GA 452 | The Power of Transactional Lean with Jen Borden

And I think once, once at least from a continuous mindset or continuous improvement mindset, if you can understand how the lean tools apply to manufacturing processes with just a little bit of practice and coaching, you will very easily be able to apply them to transactional as well. And then there's just. There's no difference.

Today I'm excited to welcome Jen Borden to the show. Now, Jen and I recorded this podcast live at the AME Conference in Dallas, Texas. And we had a really fun ch about transactional lean how to apply lean print thinking to more of a non manufacturing environment. So we go through some examples and talk about some of the things that she's learned along the way. And I think you're going to enjoy this show. She's got fantastic energy and was a pleasure to talk with. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 452. Enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jen, welcome to the show. How are you?

Hi, Ron. I'm so well. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Is this your first AME conference?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Yeah. No, it's a good one. I mean, I wasn't sure what to expect. You know, we've been to many of them over the years and. Yeah, first one since 2019. So it's kind of like I was wondering, how's the energy? But I feel like it's been really good.

I think it's been wonderful. And I think to your point about energy, people are just so excited to be back in person.

Exactly.

You know, networking and learning again together. So it's been great.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, Jen, I know you know the drill. We like to get things started right out of the gate with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I do, I do. And it's. It's on my mug that I have on your yeti with my tea. And it's the best time to place plant a tree was 20 years ago. But the second best time is now. And what that really helps me personally remember is to. Don't. Don't wait and wait and plan and plan. Do it. Try something. Right. Don't be uninformed about it, but try something. You'll start learning immediately and then you'll know whether it worked or whether it didn't and what you need to do next.

Drop the mic. I don't know what else we need to say.

That's it. Yes. Yeah.

Fantastic.

That's one and I think in a lot of places and organizations, they can get stuck in trying to plan and get things perfect, and it's never gonna be. It was perfect 20 years ago. It's never gonna be perfect. Exactly. Just try it now.

Oh, I love it. Very good. All right, well, hey, tell us about your background. Tell us about how you first got involved and all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Sure. Yeah. So I started out of school as a manufacturing engineer in manufacturing at a location in southwest Virginia, actually. And it was a Danaher company.

Nice.

And so not even knowing what I was getting into, I really started to become indoctrinated and lean. And it wasn't anything that we really talked about openly. It was just the way that things worked.

Yep.

So that's really where I started to get involved in Kaizen events and then eventually lead them. And I just fell in love with it. It made too much sense to try to do anything any other way. So I worked in various roles throughout that organization. Supply chain quality, environmental health and safety, a little bit of everything. And then settled into continuous improvement as well. And it was wonderful. From there, I kind of took an industry change. I loved continuous improvement and wanted to see what it was going to be like in healthcare. So I've done continuous improvement in healthcare with two different healthcare systems here in the Southeast over about 10 or 11 years. And that's been a wonderful experience as well. Tons of opportunity in healthcare, but there was a lot of good work that we were able to put in place as well. And then from there, I've kind of moved my way back into to manufacturing. So I'm currently with Jeldwin. We make windows and doors, and we've got lots of opportunities for improvement that I'm working with teams on today.

Awesome.

Awesome.

All right. Well, I'm really excited for the topic today, Transactional Process Improvement, because, you know, we've talked about it, you know, on the show in the past, but I don't think it gets us enough airplay.

Yes.

Right. And so I'm really excited. So maybe to start with, just like, when you think about transactional process improvement, like, what do you mean? Like, just to start with.

So it's the processes that happen that you mostly most likely can't see. So it's things that are happening in communication and handoffs between different departments. A lot of it could be electronic. Some of it can be on paper or through electronic workflows as well. Those are a little bit easier to see. But it's ultimately A lot of the things that are running our businesses behind the scenes. So it's not the manufacturing processes out on the floor or the service interactions that are happening between, you know, people that work for an organization and the clients or customers. It's the stuff that is a lot harder to see.

Yeah, like the 14 approvals that we need to order a new printer or something like that, right?

Yes, exactly, Exactly.

Okay, I got you. So, I mean, is it fair to say that most companies, from your experience, don't really start there with transactional? Or they may. You know, do they start at all or. I mean, those that are doing in manufacturing.

Not really. So what I see most is companies either don't know that that's a place where they can go look for a lot of opportunity for improvement, or it's something that they. Because you can't. It's not tangible. You can't wrap your hands around it. You can't stand in the Ono circle and watch it happening from one place necessarily. It's too hard for them to really get going on. But there's tons of opportunity in it. Yeah.

What's your experience with it been as far as, like, even your previous company, the Danaher company and all that? Were you doing some transactional?

There were, yeah. So we had a kind of standard tool set for transactional processing. Give us some examples. And I'm sure I know that. I mean, it's been a decade since I've been there, so I know that teams have improved the standards from there. But one of the examples was in our customer service area. Two different examples I can think of. So just the process of a customer calling in to place an order. This customer service rep had to enter that order into their computer, and then that eventually got sent off to the plant to make. And there were tons of things that would happen and go wrong. So through a lot of the basic lean tools, value stream mapping is one of the biggest ones that comes to mind. Understanding what's happening, doing some problem solving, in some cases, getting some standard work in place, you know, just like you would in a manufacturing process that can really kind of smooth the flow, decrease the errors that those teams are having to deal with, and end up, you know, end up improving the rate at which those things get to production.

What's been your experience on the transactional side with things like visual management and, like, how do we keep score?

