GA 272 | The Role of Lean in Empowering People with Disabilities with Brent Weichers

5S here is kind of interesting. When we go into an area that just has never been looked at in 20 years, and there'll be something that's been laying there for 20 years. And when we ask when's the last time you touched that? They don't know what you're talking about because they don't see it. You have to kind of go in there sometimes. And keeping in mind they're not messy, it's just the fact that they just don't know it's there.

Today I'm excited to welcome Brent Weickers to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Brent has an incredibly strong continuous improvement background, having worked at companies like Toyota and Danaher. Today, Brent is the director of continuous improvement at the Lighthouse for the Blind. Now, as Brent will explain, their company mission is to empower people who are blind, deaf, blind, and blind with other disabilities by creating diverse, sustainable, and meaningful employment opportunities. During the show, Brent and I talk about the type of work their employees do before taking a deep dive into how Lean plays a critical role to the success of the company. The show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 272. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning system over@gembacademy.com by signing up for a full access, no strings attached, three day trial. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Brent, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Going very well today.

All right, well, thank you for coming on. I was telling you that we recording a bunch of podcasts lately, and I gotta say that the topic for this episode is definitely unique. We've not discussed this particular aspect of continuous improvement on the show. I'm confident and it's super inspiring. When I heard about your story, I did a little bit of lurking and peeking at what you guys are doing, but it's very, very powerful. So I'm super, super excited and honored to have you on.

Oh, thank you very much.

Yeah. So as you know, Brent, I know you listen to the show, so we like to kind of get things going with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I do. One of my favorite quotes has always been, if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always got.

What's that really mean to you?

To me, it's people just not. They're expecting. You know, it's the old adage of what's the definition of insanity? Yeah, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Yeah. And to me, that's. There's a. There's another way that. Or another phrase that's very similar to this. It's also one of my favorites, which has always been. And it's something a mentor told me many years ago, is pigs don't know pigs stink. And that, again, is just a. An old adage to say, you just don't know. You know, that the process or whatever you're doing can be different or it could be better. It's just. It's not that you're. You're bad. You just don't know.

Yeah. Unconsciously incompetent. Sometimes we might even say.

Right. There you go.

Yeah, Beautiful. Okay, well, Brent, tell us about your background before we get into your. Into your company, what you do there. But tell us about your background and how you first got exposed to continuous improvement.

Yeah, so I've been in the. In the field of continuous improvement for a little over 30 years now. I'm a lean six sigma master black belt, and my background is in automotive, aerospace, electronics, machining tools, even in kitchen cabinet industry. So I've been bounced around a lot of different industries, but it's always been around manufacturing. My career began at Toyota, the company I worked for at the time, very early on, right out of college, said, hey, we're getting into this lean thing, and we need people to go and study it. So I again raised my hand, not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into, and we were sent off to Toyota, and we studied there and came back, and we're implementing lean from that point forward with some other master black belts and people from Shingajitsu. So I worked with the Shingajitsu folks for over 20 years, and eventually I ended up working for a good bulk of my career was with Danner, and.

So I was Toyota Danaher. That's pretty good training ground.

Yeah, it's a pretty good place to be. And then I ended up working with the same Shingajitsu consultants when I moved to Danaher. So I spent a lot of time at Fluke Instruments here in Seattle and Tektronix and Beckman Coulter, all of their different companies. And then the last five years, I landed here as director of continuous improvement at the Lighthouse for the Blind, based here in Seattle, Washington.

I love it. I do. I got one question just off. Off the top of my head here. You know, lean Six Sigma master black belt, and Toyota and Shingi Utsu and all these, you know, traditional lean guys. So how does the whole Six Sigma thing. You know, sometimes a lean community kind of got a little bit nervous when we start talking about belts and all this kind of stuff. And some of them more than others. How did that go?

