End-to-End Transformation: Driving Change Through Collaboration & Continuous Improvement

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I am the CEO of the Industry 4.0 Club. I have over 40 years of leadership and manufacturing experience, most of that at Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host, Mike Yost. Mike is the chairman of the Industry 4.0 Club. Mike, would you mind introducing yourself further?

Sure, absolutely. Welcome everybody. As Mike said, my name is Mike Yost. I am the volunteer chairman of the Industry 4.0 Club, one of the club founders, and Mike's co-host on these broadcasts. Been in industry about 35 years. the last 15 on the industrial nonprofit side. So certainly bought into the mission of what we're trying to accomplish here. And as Mike said, it's about hosting conversations, diverse conversations. And we're really excited to have Lisa Alderson, the Vice President, Delivery Operations and Transformation from Otis Elevator Company with us today. Lisa is going to be at the 2nd annual MX.O Midwest event in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. September 17th, and the title of her session will be End-to-End Transformation: Driving Change Through Collaboration and Continuous Improvement. So by way of background, Lisa is a forward-thinking leader with 25 years of success spearheading global transformations and developing high-performance teams across various domains, including product development and engineering, quality control, in project and program management. She's known for driving significant outcomes such as cost savings, business growth, product optimization, operational excellence, and continuous improvement through savvy strategy and goal setting. So we're really looking forward to the conversation here as well as Lisa's participation at the event.

Thanks, Mike. Just a quick more— a little bit more comment about the event, the MXO Midwest event. Um, has really become the go-to gathering for manufacturers in the region to connect, collaborate, and learn from real-world examples of successful digital transformation shared right from the horse's— or if you will, the manufacturer's mouth. Beginning in 2024, the MXO Midwest event has empowered local manufacturers to advance their careers and businesses through valuable knowledge share and exchange and impactful networking opportunities. So hopefully you get a chance to join us. For those that are joining us on LinkedIn, if you have a question for Lisa during our time together, please drop it in the comment box and we'll, we'll do our best to get it to Lisa to get her response to that. So again, welcome, Lisa. We're glad you could join us. So Lisa, let's get started. When we speak about end-to-end transformation, what does that really mean?

Well, thank you both. It is really great to be here and with your audience to talk about these exciting topics. So when I say end-to-end transformation, it is different than just transformation. Transformation by definition is a dramatic change. It is a step change, sometimes we call it in industry, but end-to-end is in reference to the value chain or a series of activities to move something from concept to delivery. This comprehensive approach ensures you aren't just transforming in silos, but amplifying that value across the company to hopefully gain, you know, value and change throughout that value chain. And, you know, manufacturing is a really critical piece of that value chain. So to me, that's what end-to-end transformation is, is making sure that you're not just looking at one function, one business unit, one silo, but really looking at all those inputs and outputs.

So in your, in your bio, we talked about your experience with cross-functional teams. Obviously, from that definition, that's quite an important role there because you're talking about going across the entire organization there.

Yeah.

And, you know, sometimes I think people can be like, oh, wow, that's a lot, like, not sure we can take that on. And it doesn't really have to be. You know, I've seen a lot of examples where You know, the people on the ground know what could be done better or improved. And so transformation doesn't— like, you work on it, work on it, and all of a sudden it's magically changed and better. Transformation happens through a series of small changes and small improvements that when you trace them and track them lead to those bigger defining moments. And so it can really be You know, as small or big as a company needs it to be, it's all about how they set out to approach it.

I think that's a really cool way to say it. I think one of the things that— one of the sayings or clichés I've heard often is beginning with the end in mind, right? And I think that kind of when you talk about that, that kind of— that's what resonates in my mind is thinking about the bigger picture, where you want to go, and then, you know, putting in steps to get there along the way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. All the pieces that play into it, all the different groups. And, and that's why I think it— you can do that in an hour meeting. Like, you can have the right people in the room from the right group that can tell you what's working or what's not, or what they would like to see better to accomplish a goal. And you can also do it in a week-long face-to-face workshop with customer journey mapping and Gemba walks and everything else. It all depends on the approach and what you're trying to tackle.

