary resources
4. Collect information and determine current state
5. Uncover the root cause
6. Identify and test countermeasures that will meet the improvement objectives
7. Develop plans for implementing the countermeasures which ensure buy-in
8. Implement the improvement
9. Standardize the improvement
10. Repeat starting a step 1

Every system should have provision for an improvement cycle. Therefore when an objective has been achieved, work should commence on identifying better ways of doing it. There is no improvement without measurement. An organization must establish current performance before embarking on any improvement. If it does not, it will have no baseline from which to determine if its efforts have yielded any improvement.

Lean improvement is about the entire organization and everything it does. Lean Thinking has to be a prime concern of executive management and its success depends upon commitment from them. Their commitment must also be highly visible. It is not enough to demand improvement. If executive management does not demonstrate its commitment by doing what it says it will do they cannot expect others to be committed either.

These steps can develop a Lean process improvement strategy in any business. As with any process, as lessons are learned, make improvements to the Lean effort. Modify and strengthen the infrastructure; select new tools to add to your "arsenal," develop improved methods to measure and communicate progress; and challenge cells to constantly get better, faster, and more productive.

Lean Quote: Nurture Your Energy Levels With Rest and Relaxation

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"One of the most important requirements for being happy and productive is for you to guard and nurture your energy levels at all times." — Brian Tracy

Most of us think that time management is only about how you control your time, but that’s actually not true. It’s also about managing your sources of energy that allow you to get work done.

According to Brian Tracy, there are 3 forms of energy that a person has to be aware of:

Physical, Emotional and Mental Energy.

On a physical level, you want to be well-rested and fit. There is no way you are getting things done when you are physically tired. On an emotional level, you need to feel good and have positive emotions to bring out the best in yourself. When you are experiencing a storm of negative emotions it is very hard to focus and work at the task at hand. Lastly, on a mental level, you must have the desire and willpower to work.

These are interrelated and have to be recharged to live a successful life. People tend to consume their emotional energy by being negative. Nurturing negative emotions such as anger, disappointment and fear will burn you out. When this energy is consumed, physical and mental energy are also affected.

Successful people have an effective way of conserving their emotional energy. They are calm, objective in dealing with situations and able to control their emotions.

When you take physical relaxation, your emotional and mental batteries are recharged as well.

You have the most leverage to get work done when your physical, emotional, and mental energies are in sync. Start paying attention to your energy levels to be more productive. The goal in taking a rest and having relaxation is to build and use your energies to have a quality and successful life.

Guest Post: Set-in-Order Lessons from the Bathroom Closet

Today's guest post is from Aimee Siegler, a fellow ASQ Influential Voices Blogger.  Aimee is the global compliance manager at Benchmark Electronics. Her interests include supply chain management and communication, hazardous substance and risk management, and sustainability. She blogs at Thoughts on Quality in a Chaotic World. Today she shares some 5S advice from home that we can all relate to and how to use this in our businesses.

It seems like the set in order part of a 5 S should be easy, right? After all, you’ve got a nice clean canvas to work on, and you’ve already weeded out the junk. Last night, I gave this a try in the closet in my children’s bathroom. As you can see from the before picture, this closet was in need of some work. There are so many soaps stuffed on one of the shelves that I could not even see that I was out of something else that we regularly use. The tissue boxes perched on my laundry drying rack were courtesy of a request to my 6-year-old son Matthew, “Please put the tissues away.” I’ve been unable to find some towels recently because they were all thrown in haphazardly. Clearly, this was a 5s project waiting to happen.

Before Matthew went to bed, I asked him what things he would like to be able to reach. He told me that he wanted to be able to reach the washcloths, plus extras of things he might be asked to replace – the soap, tissues and toilet paper. The way things were, he could not reach or easily get to most of these things, meaning he had to balance on a stool or ask for help. One other issue that I had to deal with was chemicals – even on the stool, neither of my kids can reach the top shelf, so that is the only place that chemicals can be stored.

This morning, both of my kids were excited to see the results of my project. Their towels, plus the things Matthew requested were all neatly organized on the bottom shelf. There is no longer anything stacked on the drying rack, so the kids can easily reach the toilet paper. The next shelf includes towels that are used to wipe up messes, and the kids can also reach that easily. The towels my husband and I use are on the next shelf up, while the chemicals remain out of reach at the top. Next summer, Matthew and Hannah will be able to get their own beach towels out when we go to the pool.

Working on this project at home reminded me of a conversation that I had with a manufacturing engineer earlier this year. The engineer was very proud of the tool trays that he put together on a manufacturing line to make tools easily accessible to the operators. It fit right next to the workspace. When I audited the facility several months later, the tray was buried under paperwork and another layer of tools. When I asked the operator why the tool tray was buried, she said that those were not the tools she needed.

