GA 197 | How to Use Continuous Improvement in Untraditional Settings with Veronica Silva

At first, when my boss proposed using an FMEA to figure out where we would have regulatory failures, I thought, oh, my God, this is gonna go. Nobody's gonna want to get on board. Nobody's gonna understand this.

How has continuous improvement impacted your career? And if you've had more than one job, have you always used Lean and Six Sigma wherever you went? Well, my guest today has managed to leverage continuous improvement in every position she's held, including her time as a bartender during her college years. Her name is Veronica Silva, and I'm honored to say that I played a small part in her story, as I was the lead trainer during her black belt training many years ago. On today's show, Veronica shares some great success stories of how continuous improvement has helped her in various industries such as banking, software development, and public utilities, proving the point that the philosophies of Lean and Six Sigma know no boundaries. Show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 197. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning System over@gembaacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Now let's get to the show. Welcome to the show, Veronica.

Oh, thank you. I'm honored to be a part of this.

All right, well, you know, we've been chatting a little bit here before we hit record, so it's great to reconnect with you, I guess. Why don't we start things off, Veronica, with you telling us a little bit about your background, maybe how you first came to learn about all this can. She knew some pre med stuff.

Sure. So I started in manufacturing in about 2007, and that's really when my first foray into continuous improvements was. I started into a site black belt position, went right for green belt and black belt training, and that's actually how we know each other. You were my black belt trainer.

Yeah.

And then from manufacturing. I worked for that company for about four years. I left there in about 2010 and went back to go get my graduate degree. I also worked for the university, and I bartended at night. And the funny part about that is I used continuous improvements to really set up the bar, a couple of bars that I worked at so that I could operate quicker and thus making more money.

Nice.

So I did that for about two years. After I got finished up with my mba, I went to a small business in New York, software consulting company. I worked as a project manager and operations manager for a year with them. Then I left. I went to Chase and Chase was a great position. I actually worked directly under a master black belt from ge. So I used a ton of the tools. We used control charts extensively. We actually used a business intelligence tool called Tableau to do about 90 or 100 different control charts around complaints to figure out where some of our issues lied and to get ahead of some of the issues ahead of the regulators. After that, I worked on some other projects through Chase. I left there August of last year and now I work for a public utility in New York State.

Yeah, we were talking that you're pretty much snowed in right now, I guess, in New York. Oh my gosh, it's crazy. All right, well, you've had quite the career, so I gotta ask you. Tell me about those days of that knucklehead Ron up there training you. Like, what was that like? I can't even remember what class you were part of. We trained so many folks back then. What was that? I don't even remember, like, where was it in Dallas or.

It was in Dallas. So we did two weeks in Dallas and I think you were my lean trainer as well. I remember going for lean training when I was there for about a year later doing all these, you know, the different activities with legos. But my experience was great and that lends itself so well to the position I'm in now as a full time black belt making the trainings. Because I think back to those days and I think back to that material and I think, like, what I want to do for the students that I have now is really make it an empowered type of training. Because that's what I felt when I left that training. I felt empowered. I felt like this was great material. I knew where I could use it right off the bat and I find myself using it day over day. So I have nothing but positive things to say about you. And the funny thing too, when I got to my current position and I started like reviewing the materials that I was preparing for. I started with this company now in September and they gave me their green belt material. Here you go. You're going to go up to one of our facilities and you're going to do training. And I'm looking through this, I'm preparing for my modules and I click on one of the videos they have there and I'm like, oh my God, this was my black belt trainer.

So funny. Yeah, it's a small world you can't escape, Ron. No, no. We had so much fun back then. I love teaching those classes and we had a lot of good times back Then so. All right, well, so you've had, I think, you know, kind of the theme of this episode is really how. How Veronica has been able to leverage this concept of continuous improvement no matter where you've gone. Right. So let's kind of step through maybe a couple of your stops. I am super, super interested in that bartender role. So tell us a story about what you did. Give us an example of how you made things better and problems you solved and how that worked out.