It is an interesting. I mean, they work together, but then they also have a contingent contingency, this relationship of, you know, sometimes one depends on the other. And I always looked at it as, you know, is Six Sigma or analysis. Kind of helps point the direction, kind of gives you an idea of where a problem might lie and lean goes and fixes it. And it's just kind of interesting. I was at the Good Fortune to visit a really interesting company recently and they asked me to pour through all of their data and tell them where their problem was for nine hours. They wanted me to pour through their data and use Excel and all the Six Sigma tools to kind of help point to where their problem was with their company. And I spent 15 minutes on the shop floor talking to a few employees and they told me where the problem was.

Yeah, go to Gemba, right?

Yeah, just go to Gemba. And I went and talked to Bob on the shop floor and said, hey, Bob, what's the, you know, the biggest pain that you feel every day? And he pointed out a couple things that were just unbelievable time waste for him. And I reported it back up and they said, wow, you know, how did you find that and all that data we gave you? And I was like, I, I use the, the best computer you have, you know, your employees.

Yeah, I love it. Very good, very good. So Lighthouse, what it tell us about, about the company and how it got started?

So we celebrated our 100 year anniversary back in September. So in 1918, the lighthouse was incorporated and it began hiring people who were blind and deaf, blind and blind with other disabilities. But it came about because of World War I. So as the vets were returning from the war, a lot of them were blinded from battle and from the gas attacks and those sorts of things. So they were coming back to the Pacific Northwest and the opportunity for jobs were, you know, literally zero. So it started out in 1916 as a workshop and people were making jigsaw puzzles and baskets and things and were selling those. And in 1918, when the lighthouse for the Blind was incorporated, they were manufacturing brooms and selling them door to door is how they got started. So they were down on the waterfront in downtown Seattle. Currently, as of 1967, we built a new facility. We're just east of downtown, a very short distance and just uphill from our famous baseball and football stadium. And we went through a major expansion in 1980. We now have facilities in Spokane, Washington, Somerville, South Carolina, and some facilities up and down the west coast within some military installations. And we've been manufacturing for the Boeing company, for Northrop Grumman, the federal government, the US military. So we've been manufacturing about $100 million in sales a year for some of those big customers.

Wow.

And we're currently at about almost 500 employees total.

And how many different facilities do you have again?

Our three main facilities here in Seattle, Spokane, Washington, and Somerville, South Carol, and that which is our most recent. And we have some facilities or some people working within the military bases just south of here and down in California and Nevada that are operating the little PXs, the little office supply stores that are within the military bases. So our employees are managing the inventory and running the point of sale. So we have blind employees running the cash registers within the military bases.

Wow. So what percentage of your employees are visually impaired?

About 80% of our direct labor is blind.

Wow.

So out of 480 individuals right now, we're about 4 or 485. About 260 are blind or deafblind.

Yeah. Wow.

So we are the largest employer of the deafblind in the country.

So talk about the type of work that a blind person does. I mean, you talk about cash register. That's difficult enough for people that can see. Yeah, exactly. So how does that work?

So we have people here doing anything you can imagine as far as heavy machining in this building, we have about 370, I think, in our Seattle facility. So we're doing CNC machining, lathe shear, we're doing our brick forming. We have hydroform steel hydroforms. So we're doing a lot of heavy machining here. We just have to be very, very good at modifying the equipment to make it to where a blind person or a deafblind person can run it. So we have a CNC machine that we purchase, and we were famous for breaking the warranty on things the minute it comes in the door because we tear it open. We change the software, we add. We make a CNC machine speak so it can speak to an operator. Instead of a screen output, it has a braille keyboard output. So a blind operator can just can read the braille output and have the machine telling them when it's time for a tool change or when there's an issue. If it's a deafblind operator, the mat under their feet will vibrate and let them know that it needs their attention. So we modify a lot of equipment, and a lot of it we make ourselves.

Talk about. Two things in particular are jumping into my mind is training and safety, which probably go hand in hand, obviously.

Exactly, yeah. And safety. There's some great equipment out there that's available that we really take great advantage of. A lot of them is laser fencing. So we put that invisible force field around a machine with something called a laser fence. So even somebody that's walking by a machine from behind, somebody who's wayfinding, trying to find their way, and they're feeling around, if they accidentally break the field on a piece of equipment, it'll shut down automatically. So any piece of equipment we have that would normally have, say, a foot pedal to operate it, we have a double button. So an operator has to put their fingers on both buttons so it makes sure that their hands are out of the way. So we just have to install a lot of double interlocks and safety features on top of what's already usually available. What would normally be safe for a sighted employee, we just have to add to that.