Do you typically find that those are driven from the strategic level down, that they come from a, you know, you're getting together and having these workshops and such, but they're pointing towards some North Star that perhaps the senior leadership has painted?

When we call it transformation, yes, I do. I, you know, I think that word probably comes with a lot of baggage to a lot of people in companies. It's not my favorite word. I haven't come up with a better one. Maybe you guys or your audience could. I mean, I think what organizations are looking for when they call it transformation, it means that there is a strategic shift in, in the organization or the market or the product or the customer base or something like that. And so what a company is trying to do is to align the organization or operating model or strategy to go after whatever it is that they're trying to do. So when you use that word transformation, Yes, I do see it coming from the top down. But when you talk about continuous improvement or, you know, somewhere in between, you know, high-level top-down transformation and hopefully a baked-in continuous improvement methodology, it can happen at those lower levels too. And you know what, let me apologize in advance for my voice. I just got over strep throat, so it is weak today, and I'm going to take some drinks of water to help me get through it.

Not an issue at all.

Yeah, no problem. No, that's really cool. So maybe we can just kind of turn to a little different topic. So when you— one of the things in the title, we talked about continuous improvement and continuous improvement strategies. What are some of the key elements for a company? Or, I'm sorry, what are some of the key elements you see in a continuous improvement strategy?

Yeah, you know that 2 of the things that I think are most important for continuous improvement, before you even, like, try to implement whatever continuous improvement method or methodology, is making sure that there's documented processes and access to data. If you don't know what you do, you don't know how to improve it. And if you don't have the data to understand where you're starting from, a lot of times it can become an emotional conversation. versus a database conversation. I think it was Peter Drucker that said something like, you know, what gets measured gets managed, something like that. And so I think the foundational pieces are, do you have something documented, like anything documented? And do you have access to data to measure something that you can contribute to? And then after that, once you have those foundational elements in place, I think it really depends where the company is. You know, I've worked with companies that have had a very ingrained Six Sigma culture, and it was part of their vocabulary, part of the taxonomy, part of the roles, the response. It just was. It was in their environment and the way they talked. And I've worked with others that don't know what a process owner is. They don't know how to form a problem statement. They don't— they've never heard of lean. They think it's lowercase and You know, I don't even know what it is, you know.

And so going on a diet, going on a diet or something.

Yeah, I almost said Lean Cuisine, but I don't even know if they make those anymore. I could be dating myself. But, but I think it's when you think about continuous improvement, you have to think about what do you have documented, what data do you have available, and then where's the company at. Because if you come in and try to do, or even as an employee, try to jump straight to Six Sigma experts or Lean, you know, Kaizen or 5S or whatever it is, it's not going to work because people aren't going to know or understand. But if you start smaller with just how do we do a good problem statement, how do we do a good 5 Whys, you know. So I think continuous improvement really has to take into consideration where the organization is, what the organization wants out of it, as well as the function they're starting with and whether it's more process-oriented or physical product manufacturing-oriented. There's similarities, but you would tackle it a little bit differently.

Well, thanks, Lisa. I just want to remind everybody that we're talking with Lisa Alderson, who's Vice President of Delivery Operations and Transformation at Otis Elevator Company, talking about driving change through collaboration and continuous improvement. So if you have questions for Lisa, please go ahead and put them into the to the comment sections here. We'll do our best to address those questions that folks have or insights that you want to share. Just wondering, Lisa, you know, oftentimes operations leaders are fighting fires day to day, dealing with, you know, different realities one day to the next. So when you come in with something big, you already talked about the fact that transformation might not be the right word and it might be a little bit intergalactic or something along those lines. How do you engage the the operations leaders effectively.

