GA 153 | From Tiffany & Co. to Toyota with Josh Sanchez

You're listening to episode 153 with Josh Sanchez.

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'm excited to welcome Josh Sanchez to the show. Now, Josh and I kind of met each other, I guess, if you will, over email and LinkedIn and come to find he's got a pretty interesting background. He spent some time in the jewelry industry, and then he actually went on to work at Toyota. And so today, what we kind of talk about on the show is his early journey in that jewelry industry. It's a pretty interesting industry to be practicing lean. And so here's some fun stories there. And then we really dive in deep into his experiences at Toyota. You know, he really started as a frontline employee and just kind of worked through the system, and he really pulls the curtain back, if you will, and just gives us his perspective on how things work there. Talks about first time he pulled his andon and all the rest of it. So really, really fun episode. Now, Josh, as you'll hear towards the end, is actually transitioning into the lean healthcare industry. So we kind of wrap the show up with a little discussion on that. So I think you're going to enjoy it. He was a great guy to talk to, super humble and. And really, really fun to. Really fun guy to. To converse with. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over GembaPodcast.com just look for episode 153 again, GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 153. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Josh, thanks so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from Lexington, Kentucky today, sir.

All right. Home of the Wildcats, I guess, and Kentucky basketball. Are you a big fan or what?

You know, I get razzed a lot for this. I'm not from Kentucky originally, and I was never a college sports fan.

Okay.

But I like them. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I'll root for them when they're, when they're playing, but, you know, good team.

To jump on the bandwagon. You.

I mean, that's a big bandwagon team.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So good stuff. Good stuff. All right, well, thanks for coming onto the show. I'm really excited. You got a great, great background and can't wait to hear your story. But let's go ahead and kind of kick things off, Josh, with you giving us a quote of something that possibly inspires you.

Sure. I think you may have had somebody mention this quote before, but I'm going to go a little bit more in depth with it. It's Taichi Ono's quote, and the quote is, we are all human and we are wrong half of the time. The first time I heard that, I think that really struck with me. And that quote comes from his book, Workplace Management, but if you look at the page before that, he's talking about making mistakes. And one of the things that he says, it's not so much that we're wrong half the time, but he says, if you're wrong, don't hesitate to correct yourself. And I found that that really struck a chord with me. I've worked in plenty of situations where humility was simply not part of the job aspect, and I think that's critical. Plus, to admit that we're wrong a lot of times, I think is important.

Yeah. I just finished an awesome book I talked about on a. Several podcasts ago. This ego or obstacle is the way I talked about. But this Ryan Holiday wrote another book called Ego is the Enemy, and, oh, it's so powerful just talking about, you know, how kind of, you know, all these great people in our history of. Of how they were so brilliant. Like, Howard Hughes was an example. He used, like, the guy was like the. Their modern, their. Their days. Elon Musk. Right. And. But this guy had such an ego that it just can, you know, he was ultimately nowhere near as successful as he could have been.

Right.

And I think humility is so important, especially as it relates to lean. Right. And really life in general, but for sure, with lean. So that's a great, great quote. Well, Josh, why don't you kind of kick things off a little bit by telling us a little bit about your. Your background and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Sure thing, Ron. So I actually spent 17 years in the jewelry industry. I had a high school jewelry class. I was always somewhat artistic, and I thought, you know, maybe I can actually make a living Making jewelry. And so I sought out an apprenticeship and one thing led to another. I did just about everything within that industry possible, from sales to repair, CAD design, administrative work. And finally I ended up at Tiffany and Company, one of their manufacturing facilities. And they had three master black belts that they'd had for a while. And they found that the master black belts simply weren't enough. They needed more. And so they decided that they were going to interview internally. And semi promote is basically giving more responsibility to at least 20 more people to make green belts. And I was simply looking for a voice within the company. And my plant manager is like, yeah, definitely, go for it. He had some lean background as well, and I got it. And that pretty much set it off. I was then part of their Lean Six Sigma committee. And that's what gave me my, my first taste of what lean actually was. It was something that I'd always done before. You know, I was always trying to improve things. I just didn't realize that there was actually names for some of these processes, like 5s. And I. So just from there I. That, that pretty much set it off. That's. That was, that was my first taste of organized lean, we'll call it.

So 17 years in the jewelry industry, like, how long into it was it that you. When that thing kicked off, like the Lean and Six Sigma stuff that kicked off, was that like halfway through or how many years did you practice it there? I guess so.

I was lean practitioner with Tiffany's for about a year and a half.

Okay.

So it was actually really late into my career as a jeweler, we'll call it.

Like, what did you do? Like, what does a lean thinker do in a jewelry industry? I'm curious. You know, that's obviously a very craft oriented work, I would think. Right?