Oh, my gosh. So tons of them. I worked out of like a hotel bar, which was a great gig because during the week it wasn't too, too busy. You had enough of like the professional crowd that came through. But it wasn't so busy where I was leaving at like 2 in the morning. Weekends were pretty busy because we had the after wedding parties. But a lot of times it was either myself or one other person manning the bar. And it was really, it was a struggle at first to figure out how can I maximize my time, and I mean, like, get my time down to even seconds in order to go pull a beer out of the fridge and get that customer's payment without having a line of customers up at the bar. So really what I did there was I organized the liquors and the beer in a fashion, especially the high volume around the registers so that like, say a customer came up to the bar and wanted a Bud Light. It was right next to the register. Now, for a less commonly used beer, like the Modelos, I could organize them, put them a little further away from the register so that when I got a request for it, I did have to walk a little bit further. But it wasn't happening as frequently as some of the other high volume beers and liquors.

What does your colleagues think? I'm sure they liked it. It probably helped them too. But were they curious? What are you doing?

Oh, yeah. They were all like, what is she doing now? And after I explained it, a lot of people were like, oh, that's genius. And I started to get other suggestions from people about, like, what glasses to use and where to put the glasses. Putting them around the dishwasher because we had a high volume dishwasher. So it was kind of like everybody got on board with it all of a sudden. And it worked out phenomenally.

So naturally, after bartending, you got into the software world, right?

Yeah, of course. Naturally.

Yeah. So talk about that. Stop.

That was interesting. I thought going from a corporate role and then working in education, that small business would be great. And it really was. It introduced me to a lot of the small business practices and the things that you learn in school, like how to do accounting or how to run books. I started as just a project manager, and again, the owner of that company loved the fact that I had a black belt because he was all about like, hey, we're growing. You know, we all. We went from having three people to now having 10 people in the office, and now we're moving offices. So we really have to get our processes down, streamlined, very lean oriented. So it was a natural. Believe it or not, it was actually a natural move because I had that background from working in a large corporation. And it was a good opportunity for me because, like I said, I got to use the things I was taught in school from an operation standpoint, in terms of running a business financially, hiring new people, like going through the recruiting piece on the other side of the table. So it was really cool.

Give us an example of an improvement that you made in that software world.

One of the first things I did there was create a quoting tool. So it was driving people nuts that they had to go out to, like, three or four different sites to go get information on pricing to send out to a customer. So I sat with the team, I kind of learned what information they needed and put everything into Excel with a couple of fancy macros. They called it the quoting tool, but it really streamlined the process. It cut the cycle time to quote from like, a couple of hours down to just a few minutes.

Very nice, Very nice. Okay, and then was it right? Was it chase after that, Chase after that?

Yep.

Okay, so you work for master black belt, so obviously you had some good support there, and you mentioned control charts, but talk about some other thought without, you know, too much confidentiality, since we've. We've used their name here. So. But yeah, like, what was that?

Like, that was great. And actually, one of the things I always tout for people is go for the certification because it opens up so many doors. I look at my history, and I've gone from manufacturing to education to service, then on to finance, and now public utilities. The interview itself was fantastic because I could talk to the different tools and we could have a true conversation, not just from a high level, but we could talk about the tools and we could talk about different ideas that I had. So, yeah, the control charts, that was a great tool. Another tool that we used too was an fmea. And the business really, at first, when my boss proposed using an FMEA to figure out where we would have regulatory failures, I thought, oh, my God, this is going to go. Nobody's going to want to get on board. Nobody's going to understand this. But it really took. It was a struggle, of course, to get some of the lawyers to use an FMEA or to walk through that exercise with them. But after a while, a lot of people saw the value in it and they were coming to us to say, you know what we want to consider, we want to go through that exercise with a regulation that we weren't going to consider before, but now we like that exercise. Let's do it for this.

So did you literally bring the lawyers into a room and say, all right, here's an fmea, here's how it works, let's start talking about things that could go wrong. I mean, is that what you did or Exactly?