Yeah, and not even just engage, how do you empower them? You know, because really a lot of the operations leaders are, they're like the secret sauce to the organization's continuous improvement. They usually have that frontline knowledge of the product or that customer feedback, depending, you know, what type of operations it is. You know, I remember talking to people that were working on, you know, on the assembly line for a new product that we were doing. And they're like, why didn't you guys change this or that? It would make it so much easier to assemble and service and whatever. And I'm like, that was nowhere in our requirements. And I was like, well, who did you tell this? And they're like, well, who do I tell? And I think that that is the case most of the time, is that they know these things, or the technicians that are out at dealers that are servicing a product, they know what they see more often. than not. And yeah, sometimes now we can get that out of our databases, but how often does that get back into upgrades, new product development, process improvements, whatever it is? And so I think that the core is making sure you have those communication channels so that there is a way that those operations folks who you want fighting the fires, you want them, you know, they're leading the operations, but that they have a, you know, an effective mechanism to feed those ideas and what they're seeing back. And then it, you know, it depends on the organization, how they're set up, who does something with that. You know, some groups have a centralized continuous improvement that is there in the factories or in the operations groups that can take that and act on and handle it. Other times it goes into backlogs or hoppers. You know, sometimes it's a belt program, and so belts pick those up. So, They can be addressed multiple ways, but I think the first step is providing those effective communication channels so that the operations folks that know what probably needs to be done better have a way to share that and know that it will be heard, not just going into a black hole.

Great. One of the things that, at least in my experience involved with manufacturing, We, we transfer, you know, we're going back a couple of decades now, so bear with me. But, you know, we used to focus on, you know, did we hit today's numbers, right? Did we get our work done for the day? And there's a really big mentality shift. I think you're really speaking to that, where instead of just asking, uh, someone who's worked in the production floor, hey, did you get— did you accomplish your task today, hit your numbers, whatever you want to call it? You have to actually have 2 questions. Did you accomplish what you said you wanted to do today, your numbers or your production? And did you make something better? And creating a culture where there's an expectation of both, to where— and throughout the whole line organization, not just for the folks working on the floor, but for the management team supporting that. And I think you have to create that culture, no matter your point, where not only are the, you know, the mechanisms are there, but there's also the expectation.

Yeah.

On the part of the entire Align team that, hey, our job is not only to satisfy today's customer needs, but to prepare for the future or make something better. And I think that's an important cultural shift for a lot of companies that maybe, you know, 30, 40 years ago wasn't in their DNA and needs to be today.

Yeah, and I think that's a really great retention tool as well, because most people want to make things better, want to make their jobs easier, you know, whatever it is. And of course, you'll have the one-off that just want to complain or just want to come in, clock in, clock out. But there's a lot of people out there that if you give them the tools or the time or the method to help improve things or to make their job better or be part of the solution, that they'll want to. And then that feeds that fulfillment and that growth and that knowledge. And it really benefits the employees as much as it does the company and the customer.

Yeah.

So I'm wondering, Lacey, you talked at the beginning of how you defined end-to-end transformation and being tied to the value chain and such. Do you have an example that you could share? I'm assuming you'll get into those sort of things in your talks in Cleveland, so you don't have to go too deep, but maybe just give us a short example here of a successful transformation.