So it is. And that was part of what was not hard for me. But we're looking at. So it was more lean Six Sigma. So it's reducing variation within your processes. I'm looking at how our jewelers are trained and how our jewelers, you know, create, you know, these different pieces on a day to day basis. And you know, we might have 50 different jewelers in this section that set the same product 50 different ways. And then we're wondering why we have, you know, quality, because they have. Tiffany's has extremely stringent quality specifications. Like, and then we wonder why we're having, you know, all of this, the not quality defects, but they're just, they're outside of our specs. So you got to send them back and get them repaired. I mean, if the stone is tilted just a little bit. Yeah, you see? Kicks that right back. Like, nope, you gotta, you gotta fix that. And yeah, I kept telling them, was like, look, we can standardize this. We can have it to where everything is. You know, let's try to get it to where the jewelers are doing the same way. And I kept being told, you can't do that. This is a craft.

We're different.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm like, no, you can't do that. I was like, why do it differently? Yeah, why? You know, he kept hearing, well, this is the way we've always done it. Well, maybe if we did it different, we could avoid some of these. So. And that was actually one of the things that I worked on was we redid the jeweler trainer program, you know, so that was part of. I was the lead for that project. It was basically going back. Okay, what are all of the things that we teach to incoming jewelers or individuals that are stepping into those roles? And do we need to teach them all of these things? Are there things that we need to teach them? Going back to the team leads, how do you train? You know, basically it was, it was standardizing. That's, that's, that's what it was. It was, how can we get everybody on board? So the trainers are training one thing, then they get out onto the floor and the team leads are teaching the same way. Yeah, that way we can avoid this variation. And it actually, it worked really well. But so that, that was the type of thing. I worked on a couple of training programs. I worked on an Edmund Condor inventory control. We found that we had some, some gaps there. So that was process related.

I've met I don't know how many people in my life that have been practicing lean. I mean, thousands and thousands. But you're the first one I've ever met that had anything to do with the jewelry industry. So it's really cool. Really cool. All right, well, so I guess I know, you know, from talking to you before we recorded and just over email and whatnot, that you actually went to work at the Big T Toyota. That's my question. First question is, what led you and how did you end up there?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks, Ron. So first of all, honestly, a lot of this, I can blame you.

Okay.

For that. So I had a colleague that listened to your. When I first started getting into Lane, he listened to your podcast. He's like, hey, you know, check him out. He's like, it's just pretty interesting. I was like, okay. And so I started at the beginning and you know, as I mentioned, the, the first episode that really hit me in more than just this is really interesting information, more on a life changing type of event was, was episode 15 with Mike Grogan where he's talking about his time in Tanzania. And yeah, I'm listening to the. He's a very passionate individual. You can tell just by he's listening to him.

He breathes, he's passionate.

Yeah, he's sitting here, he's talking about, you know, how he's, you know, reducing waste and eliminating waste in, you know, these developing country and how he's helping, you know, from a healthcare standpoint. And, you know, I got really emotional actually listening to that and I'm like, oh my gosh. This is, this is one of those, you know, light bulb type moments. Like, I want to do that. You know, I've. I don't know how, but that's what I want to do. And I actually called my wife at lunch and I says, I know what we're gonna do because she's very, she's very charitable, my wife is. And so that I knew that would be right up her alley. You know, if I talk about, you know, let's, let's travel the world and not as tourists, but let's go and try to help people. I knew that she'd be like, okay, yeah. And she was like, that sounds great. How do you do that? I was like, I have no idea. We'll look at that down the road, maybe when we retire. But at some point that's what I want to do. And from there, the next podcast that hit me was the. Let's see, was it episode 30, I believe? Yeah, episode 30 with Tracy and Ernie Richardson.

I knew you were going to say that. I knew it.

They spent. And Tracy in particular, I believe it's in that podcast. She's talking about how she, Toyota, had came here to Georgetown. She was 18. She had applied for college, but she'd applied for Toyota as well. And then, you know, a little bit before she's supposed to start college, she gets the call to, to go work. And she had to make a decision. She was like, okay, do I, do I go work at Toyota? Which was, I mean, at that point in time, you know, brand new. Yeah, you've heard of Toyota. But I would imagine there wasn't. Well, of course there wasn't the type of buzz now about it. Yeah. So, I mean, she had no idea what she was really walking into is it's that or do I go to college and get a degree? And she decided to go to Toyota. And you know, she mentions in that that, you know, she learned so much from Toyota that it was worth more than any degree ever would have been. And I think I agree with her. And so I'm sitting here at Tiffany's and what I'm seeing, the difference between the interviews that you're doing with individuals and what I'm experiencing at Tiffany's. And what I found was that there was a culture gap. You know, it's, it's Toyota way. I was like, that's, that's the element that's missing between what I'm doing here and what Toyota has. And I was, I was at a crossroads. I had two choices. We had lost one of our master black belts. They had, had moved to, to somewhere else. I was like, I can pursue a master black belt and try to step into that role here at, here at Tiffany's. I could pursue an MBA and maybe with that, you know, move upper management of some sort, or I could go to Toyota. My wife, honestly, I don't think she likes the Toyota idea. And we, I mean, she's not materialistic, but if you look at, we're going to make fine high end jewelry or cars, I think most women are going to say, stick with the jewelry. Yeah. And so finally I was like, well, let's, let's go on the tour at least. So me and my, my wife and two kids, we went, I set up and we went to the tour of Toyota Georgetown. And you know, we step in the visitor center and I mean, immediately it's like, I want to work here. I don't care what it takes. This is where I want to be. About halfway through the tour, my wife turns around, she's like, you want to work here, don't you? I was like, yes, yes, I do. And my daughter, she's so funny. She was, same way, she was like, can I work here? I want it. I mean, she's nine. She was like, I want to do this. What do I have to do? We'll talk later.