Yep. We had a little presentation that came with it and it was a cross functional team. So we had the legal department, we had the controls department, we had the subject matter experts on the various products. So we brought them all into a room. We did a little introduction and there was actually an introduction for our team. I worked for a master black belt and there was only one other black belt on our team of about seven or eight people. So there was some coaching for the other individuals that hadn't used it as well. But then we kind of did a train the trainer with them, so they led their sessions. But yeah, we all got on the phone, we went through the presentation on what it is, why it's valuable, how to use it. And the one thing about Chase is you've got so many people across the entire US it makes it so difficult to physically get in a room. But to do a screen share was not difficult at all. But yeah, we went through that. We had, depending on the process we were looking at, we might have needed a few more sessions. But generally we were able to get through a lot of these things in one or two sessions. It was interesting because I got to learn so much about the business that I had never known. You don't realize things like the types of vandalism that you can have at an ATM and then how you have to. What's your procedure to control that and what's your procedure to fix the atm? Because really if a customer is going to an ATM and they can't get a receipt or they can't transact, that's a failure. It was interesting for me from a change management perspective to see how people took hold of the tool, but also how much I learned from them.

Yeah, I think the FMEA is perhaps one of the most underutilized tools out there. And it's so powerful if you can get to the point to where, you know, you're building it with some integrity, you've, you know, maybe use some other tools to kind of whittle down the inputs to something, you know, that's manageable. But gosh, you start with 10 things that could potentially go wrong. You know, the FMEA could be hundreds of lines long. Right. I mean rows long when you, after you get through all the potential failure modes and so forth. So yeah, great job, Great job. Now, before we get to the public utility position that you're in now, I want to circle back to, to our, to the company that we worked at together. And I know there's a famous whiteboard story that you're kind of famous for, Veronica, so talk about that one.

That was a funny one and I apologize for forgetting it during the introduction. Yeah, but that's really how I got into continuous improvement. So I started with that company in 2005 as an intern. It was in between my sophomore and junior year at college. And I showed up at this facility. So this was 2005, showed up at this facility. One of my first jobs was to update the whiteboards. So they literally took out a report from the MRP system and you're writing it up on these whiteboards. There was a section for notes where like project managers would come in and write an update, purchasing department would come in and give an update, drafting, so on and so forth. And it was just like, this is so antiquated because as soon as an item shipped you had to erase the line. And then at the end of the month you ended up with all these lines, blank lines that you had to shift up and rewrite to the next board. So it was just like, this is so backwards. And one day I found myself complaining to the guy that hired me. Little did I know, bright eyed and bushy tailed, 20 year old I was at the time that he was the regional manager. So he says to me, well, why don't you put a prototype together? And I said, I absolutely will, no problem. I'm going to go home, I'm going to read all about access. Because I had no clue what access was. Went home, read about it, got myself knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. Came into work the following weeks and started to, in addition to continuing to update these whiteboards, I really got familiar with the metadata, was able to develop a prototype in access. I showed it to my boss as well as the regional manager and it took hold So a week before I left to go back to college, they stopped using the whiteboards and they went to the accountability boards, is what we called it in access. And when I got hired on back full time, one of my jobs was to always continue to update it. And it was amazing to see it go from this little note section that was probably like an inch wide and a foot long on these whiteboards to this massive section. But it really helped the business adapt. When I left, they were getting into the nuclear business, which really was a struggle because there's so much information to track on an order. The whiteboards would have never been able to handle that. Then after I left, I was actually hired back as a consultant to help make further improvements to that dashboard. And last I spoke to my manager from that company, they were replicating that into other facilities. So it's pretty interesting as. As just a college intern to see something like that blossom so well. And that was really my first foray into continuous improvements. After that, the company was like, all right, you know, you got to go for a green belt training. Got to go for black belt training. And that's how it really started.

Yeah, that's so cool. So cool. All right, well, let's wrap this section up with. Tell us a little bit about the public utility world and how you're using continuous improvement. There's.

It's interesting, actually, going from manufacturing, where continuous improvements was so ingrained into the company, as was the Lean Six Sigma program, to a company, fast forward 10 years, I thought, and I really expected it to be so well ingrained in a public utility, and it's not. So it poses an interesting. I won't even say problem. It's more of a challenge, because one of our challenges is in addition to developing material and making sure that it flows, that it's appropriate for people that have never seen it. It's teaching it and getting people in the mindset of, hey, this is a great way to work on projects. It's a great way to don't have the buck stop at a problem. Let's go make further improvements. But one thing I found so interesting was when I came to the company and I said, oh, I'm a black belt. People are like, what? So to explain that. And I'm like, why do you people not know? It took me aback. Yeah, it really did.

