GA 069 | Lean Farming with Thomas Riner

You're listening to episode 69 with Thomas Reiner, the lean farmer.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey there. This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. As always, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now today I have a very exciting show for you. We are going to be talking about a topic that we have never addressed at Gemba Academy in any of our podcasts or videos or really blog articles, anything. And that topic is lean farming. And Thomas Reiner is joining us today. And as you're going to hear, Thomas has a background in continuous improvement, just a traditional background. He went through a formal continuous improvement training at his day job and his, his wife and himself recently bought a farm and, and kind of figured out how to apply lean thinking principles to the way that they go about farming. And so that's what we're going to really explore. We talk about, you know, kind of how they got into it, how they, how they almost really needed lean as a necessity more than anything to, to keep the farm going with just, you know, Thomas and his wife run. And we talk about just some really practical examples of what they've done and we also talk about some of their failures. So Thomas really pulls the curtain back on what they've been up to. As you'll hear, Thomas has been heavily influenced by our good friend Paul Akers and 2 second lean. So that was really cool to hear about. And I will say, even if you aren't into farming, I think all of us would agree that we are definitely customers of farms. So whether it's in the food that we buy or even some of the clothes that we wear, we're, we're heavily influen, influenced by the farming industry. So I think if you're interested in Lean and the world, I think you're really gonna like this show. I know it was one of my favorite ones to ever record. So show notes for this episode will be found over@gembapodcast.com 69 and that's 6, 9 for 69. So gembapodcast.com 69. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the. All right, Thomas, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from today?

Thanks for having me. I'm calling you from Central Virginia.

All right, Central Virginia. So we've got a really interesting topic to explore today. It's something that is definitely a first for Gemba Academy's podcast and I'm really excited to get into lean farming. But let's just go ahead and take one step back before we get there and why don't you just kind of tell everybody about your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and how you first learned about all this stuff.

Sure. Back in 2006, I was working for a company that selected me to go through their Lean Six Sigma training. And I went through the normal training, the five or so weeks that folks go through DMAIC with a little bit of lean mixed in, and then eventually got my black belt certification. And then time went on and eventually got my master black belt certification. And along the way I worked lean projects. And whether it was span reduction or any of your basic type of lean projects, transactional even, I did some of those types of projects. So I was familiar with lean, trained in lean and knew all the terms and so forth. And then about a year or two ago, I was introduced to 2 second lean via Paul Akers book. And that's where I say I kind of had my lean awakening, if you will. I had a head knowledge before, but I got more of a heart knowledge or became very passionate about it. And so that's kind of how I got my experience with process improvement and still work it as a full time job today. Still work process improvement and still enjoy it immensely.

Love it. Yeah. Paul is an amazing person and know him well and is one of my favorite. Not just lean people, just favorite people and all over the world, he's a fantastic guy. So. All right, well, very good, Thomas. So as you know, we like to start all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quotation that possibly inspires him. So do you have one?

Sure. I'm going to actually give you one that my dad has always told me ever since I've been a kid. And that is change is inevitable. Growth is optional and especially if you're a change agent or you're dealing, whether it's lean or Six Sigma or leading teams or whatever it may be, change is coming one way or the other. But it's up to you decide to grow with that and learn something with that and Companies are in the same situation. As far as, you know, you have to be flexible, you have to be willing to change, you have to be willing to grow. And those that aren't, you know, eventually, you know, things don't work out well. So that, that's been one that always has stuck in my mind is change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

Love it. Very good. All right, so let's just get into this whole lean farming topic, and before we get into the lean side of it, let's just talk about how you were first introduced to farming. Are you a longtime farmer?

No, actually neither. My wife and I are longtime farmers. My granddaddy used to raise hogs, but I never saw him do that and was never exposed to it. You know, my dad didn't farm and my wife's folks really didn't farm. She had a grandmother that had, you know, a few animals, but no serious farming per se. But my wife and I, over the past few years have become more interested in, you know, what type of food we're putting into our bodies and paying attention to the quality of that food. And we've always also just wanted to live out in the country, and we've always, for some reason wanted to have a farm. And so a couple years ago we were able to purchase a 30 acre place. And to some people that'll be really small, and to others it might sound really large. It's all relative, I guess. But we were able to get a place and kind of start our dream of having some animals that we would eventually be able to raise and then provide for ourselves that way. And then along the way we had a lot of folks start asking us, hey, do you sell eggs? Or hey, do you sell any of your pork? And different things like that. And so we said, well, hey, let's give this a try. There's a large movement now with folks, you know, wanting to build a relationship with their local farmer and learn about their processes and how they treat their animals and so forth. And so the, the base was there, and that's kind of what got us started into the farming side of things.