Yeah.

But it was, it was such a cool experience and just to be able to see that and hear the passion of the tour guides about Toyota. And I finally, I felt, you know what? If lean is what I want to do, there's no better place for me to learn than at Toyota. And it was 20 miles down the road. Yeah, I figured I'm going to gain more from that than any Master, black belt or any NBA.

Right.

Degree or certificate. Yeah. And so that's what I did. I, I applied and, and I went.

So what did you. When was this?

This? Gosh, it took a long time. This would have been May of 2015.

Okay.

It took. So I talked with the tour guide afterwards and I was, I was asking him like, so, what do I have to do to work here? And he's like, well, everybody comes in as a, as a temporary worker on the floor. That's the way they manage their, Their staffing or whatever. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, that's how they maintain their staffing. And so they're like, everybody comes in on the floor. To me, honestly, I thought, well, that's, that's great. Have everybody come in on the floor. You know, learn firsthand, frontline worker, and then you can move into whatever role you need to. It's like, that's brilliant. I was like, okay, sign me up. And so you, you go through a temp service and you're, you're essentially a temporary variable workforce team member. But it took eight months for me to get through the process.

Oh, wow.

Which I was not expecting.

Okay.

So here I am, I've applied and, you know, I'm still plugging away at Tiffany's and just waiting for those callbacks. Yeah, from, from the, from the temp service. So it took about eight months. It was January of last year that I started at Toyota.

Okay, all right. So what was it like? What was your first day like? What'd you do?

So first, the first three days were orientation.

Okay.

And so let's just sit in a.

Conference room, watch PowerPoint kind of thing, or pretty much.

Okay, you're filling out your, your basic paperwork, they're giving, you know. But what I found was. Great about it. Everything, though, is they, they start teaching TPS into it away immediately. I know day one, they're talking about the history and they're talking about and ONS and Kaizens. So, I mean, you've got people that have no way heard about any of these types of principles or methodologies, but right away they're teaching those to what's going to be their new frontline workers. Okay.

Okay. So you get through your orientation three days, then what?

Yeah, I've got like three days through orientation, and then you go through a basic skills training where essentially, you know, regardless of. Let's see, it depends on. So I ended up going to powertrain. I was in their powertrain division. So basically I build engines. So, you know, they've got fundamental Skills. And, and we're talking around from the very basics up. They're, they're talking, you know, putting a bolt into a hole and hand starting it so that it, you know, so that when you, when it, when the bolt is shot down, you know, it shoots down straight, you know, and it's tight and everything. I mean, we're talking about, they're teaching, okay, can you put 15 bolts into this board and you know, 30 seconds or whatever the time frame might be. So that it was literally. These are the, basically they were going through twi.

Yeah, that was going to be my question. Was it kind of job instruction where they talk about important steps, key points and reasons for the key points.

That's really, that's what it was nice. It was. These are the steps you take. These are why you take them. And what was really funny too is the dojo trainers. They're like, look, I know in orientation you guys talked about improvements. You know, you're encouraged software improvements. Don't offer them here. This isn't, this is detailed structured training. Yes. We're aware that there might be a faster way to do that. That's not what we're trying to teach you right now. We're just trying to teach you the fundamental basics of what you might be doing when, when you step out onto the.

That's interesting. Okay, cool, cool.

So, and it, basically it was just so that mean that there reduces the variation. You know, if you start getting all of these suggestions, I mean, they're like, look, if there's something that's unsafe, bring that up. Yeah, but as far as, you know, the steps that we're taking.

Yeah.

This is the way we have it structured for this reason so that we can make sure that we're teaching what, you know, all of the important steps, why you do it, how you do it, when you do it, all those things.

Yeah. So when they were trading, we were like, we're, you know, obviously we were talking before we came on. We were about to release our JI course and you know, we really kind of harp on the language, like make sure that you mention the words. The first important step is like, were they pretty dogmatic like that or how did that go?

You know, And I can't speak for all of the dojo trainers. My trainers were relatively laid back in some. It was obviously structured.

Yeah.

So I don't think that they had, if they had scripted points, did they.

Have breakdowns and whatnot that they were.

Using or, you know, they, they were pretty good trainers.

They probably memorized Obviously.

