You Can Do What With Lean?: The First Annual Lean Champion Conference “My favorite part was seeing the possibilities beyond the basics of Lean. The whole event answered a lot of questions I didn't know I had.” – Charlie Evans, ProLIft. The role of Lean Champions is to lead their Dealership through the journey of applying Lean. They live the core values of Toyota, as well as practice and teach the principles of Lean to their Dealership while creating a culture of kaizen, or continuous improvement. We have been looking forward to a time when the Lean Champions could learn from each other’s kaizen activity, and after a time of working virtually, we were finally able to make this happen. Kaizen Sharing Our first Lean Champion conference, held this past October at Shoppa’s Material Handling, was our opportunity to bring the Lean Champions from multiple dealerships together and learn from each other’s experiences. “ Experiencing the viewpoints of other Lean leaders helps broaden the techniques we use in coaching and mentoring our own people ,” Brett Holbrook – Shoppa’s Material Handling. Each Lean Champion presented specific examples of how they have applied Toyota Lean Management (TLM or Lean for short) in their kaizen activity and how it improved their Dealership. Robert Payne of Toyota Material Handling MidSouth shared how his team reduced the average lead time for a repair in the shop from 17 days to 11 days! This was done by applying the Essence of Lean Cycle. They created a standard process, visualized that process, saw the problems daily through morning team meetings, and solved those problems to gradually reduce the lead time. Robert summed it up, “ We cut our lead time nearly in half with a dry erase board.” This truly shows the power of daily Visual Management. The TMHMS Daily Meeting at their Visual Management Board Aaron Ibanez of Southeast Industrial Equipment, shared what he learned from his team’s kaizen activity on parking spaces for trucks. The trucks used to be stored in front of each other. Someone would have to move a truck to get to the one they needed, which was a waste of time. The SIE team redesigned the truck storage area with angled parking. They determined the best parking angle through experimentation, and they are now able to get any truck in a minute. Angled parking at SIE helps them store a large number of trucks and still easily access them TLM at Shoppa’s Shoppa’s Material Handling was our host for the conference, and they walked us through how they have been using TLM in their Fort Worth and Saginaw branches. Preston Shoppa welcomed us to their facility and was excited to share what they had learned with us. The Shoppa’s Lean Team, Brady Muller, Brett Holbrook, and Travis Bradley led us through how they have applied TLM throughout the shop and office. They showed us kaizen activity in freight recovery, field service routes, van design, and more. We also got to see how they visualized the rental, repair, and field service process. Pat Kelly and Jonathan Jones led us through all of the TLM work they have done at the Saginaw branch. This is the largest TLM transformation that I have seen in such a short amount of time. In one year, they visualized their refurbishment process, 5S sustainment, truck storage, lead time metrics, quality metrics, and started daily team meetings at their visual management boards. This culture has led to increased communication with all team members and a reduction in lead time. “ We could see how the people (at Shoppa’s) are engaged with Lean and work as a team ” – Aaron Ibanez, Southeast Industrial Equipment. Brady Muller of Shoppa’s presenting his field service kaizen activity Engaging Customers with Lean in Step 3 TLM has three Steps. Step 1-Lean Champion Development, Step 2-Implement Lean in the Dealership, and Step 3-Leverage Lean with Customers. Steps 1 and 2 are about building up the dealership team to be able to do Step 3. A few dealerships are far enough along on their Lean journey and have begun using Lean to create unique relationships with their customers. Using Lean in the sales process is a key part of value selling. Customers want help with Lean, and it’s a part of our Toyota DNA with which we are uniquely equipped. Zach Smith from Toyota Material Handling Systems shared how he has used Lean tours of their Dealership to create new sales and provide 5S training to connect with customers. Aaron Ibanez from SIE has worked with Bridgestone to evaluate the flow of equipment at one of their facilities and shows them how they can apply Lean thinking to change their shop layout and improve flow. Brady Muller of Shoppa’s won a paid Lean consulting deal for a customer, in which he will do a Lean assessment of a manufacturing operation to assist them in applying lean to a pilot process. Shoppa’s Lean team has also helped a conquest customer apply 5S to their facility. The potential customer sees the additional value Toyota offers and is currently in discussion with the Shoppa’s team. Closing I want to thank Shoppa’s Material Handling team for all of the hard work they put into hosting our first annual Lean Champion Conference. This was a great experience for all of us to see each other’s kaizen activity and to see TLM in action at Shoppa’s dealerships. “It was refreshing seeing that other people in the industry have had some of the same struggles we are experiencing, and seeing how they much improved by using the TLM core values.” – Charlie Evans, ProLift . We look forward to seeing the TLM activity from the months ahead in our second Lean Champion Conference next fall. First Lean Champion Conference Attendees at Shoppa’s Saginaw facility
First Annual Lean Champion Conference
