Lean is a journey full of bumps and bruises along the way. Everyone has their way to launch a lean program and everyone thinks their way is the right way. To avoid this being the “flavour of the month club” I will show you why these types of “programs” fail and what you can do to avoid failure and turn around and get outstanding results. Leadership is about one thing- unleashing the head, hand and heart of your staff to achieve success. Teamwork is only achieved when the total person is engaged in helping the organization accelerate.

A journey through Wrigley Canada’s Lean quest towards being World Class, will demonstrate some techniques and direction. While this is a classic lean journey the focus on the “how” versus the “what” is the key. Anyone can learn the “what” but it is the “how” and the “who” that set’s those who are successful from those who fail.

We will conclude with how an organization must shift something about the belief system in the organization. In short, every organization develops a set of beliefs over time that becomes the norms for daily living. We call this a script. This set of beliefs defines for people what is important, what the rules of the game are, where we focus our energy etc. For the initiative to be effective, we must ensure that either it lines up with our belief systems or that we align our belief systems with the initiative. Without alignment any project is doomed to failure or mediocre success.

Wayne Thiessen, Former Vice President of Operations

Wayne Thiessen has over 30 years of manufacturing experience with the past 25 at Wrigley Canada. He started with Wrigley’s in 1982 as Production Manager and has risen to the level of Vice President of Operations. For the past 7 years he has coached a strong team to drive over 600% of growth, expanded their Toronto manufacturing facility and led the team to be a major supplier in the America’s Supply Chain. Through this journey his team has utilized many lean tools with success and failure!