GA 131 | How to Develop a Well-Rounded Approach to Lean with Chad Vincent

You're listening to episode 131 with Chad Vinson.

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 week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean In Six Sigma training videos over at GembaCademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now today, I'm excited to welcome Chad Vincent to the show. Now, Chad is a longtime listener to the podcast and we linked up on LinkedIn and got to chatting a little bit and come to find out Chad's got quite the background in quality and Lean, and I asked him if he wanted to come onto the show and he agreed and we had a great conversation. So, as you'll hear, Chad has a very wide ranging background. Kind of started with ups, and then he got into construction, medical devices, industrial packaging, and now he works in the railroad industry. So really, really diverse background and he's a really strong, deep, lean thinker with lots of coaching experience. So we really kind of get into his journey in those different industries and what he's taken from each of those and had a really good time chatting with him. And I'm excited for you to hear the show. A quick reminder about the AME conference that's up here in October. If you are interested in going to the show, which is October 24th to the 28th in Dallas, Texas, be sure to go over to gembacademy.com ame and you'll get the coupon code to save yourself 10% and any of your colleagues 10% to the show. So you can go to gembacademy.Com ame and also while you're there, we're doing another cocktail reception, a Gemba Academy cocktail reception. We've done it for, I think the last two or three years and we had, we're looking probably ahead of several hundred people will probably turn up this year. So we're really looking forward to that. That's gonna be on the Tuesday night, October 25th at the Sheraton Dallas. It's free, no sales pitch or anything like that. Just some drinks and food and just network with other Lean thinkers. You can RSVP on the website. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 131. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 131. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Chad, well, thanks so much for taking time to come onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I am calling from beautiful St. Charles, Missouri suburb outside of St. Louis.

Nice. Big Cards fan.

No, actually, I'm exact opposite. I'm a Cubs fan.

Oh, really? Well, good year to be a Cubs fan.

Good year to be a cubs fan, but still a tough region to be in to be a Cubs fan.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm a Rangers fan, so you never know, man. We meet up in the world Series, you know, so that.

That's right. That's right.

I think Cubs would kill us, though.

But it was a tough series. We played each other a couple times already.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be a good series if that's the case.

Exactly. All right, well, hey, Chad, let's kind of start things off by you telling us a little bit about your background and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Sure, sure. Well, from. From an education standpoint, let's go back to my college days. I actually funny thing is I started out thinking I was going to be a chemical engineer. I loved chemistry in high school from even when I was a little kid, you know, doing little chemistry set experiments and stuff like that. And I real. I got to college that maybe I wasn't best suited to be a chemical engineer. I was introduced to this from my college engineering management, and there was a preference area from there that was quality engineering. I just latched on with that. I liked the idea of improving business processes and things of that nature. And it just caught my attention and that's the path I ended up choosing from college. And the teachings dimming and quality by design and things of that nature just caught hold. And I would say that was probably the start of my exposure to this concept of continuous improvement. It just sounded like something that I wanted to do for the rest of my career. Rest of my life was focusing on helping businesses and organizations just improve.

Yeah, well, I think you chose well. I'm a little biased, though. All right, well, Chad, I know you listen to the show and I appreciate that for sure. And so you know the drill. We like to start with a quote. So do you have one?

Sure, I've got a couple. But probably the number one Quote that really has shaped my personal philosophy comes from Deming. The cause of inefficiency and poor quality is the system, not the employees. And it's is management's responsibility to correct the system in order to achieve desired results. And I started out, I've read the geek that I am, went out and got out of crisis, one of his books and his whole, I call it the 94 to 6 rule. You know, 94% belongs to the system and is management's responsibility. And 6% is, you know, special cause issues or troubles or opportunities for improvement. And that's just kind of stuck with me and shaped my entire approach to continuous improvement. A systems based approach. We've got to have those solid systems in place to really help drive the results of the organization. And then from kind of off the wall. I'm a history buff and George Patton, General Patton has been an influencing quot person from a lean perspective for me. So he's got some great quotes like no good decision was ever made in a swivel chair and that I equipped you. Get out from behind your desk and go to the gimba. No good plan. A good plan violently executed is better than a perfect plan next week. So just to see some of his philosophy from the way he approached battles more and more, preparing men for battle is just as applicable in business today.

Yeah, you know that second one just. I love that mantra. It's like it's so easy to get trapped in analysis by paralysis or paralysis. Analysis. Paralysis. Yeah. And. And not take action. And it just, you know, you worry, oh, maybe it's not going to work. Who cares? Go experiment. Try and learn. Right. And.