Yeah, pretty much memorized. I don't think I ever remember seeing any of them with notes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Unless when they were, you know, after we got out of that and we're in the. Yeah. In a classroom setting because we had, Gosh, I think, I think we had two days of that and then we had classroom setting where they start going over a lot of things. They went over in orientation. Again, we start talking about the forms of waste and again, history. Kaizen customer first.

And that's when they started playing all the Gemba Academy videos in. Right.

Not.

Just kidding.

Right.

Just kidding. All right, so talk a little bit now. Let's fast forward. Oh, I don't know, three months from them. You know, you've been working there for three months. Like what's a day in a life like then at that point.

Sure. I, we're going to be honest, it's very repetitive, which would make sense. You know, again, you're talking about a, an assembly line.

Yeah.

Bottom line is it's an assembly line. You're doing the same thing over and over and over and over. But what I really liked about Toyota and this was when, when I went through the, the tour, they were talking about this too is, you know, so you've got a couple of rotations a day. These rotations are split into a couple. Then they will, you know, when you're trained up on jobs, they rotate you through these jobs, you know, trying to make sure that you aren't using, you know, the same. So let's say you've got to turn an engine on one job, you know, they will try to make sure that on the next job you're avoiding that, which, you know, is looking at employee safety.

Yeah.

To make sure that you're not, you know, you're not ending up with those repetitive motion injuries.

Yeah.

And you know, one of the things that, you know, they, before we went out to the line, you know, we'd have a, you know, little stand up meeting, you know, talking about, you know, if there was any change points or anything like that, that it, that it maybe had occurred or where we were at. And you know, the one thing that I liked is before we would go out to line, they'd say, watch your safety and quality. Safety was always first. The quality was right after it. And they really meant that, you know, you hear a lot of times, you know, at work, ah, be safe. No, they really, if they tell you to be safe, they mean be safe.

Yeah.

If there's a problem, they want to know if there's a quality issue. They want to know, you know, it was. Do you ever pull the end on a daily basis?

You did? Yeah. What was the first time the ever pulled it? What was it like? Do you remember what it was a situation?

I don't even remember what it was for, but it was such.

How did you feel? Were you nervous?

No, I was. And see, and that's just it, you know, because so when you first start, they put you with a trainer. And at least where I was, you trained on two jobs. Now I don't believe this is specifically necessary in every area, but at least where I was I trained on two jobs for basically five weeks. And so I just rotate between those two jobs every rotation. But that was meant to one, it was to make sure that you didn't get overwhelmed because you know, you're talking about, you know, this process that you have. You know, depending on which area in powertrain you're at, you're tak time might be anywhere from 45 seconds to two minutes. And so, you know, you're talking about an average tact time around 60 seconds. And you have to do all of these different things to this engine. You know, that can get pretty nerve wracking. Yeah, it's like, you know, because not only do you have to do them, but you have to do them correctly. Right. So that you don't, you know, that a defect isn't caused. And so they give you a lot of time to get you up to speed so that you're. And part of that again is, is safety of the employee so that people aren't pushing themselves so hard right off the bat. So like when I first started, my first week, I was only supposed to do 25% of the process or if I picked it up really quickly, maybe I'm only doing one out of every four engines, you know, and then it just ramps up from there so that by the end of my training I, I have, you know, I can do it comfortably intact time with quality. I know the standards. And so it was. I'm with a trainer for five weeks and they pull the end on all the time regardless, you know, on if there's any abnormality, they mean that any abnormality you pull the end on, something doesn't look right, something didn't feel right. When you're putting on, you're running low on parts, whatever it might be you pull your hand on. And so it was. It quickly became second nature that, you know. And what I like too is the team leads obviously because of the respect for People, they don't come up and they're like, what's good? You know, it wasn't, you know, a harsh, like, you know, why, why did you stop the line?

Yeah.

Type of thing. It's, you know, what's going on, you know, how can I help you now? You know, team leads have better days than others but for the most part, you know, everything was very respectful and so I was, you know, I honestly can't remember the first thing I pulled the end on was because I did it even when I was in training, you know, I had full authorization to pull the end on then.

Yeah.

So is just a way of, way of life.

So what was different? Let's compare maybe kind of, and I'm not trying to poke at any one company or another, so don't take it that way, but maybe compare your, your previous lean experience with, with your Toyota lean experience. Like what was, how do they compare?