Okay, cool. So talk a little bit about. In the. In your current role. I know you're really involved in creating training materials and talk a little bit about that process and, like, how that's Going and what's working well? What are you struggling with? That sort of thing?

Sure. So from a working well standpoint, I think my department works great. Together we bring about 80 years of experience, which, when it comes to stories and presenting the material, I think it's very enticing. But one thing we struggle with, and again, such a surprise for me was the actual material, the PowerPoint presentations that go along with it. And then along with that also comes, where does material go into what section? So we constantly debate, where does the FMEA tool fit in? Where does control tools fit in? And for me, I kept thinking when I started was, this methodology has been around since 1980. Why do we not have a standard process for this? But the more I think about that, too, the more I think continuous improvements. We're continually improving continuous improvements. So it goes right down the path of how to use the methodology and use these tools over and over and over again.

Yeah, no, and I think FMEA is a great example. It's like our approach here at Gamba Academy is we don't really say, oh, you're in the D phase or the M phase, you know, because I'm like, okay, yeah, FMEA is a perfect example. Where's that go? D, M, A, I, C. Oh, the answer is yes. Right? So, yeah, so I think. Yeah, I think the important thing is, you know, learn the concepts, learn the tools, and then apply them. It makes sense. And don't handcuff yourself. Right. And, yeah, so I think you're doing great work there, Veronica. I'm super excited to see how things go. But listen, let's go ahead and jump into the reflection section now. I kind of warned you before we got started and give a little announcement to longtime listeners of the podcast. We've always done this reflection section, but we've gone through a couple of phases where we pretty much always ask kind of the same questions. I think we changed them up about 100 episodes ago, but we've literally been asking the same question. So we've got a whole bunch of new questions, and I think a plan is each episode. We're just going to kind of rotate and jump around so we don't always ask the same ones. But. So you're our. You're our first to go with these new questions, Veronica, So hopefully you're ready.

I'm excited.

All right, so the first one I want to talk about is what your opinion is. And, like, where do you think? Lean, Six Sigma? Just continuous improvement in general. Where do you think it's going in the future. In other words, what's next for this movement of ours?

That's interesting because one thing that we continue to talk about at work is Agile. So I see a lot of people trying to get other methodologies into like combine Lean with other methodologies. So I see, you know, in the future I see Lean Six Sigma really incorporating some of these other methodologies that are out there. And I actually just had a discussion with my boss this morning on, well, how do the two fit? Because for me it's kind of like you just go back and forth between mani, mani, mani. So I really see a lot of more materials out there on how everything is related. I think we'll see more companies that have been strong adapters for Lean Six Sigma incorporate certain aspects of Agile into their daily, really their daily tasks, as well as their continuous improvement program.

Okay, so this next one I think is perfectly suited for you and your background. So tell us about a time when you succeeded and kind of selling this whole concept of Lean and Six Sigma to someone else and really kind of getting them to try it for the first time.

So actually going back to the control charts at Chase, that was a tough one because I was working with their complaints department, where you're so ingrained in the complaints that we get from customers and trying to figure out where the systems are, where system failures occur and how are we going to go fix them that you don't really, it's hard for you to take a step back and realize, wait, we've got to really monitor this as opposed to just reacting. Selling that to, again, a group of lawyers was, I thought was going to be difficult. It actually ended up not being as difficult as I figured. And a lot of people, as soon as I started to talk about control charts and how useful they were and why control chart limits are so much better than thresholds. Because that was another issue that we had in just trying to monitor. We would monitor using an arbitrary threshold and that made it difficult because it was like, well, we don't know if that threshold is accurate or not. It was just a number that we kind of picked and we adjust over time. So as soon as I started introducing control charts and talking about statistical process control, people were like, this is great. So it was really, I mean, that was a true success in the sense of people held, you know, grabbed it, they liked it, they could see the value of it. And even when we ran the control charts on historical data, people were like, oh, I know what that bump was for. I know what that spike was. And they could point to. They could point to exactly a particular instance or a particular system change or a process change that caused the spike. So it was really interesting. It was great to see that light go on and to see people take hold of it and run.