Sure. I'll give you maybe 2, and these will be different than what I touch on in the conference. But, you know, one of them, and this isn't specific to manufacturing, but it'll give an idea of an end-to-end and how you can break it down into very small pieces. So we tackled source-to-pay, or, you know, procure-to-pay, depending which one you want to talk about. And we wanted to have efficiency, cost savings, as well as automation. Those were the business value drivers out of that. And we got the smart people together into the room. We captured all of their ideas. And then we broke them down into 1-month sprints and larger 3-month sets of, like, measure— like, bigger measurable outcomes, you know, because of course leadership loves to see the bigger dollars and the bigger numbers. And those aren't going to happen on a weekly basis. But when you, when you put them together in a quarter. And so like one of the examples that we did is we realized, you know, and granted this was a few years ago, but we still had a lot of customers paying by check, or we had suppliers that wanted to be paid by check, and that costs money, and it, it all adds up. And so the more that we could move them to web billing or electronic transfer sources, the more that we could just see that savings and find those numbers. And it wasn't hard. It was like sending a letter to the vendor saying, on this date, we're going to move to this, or sending a letter to the customers. And, you know, there was still the one-off, but this was not a technology change. It was not a process change. It was getting— it was moving more volume to a lower-cost, more efficient, method that already existed. And so we identified a lot of those small things that we could do very quickly that added up to the overall source-to-pay end-to-end value stream, because the data was more accurate, the timing, the throughput, you know, all those things that you start to see by sending a letter and changing electronic transfer. So that's just an example of a smaller one. Another one that is larger, excuse me, and I think has to do more with manufacturing. You know, we looked at the turnaround time for new product development, and this was in a Fortune 100 company, and a lot of their new product development timing was driven by certain regulations or certain market needs, things like that. But we wanted it to be faster, and we wanted more time to test newer technologies. Newer fuel sources, things like that. So we involved manufacturing, we involved engineering, we involved service, we involved the end customers, all of those things to see what is that full set of activities that would achieve the customer value that we're looking for from, you know, all the way through to production while maintaining the dependability and quality that we needed to have. And manufacturing was a critical part of that. So they knew what passed and failed in our end-of-line test, and they knew what was hard to assemble and what was easy. So by taking some of their feedback and bringing that into some of the product changes, or not changing because it didn't need to be changed, we were actually able to increase our reliability projection. And therefore not have to test new things, or, you know, we were able to lean on end-of-line to test things like that. So I know I'm just touching on that. There's clearly some probably sensitive things there, so I'm not going to go too deep into that. But I think that's a bigger, holistic, cross-functional new product development process that took manufacturing input and was then able to bake that into that end-to-end new product development activity. that impacted engineering, testing, the customer integrations, all of those pieces as well.

Yeah, well, I know, I know, as we talk about, you know, we're the Industry 4.0 Club and we talk about the opportunity for these technologies and such to transform businesses, the new product introduction is a great example. We've talked with many, many manufacturing companies that are trying to respond to market drivers, market opportunities, tweaks to products, new products, etc. And that's— it's a really daunting task and one of the drivers that gets people asking the question of, you know, where could we leverage new technologies, new solutions, new approaches? So I think that's a great one.

Yeah, there's a lot there for sure.

Yeah.

So the— as we get— we've been talking for the last 20 minutes or so, and maybe as we begin to get towards the end of the conversation, You know, obviously we'd love folks to come and hear you at MXO Midwest. What are you hoping that those that will be in the audience take away from your presentation and your sharing at the event?

You know, one of the things that you said early on, Mike, is one of the things I hope people take away is focus on the endgame. Look at that full value chain. Manufacturing can almost always fix manufacturing. They're great problem solvers, but they can also provide really critical insights to suppliers, engineering, testing, design. And by working across those functions in that full value chain, that's how we serve our customers better, and that's how we deliver better products. And so what I hope people take away is that they're always in the back of their mind asking, What's the endgame? What's the full value chain? How can I give what I know to be input into that full value chain and understand how really critical that is? Or else it'll be a missing part. It'll be an unexplored opportunity.

Thank you for that. Well, so kind of time to wrap up and give some final thoughts. I know we've talked for a little bit now about your talk and about Some of the elements of it. And Mike, anything you want?

Yeah, I'd love to, but I see a question just came in. I didn't know if you wanted to go ahead and—

Oh, thank you. Good point. Thank you.

Respond to that. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is from Joy. Joy's asking, I really like the idea. Thanks for, Mike, for identifying that. So we like the idea of using quick wins for process improvement. Performance improvement? Were you able to measure impact ROI so you can apply it as best practice in your company?