Got it. So you start a farm, get some animals, you're figuring it out. I don't know if you're reading books or whatever, you know, kind of finding your way. When did you first think to apply lean to farming? I guess. What problem were you trying to solve?

That's a great question. And that's exactly what happened. We got the farm and, you know, we started with like three chickens and then, and then grew from there. And the way we learn is just like you said, people go, hey, how do you, how do you know all this stuff? And we would be like, well, we don't really know. You know, we read a book or we watch YouTube and we try to figure it out. And what got us into the lean or really thinking about lean was it did grow again. It's still a small farm and we're trying to continue to grow it, but it did grow pretty rapidly. And, and you know, I still work a full time job. My wife homeschools and does everything with two very active kids. And then she was also running the farm. She was basically keeping it running. And it started to get overwhelming, to be honest with you. And along that same time is where 2 second lean came along. And you know, part of the main message of that book is, hey, every day just make some small improvement. Even if it's not huge, just make some small improvement and things will eventually start to get better. And so that's kind of what got me into thinking about lean on the farm was, you know, hey, if we're actually going to be able to do this, you know, we're going to have to figure out how to work smarter and we're going to have to try to make things easier on us. And you know, as Paul says, we're going to have to try to fix things that bug us. So that's what kind of got us into it. And then the more I started thinking about it and looking at the farm and how people farm, it dawned on me that most farmers really aren't lean farmers per se. Farmers are very innovative, they're very hardworking and a lot of them have lean tendencies, but they don't really think about the eight wastes and how their practices a lot of times contribute or add to those eight wastes.

What's interesting also is I believe I read this. I don't know if it was Ono or one of the original lean thinkers of our time basically said that a lot of this batch production mindset is, came from the early farmers. You know, they're storing up all their wheat and whatnot for the long winter and and so forth. And, and this is, you know, this tendency is what has, you know, has largely influenced the world. Not just farming, but everything. The way we manufacture product is mass production is natural to us. One piece flow is, is not. Would you agree?

Exactly. That's actually one of the things that has really dawned on me over the past months here is, is overproduction with farmers just like it all the time. Whether it's, you know, the hay that we need for our cows, we, we have a huge field that we all grow, you know, grows up at the same time. And then we, we cut all that hay and then we, you know, they, they rake the hay and they eventually bail the hay. But it's, it's basically overproducing, if you will, all of that hay. And, and for a farmer that may be listening, they're probably going to be thinking, I'm crazy. Like, what other way would you do it? But just like you said, you know, in the manufacturing world, folks that are catching on a lean realize that, you know, single piece flow is the way to go. How exactly that would look, you know, if you're harvesting corn or if you're harvesting hay, I'm not going to say I have the answers all figured out yet. But if you could get folks to start thinking that way, you know, imagine what they could, what they could unleash.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so share some examples of how lean thinking has improved your farming experience.

Oh, yes. Well, you know, there's a lot of day to day chores that come along with the farm. You know, whether it's just feeding and watering, and a lot of the animals are spread out on purpose, geographically spread out, just to kind of keep the symbiotic relationship going. And so when you're having to do all that traveling, you know, that's a lot of waste there that you start thinking about. Another jump that we had is when we had, you know, just a few animals. You could just go to the local feed store and just buy like a 50 pound bag of feed. And that would last you for a while. But the more animals you get, the more feed you need to get. So then you start looking at buying in bulk. And then you start looking at, okay, you know, am I overproducing with the bulk feed? You know, how much feed should I get? How much should I not get? And so one of the things we did is we established basically a kanban with our, with our feed. And we know when we get down to a certain amount of pounds left, we need to reorder and then restock that in. But it was like a conscious decision to look at how frequently are we going through the feed, you know, and when do we need to reorder so that we don't overproduce and have a bunch of inventory. And then if something happens, there's, you know, a recall, whatever type of defect you want to, you want to add there. And then all the waste that come associated with that. So those, you know, those are just a few of the things along with just trying to make life easier on the farm and chores easier so you enjoy what you're doing. That's one of the things about a farmer is, you know, you don't. You don't leave at 5 and it all stops. It's a 24, 7 job. You know, weekends, vacations, holidays, you're still farming. So you really have to love it and enjoy it. And if things become burdensome or hard to deal with, it takes that joy out of it.