Okay, so talk about training, then. So are these people coming in, I assume, with little experience in, say, machining or anything like that?

Right, exactly. Quite a few are coming to the building with absolutely no job skills at all. For a lot of folks, 70% of people who are blind or unemployed in this country, either underemployed or unemployed. So for them to come into a company all of a sudden, you know, like us, it's, you know, there's a lot of training involved. So we have people in the building that are. That's their job title specifically is like machinist, trainer, or, you know, trainer, operator. So they're training them on the different pieces of equipment little by little. But of course, again, we're. We have so much safety built into these machines that it's fairly safe for an operator to use this equipment right off the, you know, right off the bat with very little training. But in order to make a good quality part, of course there's a lot of training involved. But as far as the training, they come into the building with little to no training on how to run a machine. And they also come into the building with little to no training or being familiar at all with any of the lean concepts.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, lean. What's lean? You know, they're warning about machining apart.

Right, yeah, exactly. So a lot of these folks, when we. I mean, right from day one, they go through an introduction to lean training. And again, we're just introducing the concepts and the terminology and just the common sense pieces to Lean, you know, about 5s and how to keep your workspace organized and, you know, how that saves time from having to search or look for your tools and those sorts of things. And then we get into more in depth training later on. But then our training methods had to completely change. You know, in our business, we're so used to firing up the PowerPoint and having some photo examples of things. And that's again, something that just wasn't going to work here. So we don't do a whole Lot of PowerPoint here. A lot of. It's all tactile.

Yeah.

So If I'm explaining 5s to an operator, we're passing around a piece of foam that has the tool cutouts in it so they can get the idea of this is how their tools are going to be displayed is on a foam cutout.

I mean, talk about something like that. We definitely all take for granted being able to look at a, at a shadow board or something like that to where. Yep, there's my hammer and it's in a nice little foam cutout. That's great. Oh, the hammer's not there. I wonder where. Oh, it's on my tool bench.

So, like, they can feel for it and they can, you know, so at the end of the shift, they do a quick check and it's like, oh, my mallet's missing. I need to make sure my mallet's put away. And so it's all, it's all very tactile. We buy the best foam that I've found for doing this kind of work is we buy it from, as you know. You probably know Paul Akers.

Oh, yeah, Kaizen Foam.

Yep, Kaizen Foam. Yeah, he's one of my heroes. He's right up the road.

Has he been to your facility?

No.

Paul, man. I'm gonna call Paul right now.

I haven't had a chance to meet the man yet, but he's a big hero. We love his videos here.

Yes, yes.

So, Paul, if you're listening, we're trying to meet up with you, but yeah, we get that. Kaizen Foam. And that stuff is just so great to work with here. But we have that all over the building and it just works wonders with our employees to be able to find their tools, standardize their tools, and they just love it.

So I'm curious, as you know, Lean is hard enough, right? In a company, it's common to have resistance. And, you know, some folks who are kind of resistant to change and all the rest of it. What was it like in your experience working with folks that are blind and are they, are, are they more open to things like lean because they're, they're excited and. Yeah. You know what I'm saying. Or is it. Do you have the same struggles?

It's the same. Interesting. As far as like you would think going from a pegboard with no way to know where their tools are to a nice cutout foam custom layout would be a no brainer. That they would just love it and there's resistance to even that. Just because it's change.

Yeah. Interesting.

You know, everybody's the same and just change period, you know, will make people uncomfortable. But once it's done and they realize that it's really does make their life easier, then that's the new standard and they don't want to ever go back to any other way. But it's the same as everywhere I've ever been. Is introducing change of any sort always makes people a little uncomfortable?

Well, I wonder if part of it is like, you know, if you can't see and you're used to something and it's working, like, why are you messing with it, Brent?

