GA 226 | How to Practice Lean in the UAE with Dan Whittaker

It's good fun. You know, it should be like that. I'm a firm believer that lean should be fun. You know, you should keep it light hearted and fun.

Over the last few weeks, we've heard how Lean's being applied outside of the US and today we're gonna continue this trend by learning how Lean is being applied in the UAE as we visit with Dan Whitaker. Now, as you'll hear, Dan is originally from the uk, but has lived and worked in the UAE for several years now. On today's we'll learn how a country that's only 47 years old has taken to lean. And we'll also hear how Dan and his colleagues have realized great results by keeping an open mind and having a ton of fun along the way. Show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything Dan and I discussed, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 2, 2, 6. 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. All right, Dan, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Great. Thanks for having me on, Ron. It's great to hear actually talk to you rather than listen to all the videos and stuff.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for watching the videos.

No problem.

Hopefully it's helpful.

Yeah, it is.

All right, well, hey, so you have an interesting accent, but I don't believe that you're in London or something like that. Right. So tell us first of all, where are you calling it from, Dan?

Well, I'm actually calling in from Abu Dhabi at the moment. I've been out here for seven years now.

Okay.

Yeah, it's quite interesting. It's a lot different at home. A lot hotter, I was gonna say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably not as much rain and you know. Right.

I think, I think we get like rain once a year, I think.

Oh, wow. Wow.

20 minutes and everyone goes crazy for it.

Right, Right.

Okay.

All right, well, I do have to ask you. So we're actually doing this interview on July 11th right now, and it's a pretty big day for your home country, I guess, Right? With the semifinals of the World Cup.

Yeah, it's a big day. When I planned this meeting with you, I didn't really expect us to get this far. I was like, I may need to change this appointment.

Well, we had a few hours before it kicks off, so you'll be okay. We'll be done by then.

Looking forward to it. I hope we do okay. I just hope the young lads, they go for it. Seems like a different mentality this year.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's face it, been fun to watch them. So I guess I. I don't really. I don't care either way, but I think it would be fun to see England and France battle it out. So, boy, that would be some kind of a rivalry there, I guess. Right?

So, yeah, definitely. It'd be great. I think you've got half of our old English footballers over there anyway. I think David Beckham's there starting a football team as well.

Well, it's just when they all retire and want to go have fun, they come to America, you know, it's not serious anymore. You just go play a little song, you know?

Yeah, that's great.

Good stuff. All right, well, hey, let's tell us a little bit about. About your background, Dan, and then maybe be curious to learn how you. How you came to wind up where you're at now and. And what you're up to these days.

Yeah, I mean, it's. I've been all over the place, really. I mean, I left school reasonably early. I left school when I was 17, and so I just went out working and fell into quite a tough job making car mouldings, plastic mouldings, and. Yeah, it was interesting. And I learned that, well, they paid me by what I produced, so I thought, well, it seems like a good opportunity to make some money here. And so I was pumping these plastic moldings out for cars, only to. Only to find out that later on they were inspected and half of them failed. And I didn't get paid very much money at all.

Oh, okay.

So I was like, I think this is where it all started, really. I sort of said to the supervisor at the time, why didn't somebody check that a little bit earlier, before I made a mistake, you know? And that got me thinking. And from there I was just trying to, obviously, make sure that followed the standards properly that were given to me, rather than rush ahead and just think about the money. It was more important to get it right first time than just think about the money, you know? So from there, they. They were good with me, they very patient, and they saw that I was interested in making things easier for myself and other people. And we took a trip over to France, of all places, and there was one of the top manufacturing companies over there in lean. They gave a presentation and I was just blown away by it. It was actually Yamaha and they were doing scooters and they had a production line there of over a thousand machines and they had one forklift inside this facility. I just couldn't believe, just couldn't believe it. Very, very slick. And it was just something that I wanted to be part of really. And ever since then, I've always sort of, even when I haven't been fully involved in lean, whatever I've done, I've tried to make sure that I help people and find an easier way to do things. So from there I moved on, obviously, in life and different circles. And we've got a lot of Formula one teams in this country, in England. And I got a job at McLaren. So I was working for McLaren and again doing some lean stuff along the way because it was obviously run by. At the time it was Mercedes, so it was German engineering. So the. They're good with their lean anyway and just progressed on from there. And of all places, I ended up at Ferrari for five years. So that was really, that was really interesting. It was kind of like the pinnacle as a, as a young boy that was into cars and motorcycles. To be in the heart of Italy with Ducati and Ferrari around you, it was great.