Now, Paul, actually, I guess a few weeks ago, he shared one of your YouTube videos. I believe it was like chicken coop or something like that. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so, you know, traditional. And again, I'm not talking about what I'll call animal factories. Those large. I just call them factories. I don't call them farms where they cram all the chickens together. And, you know, so I'll say a traditional farm, if you will. What most people kind of think in their mind of a farm, you know, it had a chicken coop on it. But, you know, I kind of looked at that and we said, hey, that's kind of overproducing for that coop, if you will, because all of the waste that comes with that then builds up in there, and then you've got the, if you will, the inventory of that waste. And now I have to transport that waste and then I have to store that waste in certain areas. And then I have to. There's over processing dealing with that and motion dealing with that. And then it's wasting my time when I could be doing something more valuable. So we utilize chicken tractors, and we weren't the first people to come up with a chicken tractor. But the reason why chicken tractors work so good is because it's lean. And so basically a chicken tractor is a mobile chicken coop that every day or so, often push it a little bit further along. It gives the chickens fresh grass, fresh bugs to be munching on there. And then it also gives them a fresh place to drop their droppings, if you will. And it doesn't soil the ground. It's actually better for the ground. So it's getting that kind of symbiotic relationship with the chicken in the ground. And the reason why it works is because in my mind, it's lean that.

Way, so it's on wheels, basically. Do you have to move it with a tractor or your.

No, that's a great question. So we tried to design it such that you can just push it. As a matter of fact, unless it's on a hill or something, my 10 year old daughter can go out there and push it. So again, try to think from a lean perspective that way and keep it easy and keep it simple.

We'll link to the YouTube video in our show notes because I think people would really love to see that. So we talked about this in the pre interview that my wife and I actually just bought a. We don't have 30 acres, but we bought some land here in Texas with 1.1 acres and my wife is big time into. She desperately wants a few chickens. So how do I start a lean chicken movement, if you will? I don't have 30 acres. But what advice and speak to my wife right now because she's listening.

I gotcha. Well, you know, do your homework and do your research about the number of chickens or the type of chicken that you'd want to get in the breed and the type of eggs that you're looking to. And then, you know, I would encourage you to try to do the chicken tractor and there's a zillion different designs out on the web or of course I could send you some pictures. But the chicken tractor again will allow you to be more flexible, move around and it doesn't lock you into place. You know, again, maybe another way to think about it is, you know, whenever we're talking about lean, there's always some piece of equipment that's the monument that always causes us trouble because we can't move it around. Yeah, same thing applies with the chicken coop. Once you build that in a fixed place, you don't have any flexibility anymore. So you know, if you can build a chicken tractor that's movable and mobile, it just gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility with what you can do.

Exactly. Very good. All right, well, so we've talked about some successes and what's gone well, but tell us about a lean farming failure. Surely you've had one. What went wrong and what did you learn from it?

Alright, sure. So one of the things that we do on the farm is our pigs actually free range, which is pretty unheard of. After, after we set ours up, I actually did discover there's probably a few hundred, maybe a thousand people spread out across the United States that do this, but it's not very many folks. But the pigs basically free range in an area and the only thing that holds them in is an electric fence. So when I was first working on this and my wife and I were trying to figure it out. We basically took, you know, four or five acres and fenced it in with the electric fence. And then we had this big giant bore that weighed somewhere between 600 and 800 pounds. And I turned them out in the free range area. And I was so excited about this. I can't explain. I'd been thinking about it. I planned it all out. I spent all this time running wire and running all the, you know, the fence posts and everything. And I turned them out in there. And then, I don't know, it was about 11 o' clock at night. I heard our dog just kind of keep barking and barking and barking and couldn't figure out what was going on. And so I slipped into our sunroom and I flipped on the light and I looked out the door and this big old huge boar was staring at me right up through my. Through my side door there.