Very cool. All right, so imagine that you had a time machine, okay? The DeLorean is sitting in your driveway. All the snow is gone. Right? Now just imagine that, okay? And you get to go back in time and you get to spend one day shadowing anybody you want. Like from a, from a continuous improvement perspective. So it could be, I don't know, Henry Ford, Dr. Deming, Taichi Ono, anybody. Who would you. Who would you choose to visit and why?

Oh, boy, you know, I don't know that I would go that far back in time. Henry Ford, you know, things like that. I feel like I would go more modern day. I really. And this sounds like I'm such a suck up, but I would love to go shadow you for a day and see how you handle process and a client, a company that you've never worked for and the questions that you ask or you know, any of the consultants that have, you know, such. They are so well known in the industry for their Lean and Six Sigma background. But how they go into a company never having not knowing their processes, not knowing their culture, and how they go about solving a problem.

Well, you're free. You're free to come here to Keller, Texas anytime you want. Veronica, I don't know if we've got it all figured out, but we're trying and we continue to improve as best we can as well. But I'm honored by your answer there. Thank you. So the last question I have, and then I want you to talk a little bit. I understand that you're an entrepreneur in trading here as well. I want you to definitely share your story of your business that you've started here on the side. But the last question I have, this one is kind of an oldie but goodie, but it's one of my favorite. What's the best advice that you've ever received?

So actually, interestingly enough, I wouldn't say this piece was directed at me. It was more something I've heard said so many times. But really take care of yourself. So I think at the end of the day, a lot of us in continuous improvements are such go getters and type A personalities that you start down the path of making a continuous improvement or trying to solve a problem, and you just get so involved in it that you forget, you know, at the End of the day, go home, have dinner with your family, take some time for yourself, take a bath, have a glass of wine, go for a run, go to the gym. But really, it's, you know, consciously separating yourself from getting so involved and going down the rabbit hole to allowing yourself to take time on your own and taking care of yourself. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, if you're not taking care of yourself, you certainly aren't going to be making the best continuous improvements that you could or leading a team as best you can.

Nice. Beautifully said. All right, so I understand that you started a business, Veronica, and I want to hear about the business. But more importantly, I think folks would love to hear how once again, you've managed to apply this whole mindset of continuous improvement to your business. To a very unique business, I would say.

Yeah, it is certainly very unique. And thank you for bringing that up. I was trying to figure out how to get that in here, into some of the discussions. But, yeah, last year. No, actually, I'm sorry. About two years ago, I started a business where we bring pets to weddings. So found a problem. I was having the problem myself where my husband and I were getting married. We had been together for about three or four years. So we did everything completely backwards from what like my parents did. So we started dating. We actually got our dog before we even moved in together. After that, we moved in together, then we bought a car, then we bought a house. Then he proposed. So here we are planning this wedding. And our dog had been part of our lives for about three or three years at that point. So I was like, there's no way my dog's not going to be part of the day. Like, he's got to be, at least in some of these pictures, especially because you're paying thousands of dollars for wedding pictures. And the more I started talking to people and googling it, one, there was really a niche for it because a lot of couples do this now. A lot of couples date for an extended period of time and buy a house before they get married. So, you know, their dog has been part of their lives, much like mine was. And there wasn't a company that offered the service. I was even talking to one of the girls that I went through pre Cana with, and I said, tori, what are you going to do for Jack? You know, I imagine you want Jack part of your day. And she said, veronica, I have called every dog company on Long island, and they will not do a defined walk. They will not walk the dog just nine blocks down to the church and then back again, because all she wanted was pictures at the church. But no company would say, like, we're going to do a defined a walk. And then. And I just thought that was crazy. So I said, all right, I've heard enough, I've researched enough. I'm going to start this. And sure enough, my first year, I had about six clients. So not tremendous, but it was a good experience for me to figure out how to set up the business, what tools to use, what forms to use, and continually improve on those. And then last year, I was actually at a wedding, and the executive producer of brides.com came over to me. She ended up being one of the bridesmaids. And she said to me, I think this is awesome. This is. I cannot so in love with what you're doing. And she saw me in action. She saw me, you know, line up the dog for pictures and then take the dog when he wasn't in the pictures with a couple and make sure he was. He had treats. I go with a little. I call it my pawfic pouch. Somebody else called it the Mary Poppins bag.