Yeah, so like I said, I, I think so. I mean officially I have two different employers where, where, where I've had, you know, lean experience. Like I said, I did it and other places before, just not knowing that it was lean. Yeah, but I think the, the main thing really was the cultural aspect. It was at, you know, at my previous employer it was, you know, they were top down directives. You know, the upper management decided these are the things we need to focus on and then that those were the directives given to us as, as far as our projects were concerned. What I love about Toyota is that yes, we have those and some of those are retroactively implemented. You know, something is going wrong for whatever reason and so then they're like, look, this is something we need to address. And then, you know, those types of things are problem solved. But a lot of it really is frontline worker driven. It's, you know, and it can be something as small as Kaizen's to, you know, like, look, this wrench is on the left side of the engine, but the part that we put it on, we use it for is on the right side of the engine. So why can't we just switch it, move to the other side? Now you're looking at ergonomics, you're looking at less movement. And so some of the things are as simple as that. And those types of changes happen, honestly on a daily basis. What's funny is when I got, when I was going to Toyota I thought, well, they've been doing this, you know, for nearly 30 years now. Kentucky, there's, I'm not going to be able to do anything. I'm just going to sit back and watch because there's nothing that needs improved. They've done them all already. Right. But that's the beauty of continuous improvement. There's always something that can be done even marginally better. And so that. That was. I think the biggest difference was the frontline worker involvement.

Nice.

It's that it's. They strongly encourage. I mean, not even that it's encouraged. I mean, it's almost even expected. Look, if you're doing something different, please let us know so that we can evaluate it. And if it's going to be something that helps everybody, we want to make sure it's implemented.

Exactly. So, you know, I know that you were trained a lot before Toyota and went through a bunch of different types of training, obviously, probably read a book or two about Toyota. Was there anything, I don't know, different from what you expected or discrepancies between what you thought you knew about Toyota and what, what Toyota really is?

There were. And it was funny because I was. And I guess I was kind of preempted with, with this possibility. One of my dojo trainers actually pulled me aside and he's like, look, I understand that, you know, I talked about him, about my background. He's like, don't be surprised if you get out there and some things are a little bit different. And I'm like, okay, that's not what I signed up for. What are you talking about? And really, what it was, it's just, it's difference of opinions is really, I think, what it is. Toyota as a company is pretty much everything I read about, everything I expected. But I think what happens sometimes in particular is that, again, remember, I thought everybody started on the line. I come to learn later that isn't exactly the case. So when you have engineers, engineers are hired in, you know, from off the street. So they might not have TPS experience. And so I think one of the first time that I saw what I viewed as a discrepancy was we had, you know, the engine comes down the conveyor, and then there's a place where it shifts to a different conveyor and there's a couple of engines there just basically there as a buffer for transportation time because they can't teleport from one side of the conveyor to the other. And I saw them, they were building out the. The conveyor line, they're extending it. I was like, okay. I thought, you know, we were getting a new engine. I thought maybe we're having new processes or whatever. It Might be. And I come to find out that no, they're adding. They're basically extending the conveyor line for. To add more of a buffer. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, wait, wait, wait. Tayuchi Ono said that, you know, you reduce your inventory when you see stuff stacked up that, that's excess, that's waste. And I was like, that's not how it's supposed to be. Right. And I finally. It bothered me so much, I went to one of my team leads and I was like, hey, what's. Why are we building in inventory? Because all that's going to do is, yes, we're making a buffer, but that's just going to, if we're having problems, that's going to hide the problem so you can't see it. And he actually agreed with me. He's like, you know, I'm not really sure. He says, you know, but that's just the difference in engineers. He says, our last engineer that we had in here was huge anti buffer. And then this guy, the new engineer that we had in here was like, look, if we, if we're having problems, it's going to make us run better. We're going to add buffers and then we can evaluate those later if they, if they need to be reduced or whatever it might be. And so I think that was. But that was just a difference in opinion. It wasn't necessarily Toyota, it was just this specific engineer.

Yeah.

Viewed things a little bit differently.

So did they add it?

So they added it. They did and it was, and they have reduced it. And I think part of it was, we'll say this was above my pay grade, but from what my understanding of the situation was, is because of the new engine that was coming in, we were expecting certain levels of downtime. We were expecting that everything wasn't going to be perfect. Perfect. And so it was. How can we keep the line running smoothly while we're working through all of these Kaizens and problem solving scenarios to get us up to speed.

Yeah. Well, if anything, maybe that gives people listening some reason to take a deep breath and be like, oof. You know, even Toyota's not perfect. Right. So. But they're constantly trying and making improvements just like we all should be. So, so that's a, that's a really cool story. So just kind of maybe just wrap this section up with some more everyday scenarios. You know, I'm just always fascinated from people that have actually worked there. I never, obviously never worked at Toyota. So, you know, were there any Other everyday scenarios that were kind of cool for the frontline workers.

So what I think, and this is something that honestly I think any organization, you know, should have. So one thing that they have is they're called quality circles. Basically it's frontline LED problem solving think tanks basically. And so, you know, I was fortunate enough that I was able to go and be trained as a quality circle leader. And so then I ran my own quality circle. And you know, you're meeting either after shift or at lunch and you're essentially going through eight step problem solving every day. Not every day. Okay, but once a week. Once a week. But with, for my circle in particular, we're very active and so we would talk about things basically every day when you know.

Sorry to interrupt. Just quick question. Eight steps. So kind of what we would call practical problem solving, like break down a problem, set a target that. Okay, cool.