Oh, my gosh.

And so I was like, oh, my goodness, you know, how we gonna get him back in? I called my wife and, you know, what are we gonna do? And fortunately, he was kind of like a big teddy bear. And we had named him Boss Hog. So I just went outside and said, come on, Boss Hogg. And he just followed me back down to the lot and we got him up. But it literally crushed me because I was expecting, you know, I wanted it to work so bad. And so it took me a few days to kind of get over that because I wasn't sure how we were going to make it work. But we learned from it and kind of learned from our mistake. I let him out right before dark, and I think all he did is he didn't really know where the line was yet, and he just kind of stumbled through the fence and then come on up to the house. So next day, put him in there, gave him some time to learn the line, and it went great from there. And for the most part, we haven't had too much trouble with it.

You know what's interesting about that story is how you were obviously so kind of passionate about this process and the expectation of wanting it to succeed, and when it didn't, that can be a crushing blow. Not just farming, but just lean in general, right? You have this great plan for this Kaizen event or whatever it might be, and you go out and you do it, implement the countermeasures or whatever it might be, and oh, didn't work. But that can be crushing.

Exactly. And I have experienced that in like the manufacturing side. Just like you said, you've got this plan and you execute and you know, you don't get the results that you want, but you learn from it and you keep going. And that's the, you know, that's also part of lean, you'll hear people say is you got to be curious and you've got to be experimenting and always trying different things. And so that's a lot of the ways our farm is kind of like a big test bed. We're always trying new ideas and some of them are utter failures and others work great.

Now aside from these, as you described, the chicken factories and what large scale kind of factories like that, excluding them, but we think about larger scale farmers, dairy farmers or whatever it might be, do you think that they can benefit from lean thinking?

Yes, I do. I think when it comes to right now, in particular, like I said, the over processing, overproduction is on my mind a lot. Maybe that's because it's hay season and everybody's cutting hay. But whether it's cutting hay or whether it's just the number of animals you try to cram into a small space, they're overproducing and there's all sorts of waste that come along after you overproduce like that. And so I think if farmers could, could begin to look and think about the 8 waste and see the 8 waste, then they would be motivated to do something about it and eliminate it and try to make it better. I know another thing. I remember as a child, I used to hunt on a particular farm and whenever I would walk on the farm, I would look at the farmers barns and they were always horribly disorganized. And I always wonder, how could he ever find anything? And I'd always think to myself, I don't ever want to have anything look like that. And then sure enough, when we got into farming and things are so busy and you know, different things are happening, you're having to repair this or repair that. I all of a sudden realized, you know, oh my goodness, my shop looks just like that. It's a mess.

Yep.

And you know, I spend time, look, I lay my hammer down, I can't find my hammer. Whatever tool it is I need, I spend 10 minutes trying to find it.

Yeah.

And so that's something that I've been doing is trying to work to get, you know, my shop organized in the way it should be. But, but farmers are no different. And even if they have a few employees working for them, a lot of times they're going to spend time, you know, looking for tools and finding things, just basic stuff that where if they Freed up that resource because they could find their tools. How much more, you know, productivity because they get out of them on the farm.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so last question in this section I have, Thomas, is what's next for you and your wife as it's related to lean farming?

That's a great question. We continue to think about it on a daily basis. We continue to make improvements on our farm. We're starting to have folks come up and tour the farm. Had some folks come up this past weekend and tour the farm. And I think that's a big piece of continuing to grow, is showing off what you've done, but also showing off how much more you have to do. And I know for me, one of the things that I need to continue to work on is to be able to see waste. I think when people learn to see waste, they'll be motivated to actually eliminate the waste. And as much as you may think you can see waste, I think you can always grow to see it even more, and then that will lead to additional improvements.