So what was that like as far as, like a lean culture or maybe?

Yeah, I don't know, it was amazing. I mean, I was actually involved in the Formula one team rather than the car side. But every day we went to lunch, we had to walk through the car facility and you could see all the automation and the cranes that came down from the ceiling that held the car body and they rolled it over for people and it was like it was just fully automated, you know, it's fantastic to see. I mean, we can do it in Formula one and we did it to some degree. Obviously cost was very important to them. They didn't want to waste a lot of money because those carbon fiber's expensive and all that sort of stuff. So we did quite a lot of lean initiatives with cutting of carbon fiber on the machines, making sure there was the utilization of the materials and things like that weren't going to waste. And they even developed something at the end there where they were shredding the excess carbon and making high performance brake discs from the off cuts. So they actually had zero waste when I left, which is amazing.

Now obviously the folks in the lean world, when we learn about quick changeover or smed, we always watch the famous, some Formula one pit crew going crazy and how orchestrated they are. Did you ever see or were you ever involved in how they practice that and how they, how they fine tune that process?

The only Time I saw it happening was when I went come back home. I came back and I went to work for Williams and it was a very small family business and I remember they had a dummy Formula one car that literally two guys were pushing and they pushed it in, they changed. I mean, it's so fast now. What is it, like 1.2 seconds or something? Said it was crazy without the fuel and it's just ridiculous. You know, the, the speed of that wrench that they're using and the accuracy they have, it's, they could do with the, they literally practiced. It was like, you know, Carter is like they're, they're blindfolded and they just put the thing on, pull it off, put it on, put it off. It was just, it was just muscle memory. Just incredible. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I've seen your videos. I think there was a clip in one one of them where you likened it to a Formula one crew.

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So, all right, well, after Formula one then I guess, did you go on to Strada?

Yeah, well, I went back home and went to work for an aerospace company in England and I met out of a guy, this is kind of how my life worked, really. I just met people and got talking to people and we sort of moved around together. And the guy that was working with in the UK was coming to Abu Dhabi and I wished him well. And then he phoned me up about three or four months later and said they're looking for supervisor and they want to get into lean and stuff and they'd be interested to meet you. So they flew me over here and showed me the big city lights of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and here we are seven years later. Wow. Still here. So, yeah, no, it's been, it's been great. It's been a real, real privilege really to be over and see such a young country come up and be so interested in this sort of culture and that it's been really interesting.

So tell us about Strada. What's the company do?

Yeah, right, so Strata's, they make aircraft parts, composite aircraft parts for Etihad and Emirates Airlines and they'll, they're doing things for Airbus and Boeing. Yeah, we're building the huge flap track fairings that go underneath the wings, the things that kind of look like missiles but they hold the flap in position. So they're huge components and it's a state of the art facility built and designed in the uae, built from the ground up. And they had a plan over here to get 60% emiratisation. So to get the locals into work and learn these kind of things, and bought us guys over here to teach them. And with the help of you guys, obviously, and with the videos and things like that, we're doing a good job. I mean, that's been great.

So talk a little bit. Now, you came from England, and obviously you've been around the world as well, and you've seen how difficult it can be to get kind of lean, to take hold in really any company or culture. But then you go to a country that, what is it, 47 years old or something like that? I don't know exactly. And, you know, how is it different? You know, are they more open to. To these ideas or, you know, talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, that's been the nice thing. I kind of tease my wife. The country's the same age as my wife, which is one of the things we joke about. But, yeah, it's. It's been completely refreshing, to be honest. And it's been one of the most enjoyable places that I've done lean because there's no preconceived ideas. You know, it's just completely blank canvas. It came about when one of the chairmen went over to Tokyo to meet a client and met up with some guys from Toyota, and they actually met up with some people from Shingajitsu who, as you know, were, you know, the pioneers of the TPS system. So I remember the meeting came around and they said to me, have you heard of these guys? And I was like, yeah, of course. Everybody's heard of these guys, you know. And they said, well, we're thinking about bringing them in on. On a contract to come across and do some workshops and coaching actually in our factory. And we'd like to send 10 groups of 10 people over to Japan over the space of two years, which is just a, you know, just a sensational opportunity for me and for all the MRIs. So off we went to Japan and did some training over there with Toyota, Hitachi and Ge with Shingajutsu. And we actually met. Met Mr. Nakao as well. Very cool. Quite an honor. Even my sensei that came over here, Ken Sugawa, he was quite emotional when he met Nakao. You know, it just means so much to them. It's hard to believe how. How that, you know, you talk about culture and when you see these guys react to somebody the way they do, you know, it's just complete respect. And for what these people, you know, do they change. They change everything for people, you know, it's. It's the way they live. I saw. I saw Japan in the World cup this year. I saw an article about how the fans cleaned up the stadium after they left. I thought that was just incredible. You know, you talk about a culture. Well, there you have it.