Okay.

Really? I mean, and that's another version of continuous improvements, because you don't think about all these different things that dogs need on their wedding day or, you know, when they're home.

Yeah.

So she saw me using that, and she's like, this is fantastic. I'm gonna send out a producer to go shadow you for a day. And then they put that video online in July. It got 2.8 million views. So.

Oh, my gosh.

Blew our business up. And at that point, I hired a lawyer, hired an accountant, and then I hired about 10 other girls to help out as well. So we cover everything from Boston down to Baltimore right now. So really, it was somewhat overnight success, but it was good success. And I used the tools every day. I mean, right down to a little mini project on cycle time for quoting. I found that some of my customers I was losing because I couldn't respond to quotes quick enough. Then I ended up using a selection matrix to figure out what systems I could use that would help me develop or send out a quote. Get a quote down to a customer quicker, believe it or not, with that, too. In speaking to some of the customers that I had, I said, what's your take on quotes? If you get a quote from vendor, especially a wedding vendor, that's like a week after you requested it. What are your thoughts around that? And everybody said, a week is too long. I want something between one and three Days. Because if you can't respond to my quote that quick, then I know you're too busy to handle my. My wedding. So right then and there, I got specification limits. I literally. I did a project around our. Really, it's my quoting. My ability to quote. Because the other girls really. I handle the management of it, and the other girls end up doing the actual jobs now. But I constantly am using the tools to run the business and to really Design it for Six Sigma.

What's the name of the company?

It's called Pawfect4U.

It's what?

Pawfict for you, like a paw.

Okay.

Words. So instead of perfect, I did pawfict. P, A, W, F, E, C, T. Very good.

And you have a website or anything?

Oh, yeah. Website. Huge social media presence. So I've learned a ton about social media and again, even how to continuously improve on social media. I just created a. So I did a little kaizen on my hashtags. Instagram.

Yeah.

So, yeah, huge social media presence. And you really have to. Nowadays.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you gonna go, like, nationwide with it or what?

I'm gonna see how I do regionally this wedding season coming up, and then so long as things go smoothly and the processes that I've set up so far and the systems that we're using work well. I really haven't. I don't forecast there to be anything wrong, but I wanted to really pilot it regionally before I go nationally. But as long as it goes well this wedding season, Absolutely. I've got people. I knew when that video went live that it would get a lot of attention. I didn't know it was going to be as much attention, but I put on my website a spot for work for us. So I've got applicants from all over the country.

Nice. Oh, that's so exciting. I can't wait till you make it huge and then we come back on and talk about. Remember when you were talking about regional? Now you're all over the world, you.

Know, I would love it.

Yeah. Very good. All right. Well, hey, Veronica, it was great catching up with you. I'm super proud of you, by the way, for all of your success. And I'm really, really honored to have been a small part of your. Of your journey early on. So keep up the good work, and let's definitely stay in touch. And let's go ahead and wrap things up with maybe you sharing some final words of wisdom, Veronica, and then be sure to tell folks how they can connect with you.

Sure. So final words of wisdom. I always tout going for the certifications and taking the trainings, follow through with the certifications because it opens up so many doors even for myself. Been able to go from industry to industry and really have been so mobile in my career because of my Six Sigma and Lean training connection wise. Please reach out to me via LinkedIn. Check out the website. You send an email through the website for profit4u. I'm more than happy to respond as well. And that's pretty much it.

And you're on LinkedIn as Veronica.

Yes, Veronica Silva.

Okay, got it. All right, well, thanks again, Veronica. Keep up the good work and let's definitely stay in touch.

Sounds good. Ron, thanks so much. I really appreciate this and it was an honor to be a part of this.

All right, you take care.

You too. Bye.

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