Exactly. You learn so much from just experimenting and trying something. Then you will try to gather data to see if you're going to the right step in the first place.

Exactly. I love it. I love it. All right. So how long have you been practicing lean?

You know, what sitting down and thinking about, I couldn't believe it. But I would say I've been going about this for almost 20 years if I take it back to my first job as a supervisor with ups. You know, UPS was very deep into time and motion studies and analysis and ergonomics. And I remember with stopwatches sitting there and timing how long it took a driver to do a delivery and things of that nature. From my perspective, it was real helpful from my end because I was a supervisor that loaded the truck. So I determined how many deliveries they had on a route on any given day. So just that going through those motion studies and Stuff just really helped from that perspective. And I came up after college during that time UPS went through their strike. So it was a good experience from that perspective, being on the management side during that time. So after college there really wasn't a whole lot of opportunity with ups. So I ended up getting into construction industry as estimating engineer, project engineering into construction on field jobs. And this was mainly for stainless steel processing tanks. So, you know, as a young college grad going to breweries and things of that nature to work on process systems for these type industries, that was a lot of fun. And eventually I got tired of the construction and said, you know, I went to become a quality engineer for a reason. And I got into medical device company Baxter Healthcare as a quality engineer. And I spent, I'd say a majority of my career working in medical device, coming up through the ranks of the quality function, working through getting various certificate certifications and my black belt. And during that time the company was going through a lean journey themselves and it was really project based, Kaizen based, which is par for the course during that time period. That was the big, big thing during then. And so I was really trying to get into being part of those continuous improvement activities, being part of the Kaizen events and stuff. And this kind of, you know, as a reflection of my stubbornness as a type A personality, I was stuck in a stereotypical role of I'm a quality person. This lean stuff is for manufacturing, right?

Common sense. It's common sense, right?

I said, if I can't control getting on these teams and taking part in those activities, then what do I have control of? I looked at it from the perspective of, you know what, I control my own processes. So within the quality function, I started to apply the lean tools, lean philosophies and creating these systems based off lean principles within the quality function and had a lot of success in doing that. We sort of, as a quality engineer within medical device and pharmaceutical, we tend to get the bad end of the stick, so to speak, because we are the last holdout for new product development. We're the last holdout for changes being made to the process because it has to go through validation activities and things like that. So one of the big pushes that I had was how do we, from the very beginning of one of those projects to the very end, how do we expedite that process? How do we, quote, unquote, lean it out, right? And so I had some success in that and eventually ended up wanting to spread my wings a little bit more and get more into manufacturing And I got into, got a position as a lean specialist with a rigid industrial packaging company. Multiple facilities. So that's where I started the journey of how do I transform entire facilities? And mainly hung out in the Midwest region there. And now I've moved on and now I'm in railcar manufacturing as a director of lean manufacturing. And now I'm responsible for multiple facilities, but also the entire enterprise to implement and transform into a lean culture for the organization.

Okay. So I've kind of been jotting notes down, so let's see if I got this right. So we started at up. Well, first we started in college and university learning about quality and that sort of thing. Then we went to UPS and we did time and motion studies. Then we got into construction and then we got bored with that and we went to medical device and then from there we went into industrial packaging and now we're railroad.

Yes.

Okay. Goodness.

Very, very interesting path.

Yes.

It's always, it's. It's like each individual you encounter, each facility you encounter, each industry or each job, you encount new challenges. It's new barriers.

Yeah.

So it's new things to face all the time.

So I guess what I want to, I guess I'd like to understand is those obviously very different types of roles, different types of companies. How do, how has that like, impacted your, I don't know, approach to implementing Lean today? Like, what did you, what have you taken from those, Your UPS days or whatever it might be, you know.

Right. You know, it's. The journey is twofold. It's not only a journey for organizations, but it's also a journey for people. And reflecting back on my career thus far, it's been a journey full of learning, full of opportunities to learn more. And not just about the industry, but just about the way different people, different facilities react when they're faced with this lean transformation. And I would say that what has the biggest impact to me is it's actually, I would say it's made me more laid back, you know, starting out, you know, fresh from college. You know, I've got an engineering mindset. Went through and was, you know, a black belt. And I was, you know, one of those very strict black belt. Follow the process, analyze the data. Right.

You were an annoying guy with a stopwatch running back to Minitab, right?

Exactly, exactly.

But no offense, minitab. I love Minitab, but I'm dead.

