GA 220 | How to Ensure the Longevity of Your Lean Success with Mohamed Aref

By being able to become more efficient, the company was actually able to give back to the team, and it really impacted everyone in a positive way. So it wasn't just about the company making more profit. And that's it. It was both right. It was about the community. It was about helping the team and the plant, as well as adding more value to the customers.

As we all know, Lean knows no boundaries. It works in any industry in any part of the world. And while we shared a few international Lean success stories on his podcast over the years, we could have definitely done better. And this is why I'm so excited to welcome Mohammad RF to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Muhammad is originally from Egypt, where he worked at his family's business. Now, during the show, Mohammed explains how they got started on their Lean journey and how they were able to quickly realize some tremendous success. And most importantly, Mohammed explains what he believes to be the secret to their long lean success. Show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 220. 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, Mohamed. How are you?

I'm great, Ron. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, no, thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on. So we were chatting before. I guess you're up in Toronto. Is it raining? Raining right now in Toronto? Raining in Winnipeg, from what I can tell.

Actually, the weather has been amazing this week.

Okay.

So it's been pretty great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're off to. Off to this Lean conference up there in Winnipeg. And yeah, I see some rain, so hopefully it clears up. But, yeah, excited to go north.

Great.

All right, well, hey, thanks for coming on. I'm really excited to have you on to talk about maybe lean in a part of the world that I don't know if we've ever really touched on here on the podcast. So I'm pretty excited to explore Lean in Egypt. So that's going to be pretty cool. Hey, let's go ahead and begin with you telling a little bit about yourself, your background, and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and then definitely tell folks what you're up to these days.

Sure. So, I mean, I basically grew up. I was born and grew up in Egypt. My family have a business there. We manufacture door locks. So we're a large exporter to about 30 countries. 35 countries. We have about just over a thousand employees. So a nice sized company. And you know how you studied in my mechanical engineering degree in England. So, you know, I'm an engineer by training. And pretty much after my education in university, I went back to Egypt. I started working at the family business. And one of the things I actually used to do, or my father used to kind of make me do, is work there every summer, which I didn't really appreciate that much. But now that I've kind of grown up, I'm actually very grateful for it because it made me learn a lot of things.

Yeah. And what do you do these days, Mohamed?

So I'm currently the director of Operational Excellence here at idexx Corporation. So it's a great company that's with amazing people just making improvements every day.

And so if you don't mind me asking, how was the transition from your family business to this business or what led you to do that?

Well, you know, one of the things was, you know, it was actually a very difficult decision, you know, having to kind of leave Egypt. But, you know, I just, I wanted to do what's best for my family. And I feel like with the, with the political situation and everything that was going on there, you know, I felt that this would be the best decision for my family. It was a very tough decision. But, you know, at the same time, I've learned so much, you know, over the last four years. You know, I'm working for a great company. I continue to grow every day. So, you know, I have no regrets. Everything, things, you know, it's been tough, but it's worked out really great in the end.

Awesome, awesome. So how did you get introduced to Lean? Was it in school?

Well, actually, no, it was after I started working. And, you know, business was great, but, you know, we had the traditional kind of textbook manufacturing problems. You know, we had really long changeover times. We had long lead times. You know, we used to have some issues with delivery certain times. And one day, just working with the general manager there, he mentioned about Lean Manufacturing, and I just went online and I started reading about it and I was very fascinated. You know, it was a complete eye opener for me. And I just thought, you know, here we are. We have a lot of these issues that actually people have went and they've, you know, really worked on and designed a system to kind of help fix a lot of these problems. And, you know, there wasn't really a need to go and kind of reinvent the wheel. And there was something that I could actually go out there and learn. And that's where I kind of reached out to some consulting companies, and I decided to get my lead in Black Belt.

Mm. Nice. Nice, nice. I guess you've probably Googled it and found a bunch of Gemba Academy videos and blog articles. Just kidding. Yeah.

No, well, I'll get to that part later on.

