GA 455 | The Intersection of Lean and Sustainability with Julia Goldstein

Been a lot of discussion about companies that are claiming to be eco friendly and saying we are being responsible corporate citizens. And the truth. Well, there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that they are not saying.

Today. I'm excited to welcome Julia Goldstein to the show. Now, Julia is passionate about lean and sustainability. And so that's what we talk about today and talk about sort of the intersections between lean and sustainability. And we had some, a really interesting conversation about, you know, just the way that the two movements, if you will, lean and sustainability are definitely complementary and can and should work together. So really good stuff. I think you're going to enjoy the, the episode. And towards the end of the episode, Julia actually kind of mentions a, a nice gift that she's giving everyone. She's written a book recently. And so if you scroll down here on your Show Notes page, you' a coupon code that'll get you, save you some money if you are interested in buying that book. So Show Notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 4. 55. And then also if you scroll down again on your podcast app here, we're going to link to the ability to go and sign up for our newsletter. If you're not on Gemba Academy newsletter, you should. It's not one of those annoying spammy newsletters that ask you for stuff where we're constantly writing new articles and when we have new content and videos that are able to be viewed, we will link those up and then obviously when new podcasts come out. So yeah, just scroll down there and sign up for the newsletter. That'd be. That would be great. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Julia, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Well, thanks for having me on.

All right, all right. Where are you calling in from?

Bellevue, Washington. That is near Seattle, just across Lake Washington from Seattle.

Yeah, Beautiful part of the country. So used to go out there all the time, visit the Fast Cap and all the guys up there. And then my business partner, John Miller lives Bay Ridge Island. So, you know, we're at a little ferry ride away kind of thing, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. It's beautiful here.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. All right, well, thanks for coming on. I'm excited to, to talk with you today. So, you know, right out of the gate, Julia, we'd like to start with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you have?

Yes, this one is something I first heard in 2010, but it dates back longer than that, for sure. Which is seek first to understand and then to be understood. I first heard this quote from an instructor in a course called Human Relations in Business. And I had gone back to school at my local community college to earn a certificate in business leadership. And that course was just fantastic. The instructor was really enthusiastic and believed in, we need to pay attention to people and act like they matter. And really that piece of listening.

Okay.

Before just going forth with, yes, this is my idea to say it's not all about me.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. All right, well, Julia, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff, and then what you. What you're up to these days.

Sure. I am a self described materials geek ever since I learned about the field of material science. When I was an undergrad, I majored in general engineering, and then I went and got graduate degrees in material science. I was that fascinated by it, by just these amazing materials that engineers could advance. And I started my career as an engineer in semiconductor packaging because my PhD research was on lead free solders. And so lead free, that's going to sort of feature in later. Right? Just sort of thinking about that environmental piece when we started hearing, oh, maybe the governments are going to start banning lead and solders because it's toxic. Yeah. And so later on I became more just concerned about the environmental effects and the public health impacts of all these fascinating materials. And that's kind of what got me into the sustainability piece. And I became a writer through, I guess, sort of an unusual path. Although I was always the engineer who would write. When I was an engineer, I was writing the articles for the trade magazines and the reports for the government contracts, all that. And it just seemed natural then to flow into working for the trade press and then eventually starting my own business.

Okay, cool. So now what about Lean? How did you get introduced to that?

That was when I was doing interviews for my first book, Material Value. So this was probably, I think in 2017, I went to the Go Green Portland conference and there I met Brian Hurley, and he is a Lean consultant.

Oh, I know.

I. Do you know him?

Hell yeah. Yep.

Okay. Yes. So I, I met him there and I said, oh, I want to interview you for my book.

Yeah.

And I did that. And so it just sort of seemed like, well, there's a natural connection between Lean and sustainability because it's. They're both really about waste reduction.

Right.

And he gave some just fantastic examples from his experience of solutions that reduced waste and improved just the environmental footprint.

I just looked it up. Episode 237 on the podcast how to incorporate and leverage Sustainability with Brian Hurley.

There you go. Yeah.

So this was back in 2018. My gosh, it's been a while, so. But yeah, good stuff. Stuff. Yeah. Brian's a great guy. He's a great guy.

Yeah. I just talked to him. Oh, I think just a few weeks ago.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit. I mean, so you, you know, obviously it's obvious where your, your, your sort of your background as far as sustainability and, and, but let's talk a little bit more about this intersection between lean and sustainability. And so like how do you believe it? It intersects?

Yes, well, the intersection is really about the efficiency and waste reduction piece. And when people think sustainability, that's a very broad topic. In fact, I write a series of blog posts for 3D insights. It's a website that serves the semiconductor packaging industry. And I started this Sustainability 101 series with a series of seven blog posts and covering basic topics, of course, greenhouse gases. There were topics on circular economy. Well, that, that can tie into that as well. Water use. I'm trying now. I gotta remember what all the different seven were. And one of them was chemicals of concern, which is about getting rid of toxic chemicals in processes. There were a couple of different ones that related to the circular economy and that. I don't know how much the lean community is used to talking about circular economy economy.