I've worked with Minitab for quite some time. I still love it today. And, and Sigma Excel.

I love you too. Sigma, Excel. Yeah, yeah, get it all out.

And I, I, you know, I still like to heck, statistics is the only math that I'm really good at, so.

Yeah, right.

You still kind of fall back into that. But I would say it's actually jumping in with both feet on lean and the lean principles, lean philosophy. It's actually made, you know, made me less of a type A personality. Just kind of going with the flow and just being able to let your next step lead you on your journey forward. Stop trying to plan out every single step. Have fun with the step, with each step you take. Because you never know what, what your next step's really going to be until you take that first one.

I love that, you know, and for me, the light bulb has finally gone off that in the end it's all about people, right?

That's right.

And the relationships that you build, those last forever.

Right.

And that's how you really succeed with this stuff, is when you get people on board and enjoying that journey.

That's the most gratifying part about this whole journey is the people. Is those as little or as big of those the winds are when you, when the light bulbs go off in people's minds or people's heads on, they get it or they figure out a way to apply something that, that you just exposed them to those. That's what's gratifying about all this.

Yeah. So I want to. Something we were talking about before we came on and started recording, but we, you know, your experience throughout, you know, different types of industries and different plants and so forth. Talk a little bit about your thoughts on the difference between a lean practitioner at maybe like say the plant level and then maybe a practitioner at an executive level. What's the difference?

Right. In simplistic terms, it's really how you apply PDCA. All right. @ the practitioner level, you are at the strategic level, you are real close to the processes and the people within those processes. And as you move further away from those value creation processes, you actually have to look at things from a strategic level and identify those strategic processes. So, you know, my focus has been more on how do you see the processes and see the systems for driving strategy for an organization moving forward. You know, it's when you look at a value stream or you work look at a work cell or cell like that, it's easy to, you know, let's implement some 5s, let's do a smed activity and there's a lot more things that are tangible there. But once you get up to an executive Level, you're actually challenged with more strategy. And the common tool there with the strategy in lean is Hoshin. And you have some organizations that you just kind of tweak the process a little bit and get more effective at creating and deploying strategies. How do you have a better balanced strategy? So you have to walk people within the executive level through these processes. And also from a lean perspective is if we're driving a system or an enterprise through a lean transformation, we have to come up with some sort of standard path forward, while also giving each facility or each location that may be part of a large organization enough flexibility to map the journey out for themselves. Cause each facility, each plant will have its own culture, its own behaviors, and maybe at different points in their own journey, one plant may do a couple things real well and not so well in some other areas, and then you have another facility that excels in something else. And that's exactly some of the things that I face in previous organizations and currently is you've got something as simple as the lean management system described in David Mann's book, Creating a Lean Culture. You got leader standard work, daily accountability and visual management. Well, you got some plants that excel in applying visual management, so you got other plants that excel with leader standard work. So what you have to do from an executive level is you have to create basically the map ahead. And not, I use this analogy here that, you know, I'm not a gps. I'm not the person on the Voice to say what turn, you know, you're going to turn left here. But on the old roadmap, you can pull out this roadmap and you see where you are and you say where you've got to go. And you can pick all these different avenues in order to get to that point, but just creating that roadmap ahead for the organization to kind of pick and choose how, what they're going to apply, what they're going to change as they're meandering their journey.

So the last topic I want to just kind of touch on with you, I know that you're big on coaching folks, coaching learners and coaching coaches, if you will. So let's. And I believe that you kind of similar or different than Mike Rather's Toyota Kata. So I want to get into your thoughts on. So just kind of touch on your philosophies with coaching.

Yeah. And I've applied Toyota Kata at process levels and secondary levels within other organizations. And you've got to have at his prescriptive approach to the cada, the continuous improvement Pattern is very applicable, especially at the process levels. The tricky part is as you move up within the organization. Again, KATA goes back to the fundamental of PDCA and continuous improvement. How do you apply those at a little bit higher levels? So I describe it, I try to explain it to the upper levels in the organization as what are the cycles in which you review or you judge the processes? So when you're talking about a manufacturing process, it's pretty easy to have a coaching cycle at least once a day, if not two or three times a day, because you've got more cycles throughout each day in order to judge what steps you have taken and whether or not they're successful and what the next step's going to be. Well, once you get up into upper levels of an organization and you're further away from those cycles of the process, your processes in which you manage monthly meetings, weekly meetings, those cycles are longer in duration. So it's about creating that KATA approach using the cascading KPIs and setting more of a strategy. Next step A3 thinking goes along with this real well. When we're talking about the strategy A3s creating a strategy for a value stream, and you evaluate it over each month or each quarter, defining, okay, what are we going to accomplish this month? And then on the following month, asking those same KATA questions, we'll what was the last steps that we took? What did we do? Did it do what we thought it was gonna do? What are our next steps for the following month? Has it gotten us closer to the target? So it's really just about scalability. Right. It's about scaling it to what cycle that your normal work is associated with.

