Socio-Tech Implications of Rapid Lean Conversion

Some straight common sense discussion and directions portrayed by Richard Kunst, Vice President of Continuous Improvement with La-Z-Boy residential Division. See the model, witness the Templates, and hear the results.

Implementing a Lean Culture involves changing People, Processes and Paradigms. Extensive communication and documentation exists on the tools used within a Lean Culture but little has been discussed or published on how to manage the culture speed in changing employees attitudes and behavior within an organization to adopt and sustain positive change.

The things that inhibit any process to become perfect are deemed to be disturbances. In the perfect process “the object starts and stays in motion while constantly adding value in the eyes of the customer from start to delivery in a lot size of 1”. So how do we identify and eliminate disturbances along the route? … You need to build infrastructure and a culture of continuous improvement … or an organization constantly looking for a better way.

There are some basic modules of building infrastructure that will allow an organization to implement the socio-tech side of a rapid lean Implementation. The following will be discussed in detail during the presentation.

• Creating your Vision, Mission and Roadmap
• Compartmentalize the Noise
• Establish your Anchors
• Get Organized
• Create Flow
• Create Synergy, Focus and Actionable Continuous Improvement
• Measure Progress
• Sustainment

Disturbances to flow need to be eliminated in any process from the hiring of an employee, the acceptance of a customer order, the procurement of material, even managing the attendance of employees as well, the traditional area of core value conversion imbedded within the organization.

Just like parents attempting to raise their children with good moral principals through leadership and guidance, so also must the leaders of organizations coach, nurture and recognize their team.

With annual sales of over $2 billion, La-Z-Boy Incorporated is one of the world’s leading residential furniture producers, marketing furniture for every room of the home, as well as for the hospitality, health care and assisted-living industries. The La-Z-Boy Upholstery Group companies are Bauhaus, Centurion, Clayton Marcus, England, La-Z-Boy, and Sam Moore. The La-Z-Boy Casegoods Group companies are American Drew, American of Martinsville, Hammary, Kincaid, Lea and Pennsylvania House.

Richard Kunst, Vice President of Continuous Improvement

A native of Southern Ontario, Richard’s career history has encompassed many areas within manufacturing and operations covering all the aspects from “quote to cash” During the course of his career he has held positions such as Director of Operations for WEA Music and witnessed the demise of the 8-Track and the birth of the CD. Later he moved to Rockwell Automation as Materials Manager and became one of the founding fathers of the HPM Consortium – a consortium of 17 diverse companies striving to achieve excellence by working together. Richard spent time with CAMI (assembly plant for the Suzuki Side-Kick and GM Metro) as Director of Production Control implementing Lean Manufacturing Principals.

At Stackpole, an automotive parts supplier, his role was to coach the organization to adopt the principals of Lean Manufacturing … In three short years on-time delivery improved from 70 -98%, external PPM dropped from 1500 to 5 and the stock price of the company increased from $8.40 to $32.50 per share.

Now as the Vice President of Continuous Improvement with La-Z-Boy he is providing the leadership and facilitation for the Lean Implementation strategy for 8 manufacturing facilities across North America. The company has decided to adopt an aggressive Lean Implementation Strategy to preserve furniture manufacturing in North America using a Cellular Manufacturing approach embedded in a much larger Lean Conversion.

Richard’s full understanding of the Toyota Production System, Lean Manufacturing, Theory of Constraints, and formal problem solving using the tools of Kepner-Tregoe & Six Sigma has enabled him to build a solid track record of optimizing ROFE and ROI within an organization. His passion for building teams, continuous improvement and leveraging the human intellect on the shop floor has enabled organizations to accomplish what at first seemed impossible. It can be integrating new technology, increasing the velocity of product flow or information through the operation it all needs to be accomplished using the collective genius of the organization.

Richard passion to see all organizations succeed beyond their expectations has been honored by allowing him to also be Past President of the Canadian Region for the AME (Association of Manufacturing Excellence. He was also the Conference Chair for the AME International Conference in 1998 and 2003 both which attracted Lean Leaders from around the globe,