Okay, that's it. And what, what this did though is it empowered your frontline employees. So you know, you're all Kaizen's happen every day. You know, we're encouraged every day to make these small changes, you know, but what they talked about is with the kaiz, you know what the solution is with quality circle theme. You know, there's a problem here, you look very macro at first and then you break it down from there until you focusing in on one thing and you know, then you go through the steps of, you know, of resolving that issue, come, you know, root cause analysis problem, coming up with countermeasures, countermeasure, seeing the countermeasure through, making sure that following up with that countermeasure, standardizing. And so what this did though, what I felt that this did is this empowered the frontline workers to an even greater extent that this was a problem that was above just them. This isn't something where I can just fix this by moving this part here and that's going to fix the problem. This is a problem. I have no idea how to fix it. But then you're teaching your frontline workers how to go through these problem solving steps so that when they move on to team lead position or whatever it might be down the road or even just staying frontline workers, they have this problem solving mentality. And I think the ingenuity and innovation that I've seen at Toyota is some of the best I've ever seen anywhere I've worked. And personally I credit a lot of that to the fact that you've got Kaizens and you've got quality circles where you are fostering this culture of problem solving now with a day to day basis.

Yeah. So as it relates to Kaizen, like what, you know, in a traditional Lean sent the world, you know, Kaizen events. Right. Very popular, three five day blitzes, if you will. How often are those going on or did you participate in them?

They do have those. I, I did not participate in one of those. Those tend to be. There's a different department that, which, which, which was interesting. But you know, there's. There's different departments that would, that would come in at some point in time to look at those types of. Those type of events and you know, and they would pull a couple of the more experienced frontline workers to help participate with those. I did not have the opportunity to participate in one of those. But yes, they do. They would do that as well. So they would have what you would consider your traditional, you know, five. I think most of theirs are five days, you know, five day Kaizen events. And then otherwise your kaizens were every day. Yes, every day. You know, there is a. For, you know, and it was funny is I didn't even realize until recently there was actually a form that you fill out if you had a Kaizen. Because the way I was looking at, I would just let my group lead or my team lead know, hey, look, this is the issue. Do you think you could change this? And you know, and a lot of times, you know, they would just. Apparently they were taking care of that form. But there was, I mean there was an official form too that you could fill out. You know, like, this is what I want to change is why I want to change it. This is why I believe it'll be beneficial. And that's discussed with between the two different shifts. Shift, second shift. And if everybody was ingredients. Yeah, that's actually going to make things better than they just went ahead and then they'd go ahead and do it.

Very cool.

Go ahead and make the change.

Very cool. So I understand that you're actually getting ready to transition to something different though. What's going on there?

I am. So this kind of went back to that, that first podcast with Mike. With Mike, yeah. So I wanted to move to healthcare. And there's a guy at church that I go. There's a guy I go to church with. About six months ago, he learned I worked for Toyota and he starts talking to me, we start having these conversations about Toyota and how it works. I had no idea what he did. Well, what I found out is he's basically, he's a professor of basically Basically Lean Healthcare at the University of Kentucky. And he said, well, have you ever thought about switching to healthcare? I was like, well, I have, I have no idea how to do it. He's like, well, here's a course you should take. And he. The Institute of Healthcare Improvement has a course on basic patient safety and quality, which is essentially, it's, it's. I mean, it's lame that that's all there is to it. And so I took that course. I was like, that was very interesting, you know, I'd kind of like to do that. He's like, well, okay, now talk to this guy. And he sends me the contact information of the director of the Office for Value of Innovation and Healthcare Delivery at the University of Kentucky. I call him up and he invites me in to just have a sit down. I'm basically thinking, you know, I'd like to get into healthcare. I'm probably gonna need a degree in healthcare or something. I figured he's gonna tell me, well, you know, go get this degree, come back in three years and we'll talk. And we had about an hour conversation. About 45 minutes into it, he, he asked our, well, is this something that you're looking to move into as healthcare? I was like, yeah, I am. It's like, well, are you looking to move now? And I kind of was like, well, I don't know, tell me more. Yeah, and so he had a, he had an open position coming up and he's like, you know why? He's like, I feel you, you do a great job in it with your background, with your education. He's like, apply for it. The job wasn't posted yet. He's like, apply for it and we'll bring in for an interview and we'll, we'll go from there. And apparently they, they felt that I was qualified for it, which I was very thankful for. So, yeah, so I, I'll start that pretty soon. Basically, I will be essentially, it's process improvement specialist and trainer within the UK healthcare circle.