Very good. All right, Chad. Well, I could talk all day on all this stuff. It's really interesting to me. But let's go ahead for the sake of time and transition into the reflection section. And so the first question again, I know you listen to the show, so I don't even have to ask you them, but I will. So, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about continuous improvement and respect for people, those two pillars. What does respect for people mean to you?

Yeah. And listening to the show, there's so many good answers that have been given, and I'm going to take a little bit different spin on it. Respect for people. I almost compare it to how much you respect yourself. In other words, can I be better than what I think I can be? And at the same time, that really means, can I make others better than they think they can be? And that's the humility and the teamwork aspect of self respect. How do I be better about meeting the commitments I make to others? How do I become better at identifying and reflecting on mistakes or past steps and how to make those steps better, moving forward and drive personal continuous improvement, personal development and then at the same time, how do I be with the teamwork and helping others move beyond their current knowledge threshold? I, I tell people, you've got to have too much respect for ourselves to not let us do wrong by others. And you know, you can throw out the golden rule and all that, but that's just my little spin on the respect for people. Have enough respect for yourself to treat others with respect.

I love it. I love it. What's the best advice you've ever received?

I would say one that I have used over and over again comes from sort of a consultant mentor that I've had in the past who was a protege or was mentored by Deming. And he's told me that Deming told him, never go until you're asked. And if you think about it a little bit, you know, that's exactly what happened with Deming in Japan. You know, he went over there, he was asked to go and people listened. They asked him to, to come over there and so they took the time to listen and understand him. And I almost look at it like as a lean practitioner, there's a pull versus push scenario. I can either push myself and push my thoughts and philosophies on people and they're going to resist. But when I create an environment, create systems, create processes in which people pull me in to ask questions they're more receptive to, to listen and work with me on creating a next step forward.

Yeah, I love it. Do you have a personal productivity habit that others might benefit from?

I'd have to go back to just the concept of leader standard work. And I'll be. That's why lean so great for me personally is I, I was stubborn and set in my ways on how I did things. And leaders standard work is a good example of something that I finally just started doing. I kept improving, making it work for me and I rely on it day in and day out. I cannot function throughout the day without it now. And that's really how well I set up my leader. Standard work for any given week is basically outlines how well my week's going to go. So that's just.

Do you like write it out, use the outlet calendar or how do you do it?

Interesting thing there is I'm an old dog and I'm learning new tricks as I go. So I use opportunities for when people introduce things to me to try new things. So I would say within this last year, one thing that I have tried is the Outlook approach using Microsoft Outlook and creating my standard work via there, throwing in my tasks. So everything that's standard, my standard meetings, my standard tasks, all that's in there electronically in Outlook. So I print that out each week so I know what my monthly tasks are and I check these things off. All my appointments and meetings are there. So I, I got the trifold print out where I can see my calendar for the week, I can see all my standard tasks I need to get done for the week. Then I'm able to just write down those one offs, those things as I'm walking down or I'm talking to someone and I get an action item or a task that I need to follow up with. So I don't let things slip through the cracks. Sometimes as we're walking through a plant or I'm walking through the office and someone stops me for five seconds and this is a means for me to capture ideas and capture my commitments that I make to people and so I don't let those slip through and then I, you know, going back on respect for people, I don't lose out on meeting my commitments to others.

Love it. So over this last year or so, has there been anything that's kind of surprised you as you've been practicing life?

Do we have enough time?

We're doing great.

I would say nothing the second I say nothing shocks me. Something turns around and shocks me. I would say the biggest thing is with me personally, the example of the Microsoft Outlook, I had been using a Word file for quite some time as my leader center work and managing how I go about my day, weeks, month at a time. And I am surprised at how I still surprise myself at how willing I am to take on something new. And then a month or two down the road I become so dependent upon something that you know what, I was just testing it and trying it out because I was asking other people to do it. So that's the thing that probably surprises me still to this day is I'm still stubborn in a way, but at least I'll try something, I'll take a step and you know, before long when I reflect back, holy cow, I, I'm doing something that I was stubborn with and should have never been that way in the first place. Yeah.