Yeah, no, exactly.

You can't teach that kind of thing, right? That's just bred in from when you're a very young age. Everybody's doing the same thing and it's respect for each other and the places that you visit.

So talk a little bit about Lean and Kaizen at Strada. Like, how are you guys going about it?

There's a small team, there's myself and two guys that work for me as KPO champions, and we go around and we do mini workshops, but we're trying to encourage when we're in Japan, we saw each cell had their own KPO guy, which is great if you're in Japan, because you have that culture anyway and it's easy to pick. But in the uae, we're still trying to coach and mentor people, you know, through your videos, just on basic things like 5s and, you know, slowly, slowly getting there with shadow boards, getting away, getting rid of toolboxes and things like that. So it's a slow process, but it is, right? I mean, it just goes on forever, you know, it's not something that you can just snap your fingers and it's just going to be done. So, yeah, we've done quite a lot of work with. I know the Japanese, when they came to us, they were very keen for us to keep using paper. We developed a CIMS system, trying to bring it forward a little bit, whereby people can launch ideas into the company Porthole. We have a system that controls our production called sqcdp, which is Airbus, is standard, safety, quality, cost, delivering people. And we also introduced CI to the end of that. So instead of getting people, when we first launched the system, we were getting people saying, I need a new table for this, I need. I need some new safety shoes. These are not continuous improvement ideas, these are just wants, you know, so we try to control it a little bit through the SQCDPCI system. And in the CI section of that, we have the Most Wanted problem. So we have like a big John Wayne Wild west type poster there saying Most Wanted. And people are encouraged to submit ideas through that specific focus point, if you know what I mean. We've done a lot of work with you guys. I mean, we've, you know, we've got our subscription with you. We do weekly and weekly training sessions on different topics through you, through your website. We're going to work with you guys to take on for the learning management system as well. I've been speaking to the ladies and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't want to make this again by Academy commercial or anything like that, but I am always curious and I know we have a lot of Gambit Academy subscribers listening to this right now as well. Like, like, how do you guys use our videos? You know, I mean, is it just like watch a video and walk away or is there a plan to put it into action or what?

Yeah, we, we try and get. It's quite difficult because like every, everywhere is a little bit different but the, the locals find it very different. Very, very difficult to understand my English accent, believe it or not. Even though it's the Queen's English, they find it easier to understand the American acc. They like your videos and they also like the fact that they can, they can replay it and they can go over it again and again until they understand it. Because it's okay if you sit in a classroom, you teach somebody something once or twice, they still don't understand it, but they can watch it at their leisure. And we also use your quiz questions and stuff and have a bit of fun with it and that. But yeah, we take it down onto the shop floor. We've been doing some good 5s stuff recently with having a little championship there, kind of like a World cup style thing where areas go head to head and they win the trophy at the end of the World cup and stuff like that. So yeah, no, we're not just, we're not just teaching it through classrooms. We're actually down on the Gamba trying to make sure these things are put in place and educate people as we go. What we do like about it is the fact that the computer terminal is always there and if people are not sure, then they can just refer straight back to the videos and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Anytime I talk to customers, what I try to say is that, I know it sounds odd, we got thousand some videos or whatever, 1500 videos now, I don't even know how many we have and. But I, what I try to get through to folks is that it's not about the videos, right? I mean that's what you, that's the artifact, that's what you see, but it's what you do, right? And I would rather people watch one video, go watch the, the straightened video in the 5S series and, and then go spend, you know, three days, you know, doing that, right? And really taking action, right?