Yeah, well, very cool. Yeah, we were talking before we came on the recording here that you gotta connect. I know you already have a little bit with Mark, Mark Rabin, Skip Stewart, Brandon Brown, all these folks, Michael Lombard, tons of amazing lean thinkers in the healthcare world and Thetacare and just all the rest of it. It's such an exciting time really for healthcare and Lean in particular, how we can improve it. So. Well, good luck with that and perhaps we can, we'll have you come back on, I don't know, in six months and you're like, oh, so I'll ask you the same questions. What was different about. Yeah, yeah, Very cool. All right, well, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. Josh. So the first question. And I know you listen to the show, so you kind of know what I'm going to say, but we do spend a lot of time in particular the kind of Toyota principles, right. Respect for people and continuous improvement. And respect for people is obviously a lot harder to kind of wrap your arms around and define. So I'm curious, what does it mean to you to respect people?

Sure. And so I grew up in, we'll call, a very command and control environment. That's just the way I think my father was raised, and that's the way I saw this might be. My father works for gm.

Okay.

Has for years. And I think a lot of their. I'm not saying now, but, you know, you know, 20 years ago, their management structure was. Was a lot of that same way. So. So to me, growing up in that type of environment, that's what I saw. And I thought that's how you did it. You know, you. I know more. I'm the boss or the father or parent or who are the oldest, whatever it might be.

I'll think you do.

Yeah, exactly. That's the way you do it, right? I mean, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. That's the type of mentality I had. And so as I transitioned into a more of a lean mind, I moved into what I consider now serve and inspire. That's what I consider. And I realized that respect really is, you know, you've got the golden rule, but then you've got the platinum rule, which is, you know, do you know, you treat others how they want to be treated? And, you know, you look at, you know, respect for people and then you hear the definition. Well, it's respect for humanity. And for me personally, I've realized that it's. It's almost even a step further. It's not even just humanity because that's. That's. Humanity is dealing with people, you know, the human race. But it's respect for life in general. And I think I first realized that when we've got two cats, they're about a year old. So, you know, we're learning, you know, teaching them, you know, you don't get on the counter, you know, these other things, you know, and what do you do? You spray them with a spray bottle or, you know, you yell at them, you know, and my wife's like, why Are you doing that? She's like, you don't yell at the kids. You don't spray them with bottles.

Oh, we spray our kids all the time. Really.

You know, growing out of it at least, you know, and I'm like, you know, that's actually a good point. I'd never thought of that. You know, I would imagine the cat doesn't want to be treated like that now. It's, we're still in the experimentation phase. I'm not sure if me respecting them is actually making our relationship better or not.

Okay.

I think so. And, and so you. To me, respect is, it's, it's all aspects. It's not just, just people, it's, you know, it's relationships and everything involved. And I think Toyota does a great job with that as well. If you look at, you know, they don't just talk about developing their people and respecting others, but it's, you know, respecting people in your community. It's not, not even so much that, but just environmentally. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, they mean. Yeah, yeah. How can we respect the world. Yeah. Itself. Exactly. And so that's, to me, that's what respect is. It's, it's all encompassing of how can I just be thoughtful and understanding of everything. Yeah.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

That was from my wife. We'll see if she listens to this or not. I've told her this before that I was like, if I ever go on that show, this is what I'm going to tell them was my best advice. And so I like that. I was in the jewelry industry a long time. My goal from the very beginning was I was going to own my own store and make lots of money. And then when I made lots of money, I could go out and I could help other people. But you know, making lots of money was, was the number one priority. So I started working for myself in 2007. And in 2008, the two jewels the most with, yeah, you know where this is going. They're like, hey, why don't we start a store? I'm like, that's what I've always wanted. Yeah, let's do that. So we, you know, went out, did all that we had to do to, to, to start a small store. We're basically running a high end custom jewelry shop is basically what we were doing. This was in the spring of 2008. Everybody knows what happened that fall. Yeah, it collapsed. No other. I mean it art December, which is normally a big month, felt like any month during the summer, it was, it wasn't a good time for a lot of people. It definitely wasn't a good time to start your own business. So I ended up walking away from the business about a year later. I just, it was not, I could not sustain my family anymore off of what we were, we were trying to do there. That's actually when I went to Tiffany and company. I got fortunate enough to step into that company. But at Tiffany Company, basically the only position they had was an operations assistant and working in the Indianapolis store. I was, you know, I'm checking in merchandise and helping take in customer repairs. And I'm going to be honest, I was pretty miserable individual and I was probably pretty miserable to be around. And my wife, I think at one point was finally tired and this was, this is the advice. She said, she's like, josh, you got two choices, either be happy or not. And there wasn't that ultimatum at the end of it, but it was kind of like, look, you need to be happy because this isn't working for us. And that was a wake up call. And I was like, you know what? All of this has been a reflection of my own, you know, self pity of, you know, my dream fell apart, etc. You know, and it's like, she's right, I do have a choice. Everybody has that choice, whether or not they're going to be happy or not, that positive personality or outlook on life. And so from that day until today, anytime something goes wrong, I'm like, well, Josh, you've got two choices. You know, you can dwell on the negativity of it, or you can try to look at the bright side, even though sometimes that silver lining is hard to find. But take it as a learning experience. I think that goes back to why Taiichi Ono's quote hit me so hard, is that, you know, we're wrong 50% of the time. And on the flip side, sometimes things go wrong 50% of the time. And how are you going to correct that and just be happy anyways?