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a nice setup. No, it's funny. It's like sometimes I'll. You know, I've written so many articles over the years, and so have my business partners, John and Kevin, and sometimes I'm like, oh, I can't remember how to do such and such until I'll Google it and I'll find an old article that I wrote or Kevin wrote or something. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I should have just read our own stuff. Yeah, so it's good stuff. Good stuff. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about, I guess, your company's journey with Lean. So you kind of touched on, you know, how you discovered and began the journey. But let's go ahead and kind of give us the story, you know, like, what did you do in the beginning? You know, 5s, or how did you begin the implementation?

So I was actually. I was quite young at the time. I believe I was about 24 years old. And so one of the things I wanted to do is I wanted to start with the leadership team. So I wanted to make sure that everyone was on board and that everyone was actually aware of what Lean is, because I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this on my own. So one of the things we did is that we focused on providing training for the leadership team to make sure that everyone was aligned. I think what really helped me at that point is that I had a pretty good relationship with everyone on the team, and I built a lot of trust with them. And so, you know, even though some people were kind of skeptical and as being as young as I was, you know, certain people were kind of like, you know, they have to see it to believe it, but at the same time, they were. They were still willing to support me to make this happen. So that's. That's kind of how we started it.

Now, do you think the. Any skepticism that it had to do with just the fact that it was something new and lean or the fact that you were young or maybe a combination?

I mean, I think it was a combination. And one of the other things is that we've had people, you know, in leadership positions in the company for over 20 years. You know, so these are like veteran leaders, right, that they believe that this is how kind of things were done and this is how manufacturing worked. So for them, you know, introducing the new concepts wasn't always easy, you know, and I feel that at the same time, this is why, you know, I really focus on the technical aspect as well, is because I didn't want to make anyone feel that they weren't really aware of what we wanted to try and do, given that they didn't necessarily have the skill set at the time.

So. Okay, well, obviously, so you didn't have any prior lean experience to lean on within the company. So did you have like a. Did you begin with like a project, a Kaizen event, or what did you do?

So one of the things we did is we actually brought on some consultants to help us support the implementation. But for me, you know, I knew that it wasn't necessarily going to last because once the consultants come in and they implement a project or they help us implement something and they're gone. If we didn't really have that seed planted within our culture, it wasn't really going to be sustainable and it wasn't going to go on for years to come and grow. And so one of the things we wanted to do is to really pick a project that's going to help us have a huge impact on the company. We knew that we had to get this right. There was a lot resting on that to make sure that we picked the right project. And so one of the things we did, you know, starting with the voice of the customer, we identified an area where, you know, customers were asking for a reduced lead time in a product. And it was also a very high runner of ours. So we focused, you know, we thought this would be a pretty good area to start. The team that we also had working in this manufacturing environment was also very receptive to actually being the first people to help us pilot this in a specific area. What we actually ended up doing is that basically this area had everything in the plant was laid out in a traditional functional layout. And this is when we first approached it. We used tools like the spaghetti diagram and we actually did a value stream map. Initially, we grouped everything by product family. We narrowed it down to a specific product and we basically started saying that if we actually did a process layout, we would reduce so much of the walking time and the motion waste that we had. And we actually ended up doing that. I believe we reduced the walking waste by about 85%. At the time. And so it was pretty significant. Everyone pitched in to kind of help move the equipment and set the layout. We had a pretty big communication about it. And with the value stream map, we kind of mapped up all the different kaizens that we would need to improve it the time. And so that was just one of them. And by doing that and making sure that the line was balanced, we ended up reducing our WIP in the process. I believe we had over 20,000 items or pieces in that total process, and we ended up reducing it to about 50.

Wow. 20,000 to 50.

Yeah. So people, you know, were literally working across very large distances. You know, it was like a different. It was like a press department with, with some machining as well. And we were able to just get everything really close to each other to the point that people would literally be able to work on the piece and just pass it down to the next person instead of putting it on containers and then moving it across with, like forklifts.