Don't mess with what I know.

Yeah.

And they're in that culture, you know, with folks that are blind, you know, they're, they're not like people who are sighted where they get tired of their living room and just decide, oh, I'm just going to rearrange the furniture for fun. It's no. Once things are put in a certain place, they pretty much stay there. So 5s here is kind of interesting. When we go into an area that just has never been looked at in 20 years and there'll be something that's been laying there for 20 years. And when we ask when's the last time you touched that? And they, they don't know what you're talking about because they don't see it. So it does. You know, you have to kind of go in there sometimes. And keeping in mind it's like they're not messy. It's just the fact that they just don't know it's there.

Yeah. Yeah. So a big part of a lean kind of system is what we would call the visual workplace, which is very dependent on being able to see. So how does that work at Lighthouse?

Yeah. Here, I mean, like I said, the pegboard systems are going away. We're replacing those with foam. And then the other things that make a. For a visual workplace is like the, you know, like andon lights, signal lights. So for us here, of course we have some on our pieces of equipment when they're in setup mode, they're yellow and red when something's wrong. So it does allow a lead or a supervisor to know when something's going on or they get an audio signal to a blind operator. But for so many of our employees who are working, say an assembly line and they need to be replenished with parts. Well, again, a sighted person would look and say, well, I'm getting a little low on parts. I need to call for somebody. So we have a lot of technology that we use here, sensors. So when a two bin system, so when one bin is empty, they remove that bin. The second bin drops into place and then a sensor sees that one bin has been removed and a light turns yellow or it sends a text message to the lead or supervisor and then they go and replenish that line, which.

Is such a beautiful system. Why don't we do that anyhow? Right.

And it's fairly inexpensive technology. You know, we get it from some automation companies here in the area and they're, they've been great about even helping us kind of figure out, you know, and engineer some of these systems. So between that and using the pipe system, like Creform kind of things, we have dozens and dozens of those all over the building. Just to allow an operator who was blind to not worry about, hey, I need to keep an eye on my inventory. It's like, let the sensors do it. The sensors notify when replenishments are needed. If two bins are removed and the supervisor didn't get there, it turns red, it starts flashing. We have some signals, some and on signals for employees where it's a button, but it reads a thumbprint so they can bump it by accident. They won't trigger the button, so they have to place their thumb on it to read a human thumbprint. Then it will set off the signal. The light turns blue and it blinks and then it chirps like a bird and it's a loud chirp. So the leads of the supervisors get to it right away.

Wow. So sounds like you're using a lot of just lean tools in general, right? Even though, even though folks, are there any other examples of tools that you're using that you find is the same or different than a sighted person would?

Some of the things, yeah, some of the things we've had to do, like when we're training standard work. So you go through, we're Used to using, like the level loading form. So we do standard work. We look to see from operator cycle time which operator has the heaviest load, which one has the lightest load. And of course, you try to level load everybody. But when we're doing standard work with eight people and seven of them are blind, they're not being. They're not able to participate in that process. So we go to legos. So I have a LEGO Excel sheet, and we actually build that bar graph, that level loading chart out of Legos. So all the employees can kind of, you know, tactile. They can feel it and go, oh, now I got a. I have a feel. I have an idea for who's light loaded and who's heavy loaded and what can we do to balance those out?

How do you show Taktime?

So Taktime, there's a line or just another line of Legos that goes across that.

Okay.

So again, it's pretty much like what you would see on a level loading chart, the attack line and your individual operator loads, but it's just in three dimensions.

That's so cool.

And then we do the same with this spaghetti or the cell layout is we use the blocks for the different pieces of equipment. We use little Lego people for the operators and where they stand. And again, tactilely, they can get an idea of what the cell would look like after we move things around.

Well, sometimes we'll use a string model. Right. Where we're just using string as the pieces of spaghetti even. Right?

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. We've used yarn on a cork board, which is. We actually manufacture those cork boards over in our Spokane location. We still make those. I don't know who orders those, but somebody still orders.

Oh, that's so cool.