Yeah. I mean like the 5s one's a really good one, isn't it? Because the sort and the straighten is the most visual. And we did one in the office. We did one in the office the other day. It was ridiculous. We took out like 300 kilos of waste from the office, old papers, there was old people's contracts, all sorts of things in there, you know, and the management, we took some nice photographs and stuff and the management like, you know, just can't. You just don't see it day to day. But now when you take the before and after pictures, it's quite incredible, just the small things like that. And people enjoyed it as well. We had some fun with it, you know, and try and keep it light hearted as possible. If you take it too seriously, people get upset. Especially in an office area. Right?

Yeah, yeah. What kind of. I mean you mentioned, you know, it's a young country and people are pretty open, but I'm sure there's still been a little bit of, you know, change management struggle here and there. Talk about how you got, how you get through any resistance.

The locals have actually been really good. I tend to find it's the expats that are the most resistant to it, I guess because, I guess because they've seen it all before, you know, some places it's worked and some places it hasn't and you know, you get that stigma attached to things like 5s and change and oh, here comes the Kaizen police and things like that. But it's not about that, you know, it's about making people's lives easier. So we did have one occasion where a lady was very attached to the items in her area and she didn't want to let them go. But we kind of worked around that lady and just tried to let her see for herself some of the benefits and that. And one of the ladies that works with me, a local lady, is very, very patient and she speaks to her in Arabic and makes sure that she's comfortable in that and she shows her the plus sides and here's her story. And now she's slowly starting to come around to our way of thinking, you know, so it's good to watch.

Yeah, yeah. Now I understand that you guys, you know, we all hear about tps, the Toyota production system. I understand you guys call your system sbs. Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, sure. Obviously it came from the TPS system, but there's a standard within Airbus whereby there's a manual, they call it the Brick system we wanted to take on board. It's basically lean principles, but tweaked to suit the manufacturing environment that we're in. So yeah, we created a nice little booklet that the employees get when they come into the company and it gives them all the guidelines about TPM and 5s, all the things that we expect as a basic when they come in the company. I give them the training package as well. At the same time, on some lean principles and the dangers of all the wastes and things like that. It's a nice little handout as they come in. It's a really well presented book and it's quite impressive really. It's not just a booklet, you know, it's everyone's got one on their desk and everyone works to it. It's nice. It's good to see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we spent some time talking about 5s and how you guys have gone about that. But are there any other initiatives that you guys are working on?

Yeah, we had a huge problem where our factory was, where it was brand new. We had one contract that was in a huge facility and it was. Everything was very easy. We had two CNC machines, we had three autoclaves and everything was easy. Now we have eight or nine programs in there. Nobody thought about how the production system would work and how parts would travel from one department to the other. So we had quite a few problems with the push system with these huge composite components whereby there was huge build ups of wimp and inventory and weird and wonderful places things were being stored and parts were getting damaged and you know, it wasn't the way we wanted to go. So we introduced a nice FIFO system, quite a simple system whereby in each area that the parts travel to, they have a parking space with a number. Any part can go there and then domino is linked to that and they drop this wooden block into a. Basically a ladder and it just creates order and you know, some flow around the area. One of the biggest problems we had actually was people were coming to work at 7:30 in the morning and some people weren't actually doing anything until half past ten, until these supervisors and managers had had their meetings and said, right, this is what we need to do for the day. But you'd already lost like three hours of the day, so it was crazy. But now with this system, the guys come into work in the morning, they pull the bottom block out with the number on it, they take that part and they start cutting or building that, that part. Very simple idea, but hugely effective for us.

So the FIFO is like you said, they're like dominoes. Like small dominoes.

Yeah, they're kind of like 150 millimeter wooden blocks, basically with numbers on that correspond to a parking space. So there's a board full of numbers, these wooden blocks. We have like a milk run system where somebody moves parts from monument to monument. When that guy travels to the next monument, he finds an open parking space. Say number 12 goes to the board, picks up block number 12 and drops it into a ladder.

Wow.

And the blocks obviously just drop to the bottom.

What's the point of the blocks? Why don't you just use the carts?

Because these parts are huge, you know, some of these parts are, I don't know, six, seven meters long, some parts. So the car, the carts they travel on take up a huge amount of space.

Okay.