Yeah, I mentioned earlier in the show that book Obstacles Away by Ryan Holiday and can't recommend it enough. And a lot of it is rooted in stoicism. And like Marcus Aurelius, you know, the old guy from Gladiator and Marcus Aurelius had this famous quote. He says, choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed. And you haven't been, you know, and so I think your wife is a, is a Marcus Aurelius disciple, even if she doesn't realize it, so it's pretty powerful. Pretty powerful. So what are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with lean?

You know, honestly, what I'm most proud about is how it changed me as a husband and father. That truly is what. So just to give the example, I said, you know, my wife's advice, you know, and there was a transformation in me at that point in time, and, you know, for the better. You know, I became a better person because of that advice and how I decided to change my view on life in general. And at one point in time, this is probably about, I don't know, maybe six months in at Tiffany's, as we'll call it, a lean practitioner. And, you know, she actually came to me. She was like, you know what? I. You know, after that event, you know, eight, nine years ago, she's like, I didn't actually think you could become a better person, but somehow you have. And I truly attribute that to lean and to my focus on continuous improvement and respect for people. It's the Toyota way. Yeah. Toyota way is what changed that. But what I have now is now I have the tools to help me do that. It's like, it's one thing to be like, well, you know, you need to be a better husband and father, but it's another to be like, look, you know, we can use 5s in our home, we can use problem solving. There's all of these other things. You know, just the simple aspect of respect. We went from, you know, my wife's kind of mantra the year before I became a lean practitioner is, you know, with the kids, were having an issue. You know, she's like, you know, you need to reset. You know, we said reset I don't know how many times, you know, because that was our way of dealing with the issue. Mm. And then all of a sudden, I'm harping on respect, and, you know, my wife. One place is like, that's our new phrase, you know, instead of, you know, last year is reset. Now it's respect, you know, so it's not like, you know, if the kids have an issue, you know, they did something. It's like, look, this isn't a matter of you did something wrong, but, you know, it was. It wasn't respectful to everybody else or even, you know, possibly to yourself.

Yeah.

You know, so how can we resolve that? How can we look at this and make it better? And that's the changes that have happened with me personally as an individual is what I'm most proud of. Pretty cool.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Have you read any good books lately? Doesn't even have to be continuous improvement related, just any book.

So the book that I've read within this last year that I couldn't believe I hadn't read before, it would be Taiichi Ono's Workplace Management. It. I read his Toyota Production System skinny book.

Right. Pretty small.

It is. Yeah, it is, yeah. I mean it should be a relatively quick read.

You know who translated it, right? My business partner, John Miller. Yeah, he translated the entire book. Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's gone through a couple different iterations or whatever, but John was raised and born and raised in Japan, you know, with his parents. And so he speaks Japanese fluently. So yeah, he went through that then that entire book. So yeah, yeah, John Miller.

It's awesome. I didn't know that, but that, that to me so far, it's so like I said, it should be a quick read, but I find myself there's so many.

Oh yeah.

Pearls of knowledge within that. It's almost like. Do I highlight just. Do I just dump it in yellow paint and say it's all highlighted?

Yeah, exactly. The whole book's highlighted. Yeah.

That within the last year. That's by far the best book.

Yeah.

I've personally.

Yeah, well, we're gonna definitely link to it in the show notes. People can check that out. So last, last question. So you've been been around a mock a little bit, Josh, You've got a lot of great background and learned at Toyota, but is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve on in order to become a better lean thinker?

You know what? So here I was going on, you know, how I've become a better person, but I still think I have so much farther to go. I think, you know, even I still find myself even within my quality circle, trying to dictate one way, you know, because again, I still have those underlying feelings of, well, you know, I know better. And it just trying to get to that point to where I truly, I guess listen. Listening is what I need to work on. It's. It's listening to everybody's viewpoint and taking it from there instead of me trying to dictate what happens.

It's not easy. I guess I always say that's why God gave us two ears. Right. And one mouse. So good stuff. All right. Well, hey, man, it's been great chatting with you. Really, really enjoyed it. Normally these episodes don't go this long. But I can't even imagine. We've been on for almost 50 minutes, but I can't even tell. It's been such a. Such a fun conversation. So let's kind of wrap it up with telling people how they can connect with you.

Sure. So the, the best way would be LinkedIn. Just I think if you search Joshua D. Sanchez. D being the middle initial, that's by far the best way to, to connect with me.

Got it.

Got it. That's by far my preferred social media.

Got it. All right, well, again, I, I want to have you back on the show, but we'll give you six months or so to get into this healthcare world and we'll come back on and catch back up with you and see how things are going.

Well, that sounds great, Ron.

All right, well, thanks a lot, Josh. Good luck and you take care. I will.

Do appreciate it.

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