Do you have a routine or ritual you follow when things aren't going well, and you need to recharge and refocus, you know, daily. I.

And it's all my leaders center work, work at workout regime. I started doing a CrossFit.

Yeah, baby, me too.

I love it. Boxing, conditioning, kickboxing, conditioning. And you know, I like lifting weights and stuff. So it's a good way for me to kind of at the end of the day, kind of decompress between work and home. The daily reflection, even weekly reflection, those are good practices. I can always be better about that. Probably something just to numb my brain and kind of unplug from everything would be. And I'm telling all myself and everyone's gonna. Gonna know what kind of guy I am. But you know, wrestling, watch it. Watching wrestling, that's always good. It's a male soap opera.

Yeah.

That's all it is. And then video games, you know, interesting. I'm a gamer. I'm not that great at it, but I do like playing video games. I grew up, period. And it's just kind of stuck with me throughout the years. And my son likes to play. And ironically, they're. They're going through learning the scientific method.

There you go.

This week in school. So we were talking about it and I said. And it was at that time I realized, holy cow. I, you know, I teach it as part of root cause problem solving. And what PDCA is all about, it is the scientific method. But I compared him, compared what he does in life, the video games. You know, buddy, you're. You're applying the scientific method by. Every time you face a boss and you die in a video game, do you go back and do the exact same thing or do you try something different in order to beat the boss? It's like, yeah, you just applied scientific method. You just applied continuous improvement. And it's just one of those things that again, it's something that surprises me is you don't really, really. You know, it's not something that I would have thought about unless given that.

Yeah.

That particular circumstance. Holy cow. I apply it even when I'm trying to decompress and not apply.

Yeah. I mean, life is pdca, right.

Right. So.

So, so who's your favorite wrestler, man? I gotta know.

It depends. It depends on the error. You know, growing up, it was Hulk Hogan.

Oh, yeah, I see. I watched it back then. Hulk Hogan, Yeah.

Yeah, I've. And so I would say currently, you know, it's. It's got to be John Cena. That's. That's the big name. But I still there. It's Just enjoyable.

Yeah.

You can have your favorite wrestlers, but athleticism and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're athletes, I can guarantee you that. I mean, you know, so it's just good.

Oh, you know, good old slobber knocking going on.

That's awesome.

A fight breaks out and occasionally they'll, they'll have a story behind it.

Yeah, yeah, I got you. I got you. All right, well, hey, Chad, how can people connect with you?

You can find me on LinkedIn. Just Chad Vincent St. Charles or St. Louis area, American Rail Car Industries or my email. It's pretty straightforward. Chad vincent88mail.com okay, I will be at. I'll be at FabTech, so if any of the listeners are out there, I'll be out there for a coup sessions. Speaking.

So sorry, I have to admit, I don't Even know what's FabTech.

It is a put on by SME.

Okay.

It's a, A big conference for fabricating industry.

Okay.

So all these plasma cutting and. Okay, stamping and laser cutting and welding and all sorts of neat stuff out there.

What is that?

And that's in November and it's in Vegas.

Okay, cool. Cool place.

It's been quite some time since I've gone out and done a conference or spoke anywhere and this is kind of my first dip back into that pool.

So are you going to make it out to AME in Dallas?

I am still working on a plan. I want to and I've actually got one of our facilities within the company I work at is in Longview. So I fly to Dallas.

Oh, you got to come, man. It's going to be epic. Epic.

I haven't been to an ame.

Oh, it's the best. Oh yeah.

I want, I want to and it's just something that I'm trying to get it, get it figured out to where I can attend.

Well, for anybody that's listening, that's. That wants to go. We've mentioned it in the. The opening as well, but just go to gemba academy.com forward/ame and you can save 10% on the tickets. But. And we're doing a big party on the Tuesday nights, a free cocktail. So you need to come and have a drink and hang out. But it is. I mean, we love the show. We've gone several years now and it's the biggest. I think it's got to be the biggest lean conference in the world. It's just, it's just incredible. So really encourage you to come.

I know a lot of people that go to it and I just. I'm trying to get my schedule worked out so I can. Yeah.

All right, well, sounds good. Well, thanks again for coming on, Chad, and I look forward to hopefully meeting you in person.

Well, thank you very much for this opportunity. It's been great. I greatly appreciate it. And I appreciate the podcast that you put on, and every week I listen to it.

Awesome. All right, well, you got to listen to yourself now.

I may skip that one.

All right, you take care, Chad.

All right, you too.

All right, bye.

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