So before you were just huge batches moving around, kind of traditional batching queue, I guess. And now you're more of a continuous flow, one piece, flow type setup, is that right?

Exactly. And then we didn't actually stop there. The next thing we did is that we focused on changeover. And in our press department, we generally changeovers from about 30 to 45 minutes. And so that's the next step. We focused on that and we were actually able to bring it down to just under 10 minutes. I believe it was about seven minutes.

Nice.

So we took the video of the changeovers, we analyzed it together as a team, we identified kind of the internal, external processes, and we did the rest and we were able to actually achieve it.

And you did. A consultant was helping you with, with this as well at the time, I guess.

Yes.

Okay, good, good, good, good. Yeah. So, like, talk about the, the, the impact on lead time, because that was the original problem, right, that you were trying to solve.

Yes. So we ended up producing our lead time by just over 60% for that product.

And what was the customer's reaction to that?

No, the customer was beyond belief. You know, it was pretty impressive. It ended up, you know, generating a lot more in terms of. Of sales and the customer satisfaction as well. So it was pretty impressive to be able to have done that. And I think as a pilot project, it had exactly the same type of impact that we wanted, because we wanted something where we would make the process easier for the actual people doing the work, because we want to win them over. And at the Same time, we get to win over the leaders and everyone else in the organization to support us on this journey.

Yeah, so. So talk a little bit about the. The human side of it and maybe even the cultural side, because I'm not familiar with, you know, the culture in Egypt or anything like that. I mean, were there any particular challenges that you faced with, you know, on the people side, on the culture side?

I mean, definitely there was. On the culture side, there were some challenges initially. You know, people generally didn't like change. And I find that this is something, you know, regardless of the countries that I've seen people working in different environments, no one likes change. Not a lot of people like change. So I think that's something that's kind of in common.

Yeah.

You know, and that's something that we really worked on, and the way we approached it is we basically focused on, you know, what's. What's. You know, I like to always start with why, you know, why do we need to make the change? And why should the people that are actually doing the work want to make the change? And so we focused on what are the pain points that they had? How could we make their life easier coming to work every day? We were able to make a list of the pain points, like the distance that they walked in terms of the tooling. When they were doing the changeovers, they didn't have some of the best tooling that would actually save them a lot of time. Sometimes they'd have to wait for tooling. It wasn't organized. This is where we, from the people side, attempted to sell it to the team, is that we're actually going to make this easier for you. We're not going to make you work harder to produce a better lead time. We're actually going to work smarter.

So as you were going through the transformation, I assume it was probably a pretty typical transformation where you might have some skepticism in the beginning, maybe even a person standing in the back with their arms crossed and a sour look on their face. But as the transformation evolves, many times I've seen the arms start to unfold and the sad, angry looks go away and people kind of lean in and they get a little excited. Did you start to see that as well as you were beginning to have some success?

Yes, definitely. In the beginning, you could tell that some people, even though they were kind of agreeing to help us out and to support us doing this, you could tell that they didn't really believe in it. And definitely as it progressed, people were actually, you know, a lot happier with the results. And I feel like it actually built a lot of trust.

Yeah.

Because, you know, we committed that we were going to do something and we actually followed through.

Yeah. Now when was this, when was this first big project?

This was around, I'd say probably around 2009.

Oh, wow. So quite a long time ago. So bring us to present day. Like what's lean like at the company now?

It's definitely progressed a lot. There's actually like an academy in the company so that everyone on the shop floor and the production team gets lean training. So the culture has been really. The lean culture has really been ingrained in it. When we started out, we didn't have a lot of metrics that we would measure at that point. So something like measuring OEE as an example, that wasn't really existing. The data driven culture wasn't as strong as it is now. Whereas now you go down, you have daily management on the shop floor, you have metrics being measured at every process, skill matrices. We're focused on cross functional training instead of just having single skilled operators. So it's really been had a significant impact on the organization to the point that it's literally grown even after I've actually left the company and moved to Canada where I am today.