All right, well, very good. So let's go ahead, Thomas, now, and transition into what we call the reflection section. And so the first question I have is, as you know, we lean thinkers spend a lot of time talking about kind of the two pillars of TPS and of lean, this continuous improvement and then respect for people. And with continuous improvement being pretty easy to put our fingers on, it's the tools, it's the, you know, one piece flow and 5s and so forth. But what about respect for people? What does that mean to you?

That's a great question. And for me, it means caring about other people's time and their abilities and freeing them up so they can use that creative power to help further the farm in particular. Right now, I think of my wife. There's a lot that's on her because she runs the farm on a daily basis. And so for me to be able to respect her abilities, I need to be able to make sure that we do run a lean farm so she can let out her creative energy, if you will. She comes up with a ton of ideas on the farm, and she's a very lean thinker and has a lot of innovative ideas. And if I've got her tied up doing all sorts of work or processes that have all sorts of waste, I'm not taking advantage of that. And the other thing that comes to mind is a lot of times in a manufacturing setting, we're talking about respect for employees on the farm. I think that could also be respect for the animals, and that may sound a little strange, but, but the animals have certain characteristics or abilities that a lot of times farmers don't take advantage of. So for example, our pigs, they have extremely powerful noses and those noses can do some really good work for you. We've had hillsides that needed to be cleared and normally I'd have to pay a bulldozer to come in and clear that and clean it all up. And instead we just run our pigs over there and it may take a little bit longer, but eventually that pig will clean up all that brush and, and take care of it for us. So, you know, respecting the animal and its abilities and what it can do for you on the farm and kind of harnessing that is another piece of that, but maybe with a slightly different twist for farming.

No, I love that. And especially like you think about with the chickens, how you move them around or whatever. I mean, you know, they have fresh grass and whatnot, you know, and they're not locked into this little cage eating all this, you know, nasty grain or whatever. So that's a much better life for the chicken.

Much better life. And then you know, when theywhen they scratch, they're actually doing stuff to the soil to help the, to the, help the grass grow and then they're fertilizing the grass for you all along the same time.

Yeah.

So it' sit's a lot that can go there as far as if youif you respect the animal and what the animal can naturally do for you.

Love it. Love it. All right, what's the best advice you've ever received?

The best advice I ever received. I think I've received a lot of advice, but I had somebody tell me today, you know, or just recently, be yourself and remember it's all about helping other people and especially for the farming. I do really think this could be powerful for farmers, especially for mid level farmers that are struggling to compete against the big factories. You know, they need every advantage they could get. And so getting a glimpse of lean and what it could do for them, I really think that could help them.

Very good. Do you have a personal productivity habit that others might benefit from?

I'm going to go back to the two second lean and again, I know that's probably been talked about before, but it's something that's really helped me and that's just to every day try to make something better than it was yesterday, some small improvement. And again, it doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes I make the improvement and go, that's really not Much. But it makes me feel better. It keeps my mind thinking about it and it keeps me moving forward and making progress. So making some small improvement to your everyday life is what I do.

Yeah. And go read 2 second lean, right?

That's right.

Small commercial for Paul.

That's right.

So is there something that maybe has surprised you during this past year, practicing lean? Perhaps it's in your day job or on the farm, either one.

I think what surprised me the most is I went through all of that training in 2006 and I continued to get training along the way, growing and trying to take classes and have a ton of lean classes and training and like I said, even worked lean projects. But what surprised me is how blind I was to waste. I knew the ate waste and I knew what Kanbans do and I, you know, tack time, all that stuff. And I'm gonna call it stuff. It's important, but it's tough. But what surprised me was how really blind I was to waste. And like I said, once you see the waste, you will be so motivated to eliminate it, it will kind of constantly be in front of you.

Very good. Do you have a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become better at practicing lean?

You know, again? And I'm probably kind of harping on it, but the thing that I really want to keep doing is seeing the waste, especially in farming, because it's counterintuitive. Like you mentioned before, all farmers have huge grain bins. All farmers cut all their hay at one time and have, you know, 200 hay bales out in the hay field. All farmers have all of their cows drop calves at the exact same time. Instead of trying to think about single piece flow, that, that type of thing, that. That's what I really want to continue to grow on, is how do I see waste in everyday farming practices?