Talk about what is circular economy in case folks aren't familiar.

Yeah, I was thinking it might be helpful to define that because a lot of people are confused.

Yeah.

The idea is if you imagine a circle, circles keep going around and around and around that materials enter a system. And if you're talking about sort of technology, the technology part of it, they often start as fossil fuels. They start as ores that are mined from the earth. Eventually they get made into metals and plastics. And those metals and plastics go into products. And unfortunately, what happens in a lot of situations once they're done being part of the products, they go into a landfill. Oops, that's the end that they've, they've exited that circle where they could have been part of it. With the circular economy, everything goes in a continuous circle so that materials, components, parts, products are reused over and over and over again. If an entire component can be reused, excellent. You can find a different use, a secondary market. Right. Maybe it's an older generation piece of equipment. It can be sold into a different industry. That doesn't need the latest, greatest. Right, right. Or secondhand clothing markets. There's a lot of different ways to immediately reuse things in their original form. Well, at some point, things break down, they're no longer functional. And then can you take the materials in them and process them so that they can be used to make new stuff? And if you can do that continuously, over and over, not just once. Right. Not just, oh, we recycle it once and then it turns into something that's never going to get recycled. That's not circular.

Do you have any examples of folks that are. That are doing this as far as, you know, materials and reusing them, so to speak?

Well, I think the best examples are metals. Right. You think about steel and aluminum.

Yeah.

Because those can be reused over and over and over and over without loss of quality. If you look at the amount of energy to produce recycled aluminum versus virgin aluminum, it's about one twentieth of the amount of energy required per ton of aluminum that you make. And it's so much less toxic.

Yeah.

So steel and aluminum recycling have been done for a very long time and those continue to be done. Now, the other thing, just in terms of reuse, I was just talking with somebody about batteries because that is a big thing to worry about with electric vehicles with. I mean, that's kind of the big one. But there's a lot of products everywhere that use these rechargeable batteries that at some point they don't recharge as well.

Yeah, then what?

Yeah, so they're not as useful as they were when they were new. Case in point, I own a 2016 Nissan Leaf.

Okay.

When it was new, I could sometimes get 110 miles range out of the thing. Well, now it's dropped in its full. It doesn't have its full capacity anymore. And I can maybe only go 80 miles or sometimes it feels like 70. And then when we get to winter and it doesn't perform as well, it'll be even lower. I can still drive around town. Well, at some point it's going to be low enough that I'm going to say, this is getting really frustrating. If I want to go and drive to Seattle and back and then I'm out of charge, that's going to be annoying. But say that doesn't mean that battery is useless. It can go into stationary applications for energy storage where it can be plugged in stationary somewhere to even a regular outlet. Right. Where it's not charging very fast. Whereas if you have an electric vehicle, you want it to charge fast because you're not going to wait all day to charge up. But if it's continuously plugged in and getting just a little bit of charge all the time, it can still be usable. You, it can still store energy. That is an example of reuse.

Okay.

Now at some point it may become just not even useful for that. And then there's how can we recover the materials and use them to make something else?

Yeah. Now I know that you've also spoken about and written about what we, what we're calling sustainability communications. What's that all about?

Sustainability communications is about how companies are talking about what they're doing about sustainability. And that means both inside the company and outside, there's been a lot of discussion about companies that are claiming to be eco friendly and saying we are being responsible corporate citizens. And the truth? Well, there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that they are not saying. And there's also companies that are doing a lot to improve their environmental sustainability. And they're not talking about it because they're afraid they're going to get accused of greenwashing, which means that they're exaggerating their claims. Right. This thing of they're promoting the eco friendly product and really it's 5 or 10% of their product line. And what about all those other legacies products? So there's, it's, it can be very tricky to think about what to say when and it's really important to have those conversations.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I remember going to Japan, Gosh, it's been many, many years ago. And we were touring a Toyota facility, you know, and they were talking about how passionate they were about, you know, reusing materials. And I don't think they claim to be perfect by any means. But the thing I appreciate about companies like Toyota is it's not about their Twitter following and how much they're out there bragging about how great they are. You know, they're just doing it because it's the right thing and it's, it's making them more effective. Right. I mean, if it wasn't making them more effective, maybe they'd still do it. But if it was really hurting their productivity or, you know, something like that, well, they might, you know, find other approaches. I don't know. But it's clearly will benefit you if you're doing it with the right reason. So perhaps it's more about quit trying to brag about what you're doing and just do the right thing for the right reasons. And everything is going to take Care of itself, right?

