International Lean Summit 2015
On August 13-14, Pankow joined 25 companies from around the world at the Lean Summit in Bellingham, Washington. Pankow's Senior Lean Manager, JR Gunter and Southern California Regional Manager and Vice President, Jack Mollenkopf joined represntatives from companies spanning 8 countries to share the successes and struggles of being a Lean organization. Paul Akers, CEO of FastCap and author of 2 Second Lean welcomed the attendees to his home and the next day into FastCap for a factory tour. Each company shared their unique Lean journey through a 15 minute presentation and Q&A. Pankow was able to share our Lean journey over the last year- highlighting our daily Lean Huddles, over 200+ improvement videos and the use of Pull Scheduling and Last Planner. "It was amazing to hear about the success and struggles alike that the companies were going through, and some of the transformations were incredible," said JR Gunter.
Here are some of Pankow's key take aways from the Lean Summit:
- It's about the Lean philosophy and not the tools
- Everyone needs to be engaged in Lean, otherwise you have weak links in your chain that need to be replaced.
- Practice unsupervised Lean! Empower everyone to make improvements without approval.
- Work/Life rhythm does not happen overnight…it's a journey.
- Create dashboards to measure Lean performance, create buzz, and provide healthy competition.
- Have a tool cart contest. Engage all the sub trades by starting a competition on leaning out your tool carts.
- It's all about the culture! Employees should go home happy.