Yes. Yep. So that can be a similarly hard thing for people to conceptualize, because in a lot of cases, there's not a machine that's being interacted with. Like there would be on the manufacturing floor that can kind of keep track of things. So it could be more manual, but in a lot of cases we've got systems and dashboards where teams are working through different workflows and a lot of that information is available as well. You just have to know where to look and how to kind of program it in so that it's giving you information that's really meaningful and actionable to work on.

Yeah, one little brag about my business partner, Kevin Meyers. He's our CFO of our company and you know, closing the books sort of at the end of the month, you know, and man, he's got it down to a science. Just quick changeover, one on one for that process, you know, and it's hours now for him to do it. Most people it's days, maybe longer, you know, but just the whole concept of internal, external and all that, I mean, it's the same. It is, right? It's the same and just. But it's different. Like it's bank statements and whatnot, you know, that you're collecting instead of tools and.

Yes, yes, yeah. And I think once, once at least from a continuous mindset or continuous improvement mindset, if you can understand how the lean tools apply to manufacturing processes with just a little bit of practice and coaching, you will very easily be able to apply them to transactional as well.

Yeah.

And then there's just, there's no difference.

What, so what kind of. I mean, you've already given some ideas on some different tools and whatnot, but if someone's listening to this and they're like, yeah, we really need to get, get more focused on the transactional side. Like do you have any maybe practical tips or some advice, some wisdom that you can share with them?

Yes, yes, absolutely. So the best tool that I love to start with almost always is value stream mapping. With most transactional processes, it's very likely not single function. Right. It's not just all happening within one department. There's many departments or functions that are all having a part in, you know, moving something through a transactional process. So the, my favorite tool is value stream mapping. In some cases, if it's a little bit more simple, a process map will do.

Do you ever do like any sort of swim lane type stuff meets value stream map kind of thing?

Always swim lane value stream mapping just so that you can kind of start to keep those functions organized. A lot of color coding, all that fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Seeing the handoffs, that's where the danger is. Right. You're like, oh my gosh, why do 14 different people gotta be involved here?

Yeah. And it's, it's most of the time as we get through and we've mapped out a current state, whether it's a value stream map or just a process map, people kind of step back and say, good lord. Like, it's amazing that we actually get anything done and that we do it. Right.

Right.

So how do we remove a lot of that waste so that folks aren't having to rely so much on those things to push the through?

What about things like this basic blocking and tackling like 5s and the 7 waste? How do they play in the transactional world?

Yeah, so 5S is a little bit more challenging. Sometimes it can be in kind of the electronic space, which is really important that that's as simplified. Right.

Can you find any file in 20 seconds?

Yeah, five seconds. Right. You know, you want to be able to find things because if you're, if you're not able to, what's that going to impact down the line? So 5s is still a really important thing in transactional space. Also in transactional spaces, there might be different SharePoint sites or team file sharing sites. Those are really important that they're well organized so that folks aren't working off of the wrong file or doing any of that kind of stuff that creates waste. And all of the wastes apply just as much as they do in transactional spaces and manufacturing spaces. So a lot of times when I've pulled a team together for the first time and we're starting to talk about a process, I'll go through the wastes and get the team to give at least two or three examples of how they see that waste happening in their processes today. And that really gets them warmed up to go into the next step of mapping the current state.

Are you a eight waste or seven waste kind of practitioner, the skills or.

No, definitely the skills. So definitely 8. In some companies we've added energy as well.

Right.

So how can we reduce the energy use and conserve some of those natural resources? For sure, as we're kind of moving into this environmental.

Exactly, exactly. Now, what about folks that got multiple sites, multiple locations and all that? Is there anything you need to look out for as it relates to transactional?

Yes, absolutely. I think in the transactional space, because the teams don't work so close, closely together, they probably don't have relationships, they don't know each other very well. They don't know each other's Work very well.

Yeah.

So I find it really important to. To pull people together, if you can, just so that they can start to build those relationships and understand. Oh, gosh, you know, I didn't know from my position in scheduling that you've got to go through all of that in accounting, you know, as things move through. So getting them to better understand how their function and work impacts things that are up and downstream is hugely important.

Yeah.

And I think we've all learned over the past couple of years that when we can't come together, you know, in person.

Right.

Being able to do things virtually is really important as well.

It's totally doable.

It is, yes.

You know, it's not as good as this, talking face to face, but, yeah. It's better than just picking up the phone or sending an email.

Never. Never send an email.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I'm wondering if maybe as we wrap things up, if you just have maybe some encouragement, you know, because sometimes I'll ask people, give me some tips and some words, but maybe encouragement for folks out there who are. Who are trying, but it's hard. They're struggling. Maybe they're frustrated. Like, speak to them.

Great question. So I think for folks that are kind of struggling, working, tackling a transactional process issue, I'm gonna go back to my favorite quote, and it's. It's try something. Right. It doesn't have. You don't have to fix the whole value stream at once. Like, find one process, one person that's having an issue that they can communicate to you. You guys can work on, you know, as a small team together and just fix that one thing. It'll make it better for that team or that person that was having that issue. But then you'll also start to gain confidence on one side. But then as well as, you know, people will see that things are improving and that improvement is possible, and that can kind of open the door to expand that effort. I love it.

I love it. Jen, if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way? LinkedIn.

Something like that. They can find me on LinkedIn. Absolutely. I'm probably in there as Jennifer Borden.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But, yeah, happy to connect with anybody.

All right, and this is episode 452. And so we'll link to that in our show notes. We'll link to your social, your social media and all the rest of it. So thank you for coming on. This has been fun.

Awesome. Ron. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Thanks so much. All right.

Take care.

Yep.

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