So they, they park them on. They've got like a bogey trolley that's in. In the area for that specific part. Yeah, so they put on that part. Very cool. Yeah, it's really interesting. They had a huge. We had a really big area that had like 150 spaces in this quality area. And you can imagine that's a lot of parts. And they had segregated this area off into different programs, nine different programs. And they were finding. When they had a part to go into an area, there was no parking spaces available. But there's plenty of parking spaces, say, for an A380 program. But this wasn't an A380 part. So I said to the guys, well, why don't you just forget about the areas? Just number one to 150. As long as the part fits in that space, it can stay there. And they were like, yeah, but what about the ladder system where you drop the dominoes? It would be the size of the Burj Khalifa in the Dubai or something. You know, it'd be huge.

Yeah.

And said, oh, we need to figure something out. Anyway, I play a bit of golf and my local golf pro had some old balls there. And I was like, oh, this gives me an idea. So I made like a mousetrap type thing whereby you drop the golf ball. The golf balls numbered and it goes down like a chute, you know, like a Happy Gilmore style.

Yep, yep, yep.

Happy Gilmore style type thing. And it drops into the bottom section. And when you pull the bottom ball out, obviously they start moving down. So it's the same thing, but it's just in a more condensed area. But it looks really cool.

I love it. You know what I love about that? You know, I know you've watched our video 10 Commandments of Continuous improvement. And one of those commandments is use your wits over your wallet. Right?

And.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And you wouldn't believe the amount of attention it draws when customers come around. They're like, what's that thing there? And they're like, oh, that's our mousetrap. And everyone loves, everyone loves it. It gets on Snapchat and Instagram and stuff like that.

Very cool, very cool.

That's good fun. You know, it should be like that. I'm a firm believer that lean should be fun. You know, you should keep it light hearted and fun.

Yeah, for sure. Now what about like, so we've got FIFO systems, but do you have outside of that, do you, is it more of a push environment? Do you pull? How do you do that?

Yeah, so that was the next, the continuation of the FIFO system really. We tried to switch from a push system because it wasn't working for us and, and we introduced some supermarkets and now we have a nice pool system whereby the assembly area pull from a supermarket of basically black carbon fiber parts. And then it's standard supermarket system. It's run on Kanban. As soon as a part is released, it's triggered in the system and then it automatically generates a work order to the start of the process where the raw material is formed into the carbon fiber is formed into the shape of the part we want. So yeah, it's working really nicely and it's really, you know, our inventory level's gone down hugely and parts are moving so much faster. The lead times gone down. It's great.

So what kind of, what kind of benefits have you guys realized? Just, you know, compare yourselves today to where you were, oh, I don't know, a year, two years, three years ago. What kind of benefits have you realized as a result of all this activity?

I mean just the working environment is so much better to work in for people. It's clean, it's tidy, you can see what you've got to do next. There's very minimal amount of instructions there anymore. Whereas it used to be kind of a, you know, who shouts the loudest gets their part. There's a process behind everything. You know, we have a standard that we work to. So you know, we're doing really well. We had a nice idea. There's a VIP system in the uae, you know, like at the theme parks where you get the fast pass if you want to go on the attraction early. So obviously there are problems in the production line and there's some emergencies sometimes if an aircraft needs a part urgently. So we took care of that with a fast pass system. So we issue tickets to the planning department where they get 15 free rides every month. So it works quite well and it helps those guys out as well. Which is the main objective behind it all is to make sure that everyone's able to do their job as easy as possible.

Well, it sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun.

Yeah, we are. We have a good bit fun every day. It's some good fun today as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I know you've watched some of our Gemba Academy live videos. It sounds like me and Greg and the guys got to jump on a plane and fly on over and spend a few days and be more.

Yeah, that'd be great. I mean we watched the 5s has been a big one for us lately because the office area want to get in on the act because they keep seeing the production areas winning all these trophies and we've got WWE belts that people are winning and all sorts of stuff. And now it was really nice actually. The one of the engineering managers came to me and said, look, I need in on this action. How do I do it? And I gave him the login details and stuff to your site. I said, look, watch a few of these videos first and come back and see you next week. And he was completely hooked. He said, value stream maps and stuff. He said I didn't really understand the importance of it all before, but now, you know, I really want to do this. I really want to make it part of what we do here. So that's great. You need people like that in that sort of area. Engineering managers, it has to be driven by those guys. You know, I'm just a one man band, I have no authority over anybody. So yeah, now I need their help. That's good.