Fortunately, we make whiteboards as well. We make thousands of those things. Somebody's still ordering the cork boards. But even training in lean, you know, training in flow, trying to teach people that one piece flow versus batch, you know, we've used the. Over the years, I've always used the airplane exercise. We've used the. The Kanban pizza game. But again, that's all things that take hot and, you know, hand eye coordination and the ability to be able to see and write. So we switched over to Legos even for that. So we manufacture, we have an assembly line, and again, it's tactile. A blind employee can tell if the. At what stage the. The part is and what part they need to add to be a part of the factory. And just that way, they're part of the whole experience.

So I don't know what's the appropriate way to ask this question. But like, what is, what would you say is the, the purpose, the why of the Lighthouse for the blind? Like, why do you can, why do you employ blind people? Like, what, what is it, you know, is there, there has to be a deep, deep mission behind the, the company?

Yeah. And our mission statement really is to have family wage jobs for people who are blind, deaf, blind and blind with other disabilities. So that's been our mission statement for 100 years. It's changed with the times, you know, a little wordsmithing here and there. But in general, that has been our mission for 100 years, is just to be able to be a safe place for a person who was blind to come and work and earn a family wage job with good benefits and just be a good, safe place to work.

Yeah. So did you have people kind of coming from different parts of the country and even world.

All over the world? I think the last count, we had over 30 languages in the building.

Oh my gosh.

So we have a staff of interpreters. Wow. So with our, with our employees, some of them being deaf or deafblind, we have a sign language interpreter, so we are multiples of those and then we have training. So we've all had personal one on one lessons on sign language.

So I assume you're proficient at fairly.

Fluent by this time. Yes. And like any language, you learned how to order alcohol and you learn the bad words first and then you go on to learn more conversational language from there.

Oh gosh. Oh my gosh, that's so good. That's so good. So what, what, what have you learned, Brent? I mean, obviously you, you, you are a very, very experienced practitioner of continuous improvement, learning from some of the best people in the world, not some of the best people in the world, you know, learning about lean. But like, I'm guessing we had to have learned a few things, not necessarily about setting up a kanban, but has this place had an impact on you?

Yeah, very much so. It's a very interesting place to work. We still have the same pressures, the same cost pressures and quality pressures as we're 40% of our business being aerospace, 40% being military. Those things that we manufacture for the military, some of which are very top secret, very highly specialized items and their quality expectations are even beyond aerospace. So we have those sorts of pressures on us, but at the same time we have all that added, all that added caveat of having employees that are blind and things are going to happen because they didn't. They can't see them. So we have to have all this additional staff around that that are cited, our quality departments, probably three times what a normal company would be. Just to make sure we were able to lay eyes on everything before it leaves the building. But just in general, the business and the people that work here are. They're here for the most part because they want to be here.

Mm.

It's a job, and we're all getting paid, but at the same time, we're. We're here because it's more kind of a piece of our. Our heart and what we enjoy doing. We could all go off and do other things at other places, but. But in general, a lot of folks are here just because this is where they want to be. Yeah.

Wow. So good. If folks want to. To learn more about the work that you guys are doing or do you do tours or anything like that, or.

How does that work? Yeah, we do tours almost daily.

Wow.

We have a lot of. Just yesterday, we had a. Like, a group of about 40. I think they were third or fourth graders, come, like an elementary. Elementary school came through the building the other day, which is always kind of fun and trying to remember when I was that young. So it's kind of fun to see them all coming kind of traipsing through the building. But we do tours constantly. And the fun thing with some depending on the size of the group and the reason for the tour. Part of our tour is to blindfold you and feed you lunch.

Oh, wow.

So we put you in a lunchroom, blindfold you, give you change for the vending machine, and kind of leave you on your own.

Oh, my gosh.

You know, that was my first day here was I was blindfolded, given a salad, and given a $10 and change and told to go get something out of the vending machine. And I wasn't sure what I was going to get. It was a total surprise because I couldn't read braille, and I managed to eat my salad and almost worked my way back up to the conference room, where we were expected to be back. I did manage to almost walk into the ladies restroom, and somebody saved me.