At home, it was okay for me to ask my son a few questions, get no input from my daughter (let alone my husband), and then tackle a small project. However, at work it is critical to involve the people who work in the project area to ensure that we are adding some value in doing the exercise. It is not enough to organize things neatly; we need to put things in the place that they are most useful. This engineer’s 5s project created a pedestal to store papers and hand tools; what kind of projects have you done lately?

Celebrating Independence Today and Everyday

The United States Independence Day (also known as the Fourth of July because that's the day it is celebrated) is a holiday that celebrates the separation of the United States from Great Britain, and the United States' declaration of independence. Traditionally, many people celebrate this day with family and friend gatherings, barbecues, parties, games, food, fun, festivals, parades, musical events and fireworks. It is important not to forget the true meaning of the day.

Variously known as the Fourth of July and Independence Day, July 4th has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution (1775-83). In June 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies then fighting in the revolutionary struggle weighed a resolution that would declare their independence from Great Britain. On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later its delegates adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson. From 1776 until the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the birth of American independence, with typical festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues.

Lean Manufacturing is a business method that extends employees independence. It provides more employees with the tools, methods and authority to make decisions. It creates teams to measure progress and devise new techniques. This leads to higher employee motivation and productivity
as workers are asked to come up with solutions to problems as opposed to having to work with flawed procedures. There is much to be said for greater worker independence in the execution of a Lean philosophy. We may not have a day to celebrate independence like the US but the message is no less important.

Meet-up: Kaizen Institute's Jon Miller

Today, we’ll meet-up with Jon Miller, the CEO of the Kaizen Institute. Jon frequently blogs at Gemba Panta Rei, the company's blog. He is one of the first Lean bloggers I ever followed. Jon's first hand experience over many years and his highly creative style make for a great combination.  He is frequently highlighted in the monthly round-up.


The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some other influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions:

Who are you and what do you do?
Jon Miller of Kaizen Institute. I try to help people and organizations remove barriers so they can achieve their potential.

How and when did you learn Lean?
I spent 8 years working as a Japanese-English interpreter for consultants from the Shingijutsu group. This took me around the world where these sensei were using kaizen events as a way to help companies solve problems and build a semblance of TPS. During these years I learned PDCA, how to make kaizen events work, and various TPS subsystems and improvement tools. I also learned that you can’t string together kaizen events and expect a lasting change. That inspired me to move into the consulting world in 1998. This allowed me to try out kaizen and Lean without having grey hair or a Japanese face. That’s when I really started learning the importance of the organizational and leadership elements of kaizen. Since the year 2000 we’ve organized more than 120 study missions to Japan and these were always opportunities to either firm up what I knew or shake it up and reframe it. What I still haven’t learned is how to make Lean succeed in social and business environments that lacking long-term thinking, basic fairness in compensation systems and a constancy in leadership purpose.

How and why did you start blogging or writing about Lean?
I started blogging about lean for purely mercenary reasons. A company advising us about internet marketing recommended that we start a blog to increase website traffic. At some point after 1 or 2 years blogging became a lot more widespread with other Lean bloggers joining in. Soon there were quite a few people reading and getting value from the blog. This gave me a sense of responsibility to put good quality information out there since there was and continues to be so much misinformation about Lean.

What does Lean mean to you?
At a deeper level it’s a very optimistic way of looking at the world and seeing that all of our problems are solvable. There is enough to go around. We can do more with less. People working together will find a way. This is necessary since a Lean person has to face the brutal reality of a staggering amount of waste in every industry and sector, behaviors contrary to Lean and so forth. At a superficial level, Lean is an annoyance. The term Lean is a small subset of the work we need to be doing, science in service of society in the broadest sense. Lean is an easy bundle of systems, tools, ideas, shorthand for getting started with improvement, but too often people aren’t curious enough to delve deeper so the new “Lean thing” that gets popularized is another bastardized version of something that is already ill-defined. At an extremely practical level, Lean is a livelihood and a profession. Here I am having dedicated 20 years to Lean, so I feel grateful to Lean regardless of the term’s limitations, and a sense of responsibility to make sure Lean grows up to achieve its full potential.

What is the biggest myth or misconception of Lean?
The misconception is that we can draw boundaries around a few observable things and label it Lean. The orthodox definitions of Lean are criminally inadequate. Elimination of waste, variation and overburden; customer focus, map value, flow, pull, pursue perfection; continuous improvement and respect for people, etc. All of these are important and practicing Lean can do us a world of good but until we look at Lean with an inclusive and truly long-term view of societal values, industrial policy, economics, education, etc. it will always be an exercise in rework.

What is your current Lean passion, project, or initiative?
I’m trying to do less. It’s a huge challenge.