Yes, that's part of it. Yes. Do the right thing for the right reasons. There can also be a good reason to, I don't know if you say brag about it, but maybe if you do it in the right way to share. We had this challenge. Yeah, right. We had this waste stream that we were very concerned about for these reasons. Here's what we did.

Yeah.

To reduce it. We would love it if the rest of the companies in our industry would do the same thing. Yeah. We are not keeping that as proprietary ip. We have our own proprietary bit that's going to differentiate us from the competition. That sustainability piece does not need to be part of that. That can be pre competitive shared information. When companies do share their success stories about that kind of thing and say, please talk to us about it, please do the same at your company.

Yep.

Yeah.

And I would argue the strongest companies out there, it's not just sustainability that they should do that. It's for all. Because Lean obviously can benefit the world and it is. And so people should be talking about the benefits they're making, not just for sustainability. You know, when you find better ways to, you know, improve employee morale or, you know, productivity or whatever. I mean, Toyota, these guys say, come in, look what we're doing. You know, they're not hiding anything. Right. So, yeah, sure, there's, I'm sure there's some trade secret stuff that they're not going to necessarily show you on the tour that they bring you on, but, you know, the best companies are open to share the good things that they're doing. So. Yeah, I totally agree. So, awesome. So what do you think are some of the, the, the obstacles or maybe the roadblocks that companies or organizations or even individuals are facing as they try to, you know, become maybe get a little bit better, even if not perfect, but a little bit better with, with their sustainability journey.

I think a lot of the problem is just a lack of awareness, a lack of information. Sometimes there seems like an overload of information and it's contradictory and they don't know what to believe and what not to believe. It can get super overwhelming and confusing.

Yeah.

I think it's important to kind of filter it through. Who is it who's telling you this and are they credible?

Yeah.

And to, I guess, try to seek out the answers. Now, another seriously important roadblock is cost. There are, I mean, companies for profit. Companies need to make a profit now. How much profit do they need to make? That's debatable. They can, you know, some of them may be going too far in that direction of just prioritizing profit. But in any case, they're concerns about controlling their costs. Honestly though, lean, when implemented properly is going to save on costs. If you can improve efficiency, if you can reduce scrap rates, if you can find ways to maybe resell waste streams into other industries that can actually use that waste. And it's not waste to them, it's a useful input, raw material.

Right.

That is a win win. And maybe you get income from that. You can use that income to fund investments in some other areas of sustainability that do require an upfront cost or you know, this supplier is going to be more expensive because they're not as established.

Right. No, exactly. You know, and we've visited companies over the years where, you know, they're, they're repur the recycling water, you know, within their, their organization or they're capturing rainwater or something like that and then running it through some filtration systems and whatnot. And so they don't really buy much water, you know, because they're just kind of repurposing it and reusing it within their system. Another easy one is paper. I think, you know, just paper everywhere is very inefficient by its nature. Now with technology the way it is, you know, you can. Most factories are pretty paperless already like sophisticated ones are, you know, whether it's iPads and stuff like that.

But it's surprising that, yeah, some industries are still.

Yep.

Kind of almost stuck in the 80s in, in terms of using paper. And I think this was a presentation. I went to the Women in Manufacturing conference about industrial IoT, Internet of Things. And part of that was tracking and tracing options so that you don't need a paper trail for everything. I mean when I worked for a company in production control back in the 80s, yeah, everything was paper based, but we didn't have a choice back then.

Right, Exactly. Good stuff. All right, well, hey Julie, as we wrap up, maybe some final words of wisdom or maybe some practical tips that you can leave for the folks who are, who are listening that might be interested in trying to do better in this area. What do you have to say to them?

I think to look around your workplace, find colleagues who are also like minded and care about these things and really start those conversations. Sometimes people are just kind of going about their work because it's how they've always done it and everything seems to be going along fine. Why fix it if it's not broken? Well recognize, let's put that continuous improvement hat on and work together and say, how can we really make things better?

Yeah.

And then let's talk to the folks in marketing and say, how can they, you know, they help us share that story with other customers and suppliers, for sure.

Good stuff. All right, well, Julia, if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way?

You can go to my website@jlfgoldstein.com and if you go to jlfgoldstein.com bookstore, I have digital copies of my books there. And I will offer your listeners a special discount code for 50% off any digital books on my website.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Is there something you want to share on that? Or we can put it in the show notes or something like that?

We can put it in the show notes? Yeah.

Okay, cool. All right, well, everybody can go check out the show notes. Just scroll down here on your podcast app, whatever you're using, and there'll be some good stuff down there. So. All right. Well, I appreciate that, Julia. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, well, thanks for coming on and keep up the great work.

Thank you very much.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 15 lean and six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.