Yes, we were. And I'm not sure which— if there's a specific example Joy is asking about. But, you know, back to my first comment, making sure you have the data and you know where you're improving from. Because not every improvement should be a best practice, right? And you learn things as you go, or you need to pivot, or you need to shift how you do that. But I think Using the quick wins creates momentum, it builds trust, eliminates the fear, and then groups that are trying to do that continuous improvement, or the process performance improvement, as she references, will be able to take those small wins and amplify them, kind of like a mirror ball, out into what the big wins could be. And so when my team and I start a new transformation or a change or or a new organization, we always start with what's our quick wins? What's our 1-month quick wins? What's our 1-quarter quick wins? And then also, what are the, like, super big challenging issues that people have just learned to tolerate it and we shouldn't tolerate it? We need to solve it. And so pairing those together allow you to, to build that momentum, address that fear maybe of doing things new or different, and create that credibility while also in parallel working towards some the bigger pieces that may have been epidemic problems for a longer time in the organization. That's a great question though.

Yeah, great question. Thank you, Joy.

Mike, thanks a lot. We're getting ready to wrap up. Maybe I can get a final thought, Mike, from you about what you've heard today and what you expect to see at MXO Midwest. Then Lisa, I'd love to hear your final thoughts as well. Mike, would you start us off?

Yeah, I hope Joy and everybody else who's listening can come and listen to Lisa and interact like this. I think it's exciting to have that kind of interaction and get the perspectives from those that have been there and done it. You know, I think from early on in this conversation, Lisa talked about the fact that the people on the ground know. But then I think another really important point that she mentioned is that sounds like the company has a culture of listening to those people. So I think it's really important that, one, the company wants to hear from those folks; two, they feel compelled and invested to share what they know; and then three, that the company will actually take that and do something with the insights that those folks are sharing. So thank you for that, Lisa.

Thanks, Mike. Lisa, how about your thoughts?

You know, one of the areas I talked about but I didn't touch on a lot is change. And process or progress doesn't happen without change. There needs to be a reason or a clear problem statement as to the reason for change. But also, don't be afraid of that change. Don't just tolerate it. Identify what could be done better. See what to bring together. Be part of that solution. So, you know, some of my final thoughts are, as we, you know, when I talk about transformation or change or process improvement, continuous improvement, all those things. I think paying attention to what the change is, how people can ask how they can be part of the change and understand the why behind that change is really important. And that's, you know, by helping with the people, the process, and the technology, bringing that all together is what really delivers the value that most companies are looking for.

Well, that's fantastic. Well, thank you for that. Um, so I want to thank Lisa. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to share your insights, uh, into Katisha's improvement strategies and for giving us a preview of your participation at MXO Midwest, which is going to be happening really a month from now, just about, on September 16th and 17th in Cleveland, Ohio. Well, if you're going to decide to join Lisa and the Industry 4.0 Club at the event. And if you'd like to know where to go to register, here's the website. If you'll take a moment and capture that, I know it'd be great to see you there. So we hope that you decide to sign up and join us. The Industry 4.0 Club would also like to encourage you to take action. Attend the event. That's one way you could take action to learn more. Read a book or read an article. Or think about doing a smart manufacturing roadmap strategy. There's lots of ways you can engage and help to deploy Industry 4.0. We'd like to know what you decide to do, so drop us a note on our website at www.industry40club.com or on our LinkedIn page and let us know what actions you're taking to advance Industry 4.0. We also host these sort of conversations weekly, If you'd like to be a participant on one of these conversations, we would certainly be interested in entertaining that. Again, drop us a note on our website or to our LinkedIn page. On behalf of the club, Mike, thank you. Lisa, thank you as well. We want to wish everybody a good rest of the day and a good rest of the week.

Excellent. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Lisa.

Yeah, that's great.