Now give us do they still use consultants or how do they go about their learning now?

So the consultants actually were only in the company for probably about seven months or eight months. So it was only really to do the kickoff and to support in terms of the knowledge. And I knew that that wasn't going to be the long term and that was one of the things that. Things that worried me is that once the consultants were out, you know, are we really going to be able to sustain this and keep this going on our own? Yeah. And so, and that's where I kind of relied on Gemba Academy. So, you know, one of the challenges that we had at the time was that there actually wasn't a lot of lean material in Arabic. And Arabic was. Is really like, you know, the main language for everybody. There's people that understand English and speak English, but you wouldn't be able to rely on that for everyone across the plan. And so one of the things that I did is after subscribing to Gemba Academy at the time is that, you know, I watched a lot of your videos and I used to conduct the training myself. So what I used to do is I used to actually play the videos and that way the team gets the kind of the visual effects of the training and I'D actually, you know, every minute or so, I'd pause it and I'd actually translate everything you said.

Oh, wow. That's pretty cool.

So for a while there, I was kind of the Arabic speaking grand prayer.

That's awesome. I hope you used to say mannerisms and every talk really fast, you know. Oh, that's great.

Yeah. And then one of the. One of the things that I used to do on top of that is I used to just, you know, take videos and. And pictures from the plan. That way, I kind of custom tailor it to the area where I'm actually doing the training.

Yeah.

And just make it a bit more interactive for them, you know, since it's kind of in a different language, so I had to kind of overcome that barrier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So talk a little bit about Lean and Egypt. Overall, I'm curious, like, is it. Is it being used in a lot of companies or still pretty new, or how's that going?

I think at the time, you know, there's automotive in Egypt. So, you know, obviously these, like, automotive companies, you know, anywhere, any plant, they kind of. They work in, they implement their systems. They already have their systems. At the time, Lean wasn't really kind of spread throughout all the manufacturing, but since then, it's gotten a lot more kind of attention. And companies are starting to realize that this is. With all the global competition and globalization that's been taking place, companies have started to realize that they have to be much more competitive. And this is where leans is now much more utilized to make plants more efficient. But there's still definitely room to grow in that area.

Yeah, room to grow everywhere in the world, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So, last question. As it relates to your company in Egypt, if you were to look back on the journey and you've been on it for some time, or they've been on it for some time, what would you say are some of the main success factors that got you to where they are today?

Well, I think one of the main success factors was just being able to win the people over. I think without that, we couldn't have done it. I think if I was just to summarize it, I'd say we were able to really communicate the vision and why we needed to change. We had a really great team that was actually willing to join us on the journey, and we really invested in the training and development of the people.

Yeah. You know, I hope if people are listening. I think what you just said is really. I would say if there's one key to success with continuous improvement. It lies in three letters. W, H, Y. Why? Why are we doing this? Right. So many times people go to a conference or they watch a video or they listen to a podcast or they read a book or and they learn something and they are excited, you know, and they want to try it. So they just go and start pushing it down people's throat without explaining why, why are we doing this? And when people just take that step and ask why and explain why, it's so much better. Right? And so I think, I think you're right. You know, you change their hearts through the power of understanding why.

Yeah. And, you know, I actually have a story about the training that we did, you know, so this is actually something that, you know, we had one person in the company, they've been there for a long time and this was kind of something rare in the company. So that person had a really great work ethic, but they weren't really fortunate enough to go through the proper schooling system growing up. And so they couldn't really read well. And what we did is that we supported that person through a company funded program. Intuition. And he actually ended up, you know, completing all his schooling. He was proposing, he was actually promoted to a cell leader. And he was really a role model example of being able to operate every single process in the cell and train other people on everything that he learned. And it's just examples like that that people saw how by being able to become more efficient, the company was actually able to give back to the team and it really impacted everyone in a positive way. So it wasn't just about the company making more profit. And that's it. It was both, right? It was about the community, it was about the team and the plant as well as, you know, adding more value to the customers.