Yeah, I mean, like, I keep thinking about baling hay. I mean, I grew up on a farm in Ohio and so, you know, certain parts of farming are seasonal. So I'm like, I'm even thinking in my mind as we're talking, like, how would you do that? You know, like, if you could just like wave a magic wand to lean out the hay baling process or whatnot. I mean, what would you really do? I mean, have you ever. I mean, do you have any ideas on that?

You know, that's a great question. And it's been really racking my brain thinking about it, about exactly what you could do. I've. And like I said, most farmers, if they're listening to this, they'll be like, hey, that guy's crazy. But that's how you do something new. I suppose. But I've thought about, do you just take small patches of the field and kind of think either single piece flow or. In the manufacturing world, if we can't get down to single piece flow, we always try to reduce the batch size, right?

Yeah.

So maybe you pick and you just cut a quarter acre and then you stagger when you're cutting your hay and kind of cut these little paddocks. And at least that would take away some of the risk. The other thing that comes to mind is if you. If you cannot get away from batching, then you have to have the best quality that you can possibly imagine. Because if you overproduce and you have to transport it and you store it in inventory, but you never get the defect. A lot of those other wastes never come along, like the over processing and the motion and folks waiting and so forth that comes from all that. So if you're not going to be able to reduce down to single piece flow, you better have some awesome quality. And that may lead you down paths, especially with hay. You know, if you. If you get the hay up and it's damp or it's wet, it'll. It'll rot and mildew and then it's no longer any good. So you know, that that line of thinking may also help at least eliminate some of the waste.

What kind of defect rate do you think is if you were to average it out across all the farmers in America as it comes to baling hay and how much hay is scrapped, for lack of a better word? What do you think that is?

Oh, wow, that's a great question. I don't even know if I could begin to guess that. But every year, you know, when I talk to farmers, they. They always inevitably have some that go bad. We were just recently visiting a friend's farm and they had purchased some hay and sure enough, it had been put up damp. And it didn't take too long for them to realize that, you know, it was mildewing and rotting. And so we were actually breaking apart square bales of hay, kind of fluffing it all up in the air, hoping that it would dry and not mildew on them and all the rework that came along with that. So that would be a great question. I'd have to think about that one for a while to even put a guess to it. But see, just like what you said, that's what I love about this conversation is how many farmers are thinking in scrap or rework or defect rates. They're just not thinking about that. And so just if you could get folks mind to start processing in that way, it may free up or they may generate ideas that we haven't even thought of.

Yeah, exactly. Very good, man. I could talk about this all day. It's so fun to think about applying lean to a very different industry that most people just don't think about, but obviously impacts each and every one of us. So long as we eat, you know, drink milk or eat eggs or chickens or anything else, it's definitely an important part of our life.

So, yes, very much so.

All right. Well, Thomas, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I know you're very busy with your job and your farm, so really appreciate it. I look forward to hopefully meeting you one day. But let's go ahead and wrap this show up with you sharing some final words of wisdom. And then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you and we will link to your YouTube channel, but if there's other social media outlets that you're on, go ahead and let everybody know.

Sure thing. And I do appreciate you having me on and giving me the opportunity to be on. And I guess the final words that I would say is again, just try to, in everything you do, look to see the waste that's there and then look to make some type of an improvement to eliminate that waste and just make your life just that much better. As far as checking us out, just like you said, Our YouTube channel is called Farming Outside the Box, so you could subscribe to that. And we try to put up a video about once a week and may try to do that a little more frequently. Also on LinkedIn, I have some lean farming articles that are published. So if you did probably a search for just lean farming, you would find those. Our Facebook page is for our farm page. Our farm is called Fancy Hill Farm in Amherst County, Virginia. Or you could also reach out to me via gmail@farmingoutsidetheboxmail.com Very good, very good.

Well, you know, maybe one day we'll show up there with our Gemba Academy videos and we'll do a Gemba live on the farm. How does that sound?

Oh, that would be awesome. That would be great.

Yeah, very good. And I am going to be calling you back later as we get ready to buy a chicken or two. So I'll get your help and we'll try to be lean from the outset.

Oh, no, that sounds great. That'd be great.

All right, well, you take care, and thanks again, Thomas.

Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now it's time to take a free, no strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma. Over at Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@gembacademy.com.