Yeah, very good, very good. All right, well let's go ahead and transition into the, into the reflection section.

Dan.

I got definitely got a few questions I want to run past. So you know, you've got, you've, you talked about early on in the episode, you know, young 17 year old lad going out and kind of finding your way a little bit. I'm curious if you could go back in time right now, today, Dan of today, and go back and spend, you know, an afternoon with that young 17 year old and you could give him some advice. What would you say?

It'd definitely be like just to be more patient and relax. You know, I was an only child. I Have no brothers or sisters. So I was very used to get in my own way. I was quite a sort of strong willed character in my younger days. And through Kaizen and seeing how the Japanese work and things, I've learned to be very patient with people. And like you just said to me, you know, how do you, how did the locals deal with change and stuff? You have to be patient here because they just, you know, it takes a little while for them to understand. They've never seen anything like this before. So. Yeah, no, definitely just to be relaxed and stay patient with people.

Yeah. Where do you think lean is going? I'm gonna ask this in two ways. Where do you think the Lean movement is going overall? Let's call it within the whole. The world at large. And then in your particular part of the world where you are right now, where do you think lean is going?

Well, I mean, everybody's interested in making money now, right? So the costs are just spiraling and people need to make things faster, cheaper and better. And everybody lean. No matter how many years go by, it always seems to be the buzzword, right? Everybody talks about it, everybody sees it. It's very visual and it's very simple when you get to know how to do it. I only, everything I see around here in the uae, you know, you can see elements of Lean in it. It's just, it's incredible to watch. You know, the way they put the buildings up, up in Dubai, you know, the place just goes from nothing. Every time I go down there, there's a new road. I'm like, there must be some crazy logistics behind this somewhere. I'd love to see how all that sort of side of it works. But yeah, I think everybody's taken on board lean. They have to these days. It's part of it.

Now with that said, is there, is there an area of Lean, maybe just an aspect of the, of the methodology or the philosophy of Lean that you struggle with? Maybe you wonder if it even really works.

That's a tricky one. I know when the Japanese came over, it was, it was all value stream maps. And I'm really interested in the value stream map concept. But even all the places that I've been to, I've never actually seen one on a wall and somebody working with one on a wall. And it's still something to this day that baffles me. You know, I can build them, but, and I can see how they work. But when, like in our company, when a new program comes in, I'd like to see a team of People that are inboarding that program, it should be those guys that go to the company it's coming from and then do the value stream up there and bring it to our company. You know, it shouldn't be me that's doing all the value stream and it should be the engineers. You know, it's important for them to understand it, not for me to understand it. So that side of it I've really struggled with, you know, even the guys that come from Airbus and that, they always ask, where's your value stream map? But I've never actually seen working full fledged.

Yeah, it's interesting. Gosh, I have to look up the number, but we've had Brandon Brown. Well, he's been on a number of times, but he came on most recently kind of talking about, you know, he's big into this Toyota Kata and about how they're starting to use things like value stream maps to. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but really to, you know, one of the aspects of that kata methodology is to deeply understand the current state. Right. And so that when they get to that second step, you know, current condition, that they sometimes they'll do a little two or three day blitz to kind of map out to deeply understand material and information flow. But what they're really trying to do is it's part of the whole kata methodology, right. Just to understand where they're at and then they'll set that target condition and then carry on like normal. So I think it's interesting, you know, how these tools over the years can be used in a number of ways. Right. They don't have to be the way I think you've even, you know, even if you've got Mike Rother on here and asking about, you know, he wrote the book Learning to See. Right. You know, like, and how this, how this idea has morphed and evolved over the years. I think it's, it's really good.

I think you're right. I think it just depends on the environment that you're in. You can tweak it to do whatever you want it to do, you know. But in our company particularly, we bring legacy programs in. So it would just be nice when the program is coming in to see the times, this, you know, the cycle times, how many people were doing it. I just like to see it all in front of me right at the start. It make it make everybody's life a lot easier. Yeah. So this coming year I want to try and make sure that I get into the, we call it the IPT team and Try and get some code APO backing on that side of things at our company.

Yeah, beautiful. Hey, what the. What's the best advice you've ever received?