That's beautiful. I mean, I've always said, and I really, truly believe, you know, Lean can and will change the world, you know, when it's properly executed. So. No, that's beautiful. Beautiful, Mohamed. All right, well, hey, let's go ahead and jump into the reflection section. I definitely have a couple of questions I want to, I want to swing past you. So the first one is, you know, I know you've listened to the show, it's an oldie but goodie. But it's that respect for people one, because obviously you get respect for people. But I'm curious to hear maybe how you would define or explain respect for people to someone else.

I mean, for me, really, respect for people is, you know, first of all, just being able to Listen to people and really understand what they're trying to say without passing judgment. It's about, you know, treating people just well, you know, regardless of kind of, you know, their. You know, who they are in the company. It doesn't matter if they're, you know, just starting out, if they've been in the company for a long time, if they're a manager, if they're not a manager. I think just treating people as human beings, you know, interesting people, the way you'd like to be treated.

Yeah, beautiful. If you could jump into a time machine and go back and spend a day with yourself, you know, the young Muhammad who's just getting started, about to go talk to these people for the very first time about this whole thing called lean. I'm sure you're nervous and not sure exactly what to do, but today's Mohammed, I get to go and visit with your younger self, and you could have maybe five minutes to give yourself some advice. What would you say?

I mean, I think there's probably a lot of things that probably need more than five minutes.

No, you only get five minutes, so you don't have much time.

But I think one of the things that focus on. I guess when I was younger, I used to get really frustrated, you know, when. When things didn't really pan out the way, you know, that I wanted. There's a lot of change that I wanted to make happen at the company. And I thought. I didn't actually think that it would take that much effort, you know, I thought that things would be a lot easier. And, you know, sometimes I just used to get really frustrated of why people wouldn't understand, you know, that this is something that we had to do and this would be better for everybody. So I guess I just tell myself to, you know, just listen more and try and understand people's perspective more.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, can you think of some really, really good advice that you got over the years? Could be from anyone can family member, colleague, manager, coach, anybody, actually.

So something comes to mind. I actually worked for a really phenomenal leader, and he was very charismatic. He was able to just get people to trust him very quickly. And, you know, I asked him, I said, how do you do that so well? Like, how do you actually build trust so well? And he said, do you want to know the right way to do it? And I said, yes. He said, it's one person at a time.

What does that mean, do you think?

Well, I think it's that, you know, even though you can. You can kind of get people to rally behind you that, you know, unless you really impact people and you genuinely, really care about making a difference, you know, that charisma is not going to last forever.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I had a coaching call today with someone going through our black belt program, and he had a kickoff meeting, and it didn't go well. And he had asked some managers to invite, you know, some of these team members, which was probably the first mistake he made. But so these people turn up, and they weren't happy to be there, and they had no idea why they were there. And so he was caught off guard by all that. And so, long story short, the meeting was pretty disastrous for him, and he was pretty shaken up by it. And I kind of, you know, tried to rally him a little bit, but I said, well, this is a. It's a beautiful opportunity for you, you know, and he was still there at the facility. This meeting had just happened. I said, what you got to do is you got to go out to each of those people individually, seek them out one on one, and you got to go up to them and you got to just say, hey, I apologize. I messed up. Said, you need to take responsibility for it, you know, even though you could easily probably blame some manager for not doing their job or whatever it was. But said, you take responsibility and, you know, and mean it and own it and look them in the eye and explain to them one on one why they. Why you need them on the team and this and that. I said, but I think it's a beautiful opportunity to turn maybe what they would call lemons into lemonade. Right. And, yeah, so I think these situations happen all the time. Yeah.

And I believe, you know, there's always for everything, you know, that I've worked on. I feel like there's always been a learned lesson, you know, there's always something that you could do better that you learn. Right. Hindsight 20 20.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, so do you practice continuous improvement kind of in your personal life?