Oh, boy.

I thought I was walking into the elevator.

Well, I was all excited about, hey, Brent, I'm gonna come now. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

And then some of our tours are. We have some. Got some special goggles that people try on, and it lets you experience all the different levels of blindness, tunnel vision, the opposite of tunnel vision, or whether you have Just pieces of your, you know, you have large blockages of your vision and those sorts of things. So you can try these different goggles on and then try to do some of the tasks that we have. And just so you can you kind of get a feel for how difficult it is for somebody who's blind or someone who's losing their sight.

Man, that's incredible. Well, I gotta ask Ben. I would love, I don't know if you ever are open to this. Shouldn't even ask you this on the air in case it's. No, we can edit it out. Boy, I sure would love to come to what we call Gemba Academy live episodes. And we, we go and we visit companies and they tell us their stories and we film it. So boy, if we could, that would.

That would be incredible. We, we shoot quite a few videos in here constantly. Yeah, we're gonna, we're sponsoring the National Industries for the Blind, which is the federal department that we work with the federal government. We're, we're supporting and I'm going to be speaking to a group of CFOs from all of our member companies. There's about 45 of us, I think across the country that are like us. I think we're the second largest now, Texas is the largest and all the CFOs are gathering next month here in Seattle for a three or four day conference. And I was asked to come and speak about Lean and how it saves money to the bottom line and those sorts. So we do those sorts of things constantly. I think next month we're also, I'm speaking at an engineering conference which is again, all the companies like us, but some of them are only 30 or 40 people and they can't afford to have a continuous improvement professional on staff. So we do these engineering conferences about once a year supported by the National Industries for the Blind. And I come and speak and talk about Lean a little bit and you know, kind of introductory stuff and kind of give them an idea of what they can be working on and things they can do to help save money.

Yeah, I love it. Oh, so good. Brent, very inspiring. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for sharing your story with us. If folks want to again, what's the best way for them to connect the.

Website or either on the website? My LinkedIn, I'm easy to find. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. They can also reach out to me in my, my email, which is my, my last name and my first initial. So Wickers B, my W, E I C H E R S letter B as in boy at Gmail. That or on, like I said, on LinkedIn is a great way to reach out to me.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so Brent. And then W, E, I, C H E, R s on. On LinkedIn and we're.

We'll.

We'll link to. To the. Your. Your company website, the Lighthouse for the blind. Inc.org I believe. Is that right?

Yeah, it should be. It's. Some of it's changing recently, but it's still the lighthouse for the blind.org with that. With the inc.org all together in one big long word.

Okay, that's a long URL.

Yeah, it's a long one. So we're. It's changing to lh Blind.

That's better.

A little shorter. Okay, it's changing to that.

Well, we'll link to everything in the show. Notes. Yeah. Again, Brent, do you ever get out to any conferences or anything like that?

Yes, actually, I almost got to meet you at AME in San Diego. You were standing there speaking to somebody and I kept hovering around like a little fan girl hanging around you, trying to get an opportunity to meet. So I was spoke at last year's ame yeah. And I was asked to come back and speak again this year in Chicago.

Definitely. Swig by. We have a good time at ame.

It's going to be fantastic.

Might be a little chillier in Chicago this year than San Diego, but.

Yeah. Why they pick Chicago in November.

But the food will be better, I can tell you.

Food's great. Beautiful city. Chicago's a great city.

It's going to be great. Yeah.

Yeah.

Much easier to get to than San Diego for most of us. Yeah.

And that's my. My hometown in San Diego, so, you know, I always love going down there when I get a chance.

Yeah, there you go.

And we have a facility about two blocks from where the conference was, so.

Yeah. Nice.

I was able to do some work. I'm doing air quotes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotcha. I got you. Good stuff. All right, well, thanks again, Brent. Keep up the good work. Give my best to everyone there and. And, yeah, hopefully. Let's set it up offline and we'll get over there with our video cameras and share the story with the Gemba Academy world.

That'd be fantastic.

All right, thanks, Brent. Take care.

Thank you.

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