The best advice.

Or some really good advice? You know, they say best is so extreme.

Yeah, I mean, my favorite one is the ghost. Go see for yourself. Genshi Kembetsu. Just get down there, get in amongst it. And not just from the fact that you want to watch. You know, it's good to interact with people and understand what everybody's problems are because everybody's different, you know, different abilities and things like that. I've actually got a desk that I made from Creeform that's got wheels on the bottom of it, so I can just wheel it around and sit there and watch people and work at the same time. So when we're doing like time studies and stuff like that, it's interesting. Yeah, but. Yeah, definitely, definitely. You know, in this day and age, I think people spend too much time in front of the computer and not actually where the magic happens as such. So just get down there and have a look.

Yep. Last question. Is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need? I know you mentioned value stream mapping, but maybe something else besides that that you want to maybe get better at and learn more about over this next year. And if so, what's your plan?

I was really interested. Again, I don't want to turn this into a commercial for yourselves, but the Carter stuff that's just popped up there, I was interested in that. That's a really nice piece and I'm going to do some studying on that. It looks really interesting.

Yeah.

And there's a few people over that have studied martial arts and stuff, so they understand like kata and stuff. So. Yeah. Now I'm going to try and get some of that into the engineers.

Beautiful. Beautiful. All right, well, hey, Dan, I don't want to keep you too long. I know you got pre game work to do here as English gets ready for their big match here. So I don't want to keep you too long, but hey, thanks for coming on. And so let's wrap things up, Dan, with you sharing some final words of wisdom and then definitely tell folks how they can connect with you.

Sure. If anyone wants to connect with us and see what we're up to, we have Instagram and Twitter. It's Strata UAE and I'm on LinkedIn at Dan Whitaker, if anyone wants to talk about lean and stuff like that. No problem at all. Words of wisdom. I mean, it just. I can't emphasize Enough about, like, standards and. And making sure that. I was going to talk a little bit about Joseph Duran's comment there. Without a standard, there's no logical basis for decision making or action taking. We use that a lot at strata through the SQCDP. We don't make any change until we're confident, 100% confident, especially being aircraft components, that people are working the way they should be working and they're following those standards religiously. And there's no point in making any change until you know that for sure, you know. So I was interested to read a little bit about him just recently, how the Japanese were interested in his quality control handbook there. It was quite, quite amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

Everyone, everyone, everyone thinks the Japanese bought all this Kaizen stuff around, but I think it's Teichi Ono that said without standards, there can be no Kaizen. Right.

Yep, exactly.

So. So he must have got that from Joseph Duran. I would assume so.

Well, I think everybody gets it from someone, you know, and go back to the. The Venice, you know, Arsenal and all this kind of stuff, you know, I mean, it goes back way, way long time ago.

Right.

So good.

There's a lot of history behind it. Yeah. As long as it works for everybody, then it's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, do you ever, ever get out to any conferences or anything, Dan?

Hopefully next year we're looking to do a few, and I've got some friends over there in Texas as well, so maybe stop by and see you guys.

Oh, man. You need to swing by and see where the magic happens.

And likewise, if you guys are ever in this neck of the woods, then you're more than welcome. Just contact me and we can arrange something. Come and visit us.

Sounds like a fantastic vacation spot, if nothing else, right?

Yeah. I mean, if you've never been before, then.

I've not.

No. It's pretty amazing, really.

Yeah. I better not have my wife listen to this episode. She'll be. Let's go.

It's interesting. We just had Porsche design came over a few weeks back, and one of the guys, he's actually based in Atlanta for Porsche design there, and he's actually German, and he said, you know, I had so many thoughts and preconceived ideas about Dubai, but it's completely different to what I thought it would be, you know. So, yeah, you know, Western and. Yeah, it's nice. It's really nice place to come and visit. Sure.

All right, well, thanks again. Take care and good luck to your English soccer or football men, and I hope they do well and represent you guys well.

Me too. Hey, thanks to you guys over there as well. You've been a great help to me over here. It's been a godsend having your stuff on board. It's been great. Thanks very much to everyone. Great work.

Thank you, Dan. Take care.

Cheers, guys. Thanks, mate.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now we invite you to take a no strings attached, fully functional Test drive of Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than a thousand Lean and Six Sigma learning resources, all free of charge at Gembaacademy.com.