Yes, definitely. I try to give us an example. Well, I mean, just, you know, I like to surround myself with. With people that really add value as well in my spare time. So, you know, I joined some meetups. I do a lot of reading as well. I'm always looking to try, you know, new, different things, not just, you know, from a lean perspective, but even just hobbies, you know, I like to, you know, since moving to Canada, I've done a pretty cool things. You know, I went and I saw the northern lights. I've Experienced the freezing weather there. Yeah. But it was definitely worth it.

Yeah.

So definitely. I try to just make, you know, just always try to learn and challenge myself and just try to get out of my comfort zone because I feel that's when you really get to grow.

Yeah. Top three books that everyone should read. What are they?

That's like really putting me on the spot here.

Or three really good books. How's that? They don't have to be the top.

Okay. So I guess one of the books that I really like is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Stephen Covey.

Yep. Definitely. There's a book called the Hard Things about hard things.

I never heard of that.

Yeah. So it's a pretty interesting book about a leader that operated his own business and he kind of talks about all the hard things that you don't really get taught how to do. Such as, I believe he uses an example of the company was going bankrupt at the time and having to communicate that to the team. So he just talks about a lot of different challenging situations that you face as a leader. That is very. Actually something that you just don't learn in school.

Yeah. Author is Ben Horowitz. I just ordered it on Amazon.

Exactly.

Yeah. The hard things about hard things. Building a business when there are no easy answers. There you go. Everyone go out and buy that book. We'll seek out Mr. Horowitz and try to get him on the show. Yeah. Beautiful. Give us one more.

I guess one of the other interesting books that I found was the Lean Startup.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. It's frequently bought together is. I swear it says the Hard things about hard things. Plus the Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Yeah. I swear it's right here on Amazon. Can't make it up. Yeah, yeah, we actually had Eric Ries on the show. Oh, God. Better be a year or two ago. Yeah. Fantastic book and a great guy. So, yeah, good stuff. All right, well, those are three. Everyone's got their homework now, so to go out and read some books. So Hard Thing about hard Things. Can't wait to read it. All right, well, good stuff, man. Hey, I really enjoyed chatting with you, Mohamed. Thanks for coming on. Let's go ahead and maybe wrap things up with you, sharing some final words of wisdom and then definitely tell folks how they can connect with you over social media or whatever it is.

I guess just having worked at different companies, I can say from experience that I don't think there's a one size fits all solution for deploying leads. You know, I feel like Every company that I've worked at has been kind of at a different point in the journey and has had a little bit of a different culture. But the one thing that I want to say is that there is some common ground regardless of the company, which is that, you know, I think Lean is just as much about. It's not even more about people than it is about, you know, actually making improvements in the operation. And I firmly believe that, you know, if you're able to actually build the trust and truly have the intentions to help people out, I think the implementation will be a lot easier. And, you know, the financial and operational metrics just naturally will flow through.

Beautiful. Very well said. And how can folks can connect with you?

You know, just the best ways. It's probably just on LinkedIn. You know, anyone can feel free to reach out to me. I'd be very happy to share my experiences with them or, you know, share my advice regarding, you know, any questions they might have regarding to their Lean journey. So I'd be very happy to help out.

Yeah. And Mohammed, spell your name. Your last name. Muhammad.

Yes. So it's Arif. It's a R, E, F. Yeah, A.

R, E, F. All right, well, we'll link to it in the show notes as well. This will be episode 220, so GembaPodcast.com people can go find 220 and then everyone flood Mohammed with LinkedIn request. Yeah, good stuff. Well, hey, hopefully we get to connect. I know you're not going to the. To the Lean Conference coming up here in Canada, but maybe we could get you over to AME or. Or ASQ or something out in the next year or so, because it'd be fun to meet up and trade some Lean stories together face to face.

No, definitely, we're gonna have to do that.

All right, well, thanks again, Mohammed. You stay. Enjoy the summer. I guess I was gonna say stay warm, but it's not cold there right now in Toronto. It's beautiful.

Definitely. I will. Definitely.

All right, you take care.

Thank you, Raul. You too.

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