Impact of 2 Second Lean (eBook)

Paul A. Akers (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
223 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-3652-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Impact of 2 Second Lean leads by example.  Paul's revolutionary concept of making daily 2 second improvements continues to transform people and organizations around the world.  Get motivated and revived to live a life of relentless improvement every day from people around the world living and sharing the powerful IMPACT of 2 Second Lean.

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Impact of 2 Second Lean leads by example. See how Paul's revolutionary concept of making daily 2 second improvements continues to transform organizations around the globe. It has galvanized the business world with countless lives changed and their businesses reinvigorated by this basic and easily attainable goal. After a decade of Paul's 2 Second Lean concept circling the globe, these seemingly small two-second time and energy-saving improvements, innovations, and ideas continue to multiply to multitudes of millions of hours saved. You'll be inspired by seeing this contagious concept implemented among 50 Lean business leaders from every business size and sector imaginable. From owner/operator entrepreneurs to leaders of billion-dollar organizations, you'll see the evidence and real-life examples of these incredible 2 Second Lean success stories. Get motivated and revived to live a life of relentless improvement every day from people around the world living and sharing the powerful IMPACT of 2 Second Lean.

Textauszug

Alex Ramirez

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS
VALLOUREC TUBE ALLOY LLC • OIL AND GAS

I come from a very creative family. My father is an architect/artist and my mother is an educator with a passion for the arts. I grew up seeing my father doing aquarelles and building the most awesome architectural masterpieces from tailored homes, hotels, theaters, hospitals, and office buildings. My mother created an international bilingual kindergarten school in Mexico so my sister and I could have the opportunity to learn in a Spanish and English environment. Growing up, my mixture of cultures showed me that all cultures have much to offer. My father being Mexican, my mother from the US (Minnesota), and my grandparents from Germany, made me have a totally different perspective of the world. In my house, it was normal to have tacos for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and sauerkraut for dinner all in one day.

While at university, I participated in many different design contests as a Mechanical Engineer in the US (ASME Region X Chapters). To my surprise every year I won several first and second place prizes. For a kid in Mexico to win in events held in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, it was fantastic. The culture I had grown up in allowed me to open many doors to make friends outside my country.

While I did my university studies, I got invited to work as a process engineer in a company that made animal nutritional supplements. After working for this company and making many improvements the owner asked me (a 21-year-old non-experienced student) if I could build him a new factory with a totally new process. It only took me 3 seconds to respond with a big, “YES!” I had no idea how to do it, but this opportunity was awesome. I finalized the project and built a 90-foot-high building with vertical processes. It worked very well and boy did I learn a lot. This project boosted my confidence to achieve whatever I set my mind to do in life.

With the money that I earned, I started a new business called MET. It is a camping textile goods company. We started with only 5 people and made backpacks, sleeping bags, and hiking gear. The outdoors was my passion and I thought I could pull off starting this business. To my surprise, I had no idea how to run a business or how to develop products that would sell, or solve “what bugged people.” I noticed that the Chinese were selling similar products at the price I was paying for the material to make our products.

While all this was happening, I fell in love with my beautiful wife and I knew I needed to find a way to have enough income to take care of her. I was not going to go very far to build a family if I stuck with my backpack business. One morning I decided to close the shop and drive to Houston and visit a friend I had made in the ASME chapter as a student. He was an opponent during my years of competitions and he was now an engineer working at NASA. I had kept in contact with him through the years, and eventually, he became my compadre (godfather of one of my 3 kids). Back then he had invited me to his home to look at different opportunities in the area. He insisted that I do a postgraduate degree, but I wanted to get married and not get a doctorate. His kindness to help people was beyond belief and he welcomed me into his home with his family.

I eventually ended up getting a job at Vallourec, where I still work to this day, and was able to get married to my sweetheart. I had many different positions as process engineer: engineering, production, a supervisor in production, and so on. One day an executive walked through my production line and loved the 5S implementation I had achieved. I loved the 5S concept and was really good at it. The problem was my team was so good at transforming our line that others just looked abandoned. An executive from our corporate office in France walked in my shop and was impressed. He eventually asked to speak with me He opened the door for me to choose wherever I wanted to go in the group to have an experience beyond Houston. He told me he wanted to develop my skills. It was a fantastic opportunity and one more time I took 3 seconds to say, “YES, thanks to you!” Being that I work for a French company I chose France!

Over the years I was sent back to Houston and invited back to France to lead a team of experts to create a process that would establish best practices and develop technologies to improve and develop new processes for new products that would go worldwide. This was a fabulous experience and I was exposed to many great people, leaders, and managers. I was able to work in 28 different locations around the world. I was able to travel to over 50 countries, benchmarking and developing partnerships with suppliers. I learned a lot as a technical expert in threading premium connections for the oil and gas industry. The Lean part was something for smarter people that could handle all those tools. Even though I went to a Japan mission and have seen Toyota, and many other companies, the guide company never explained the concept of Lean and we came back with a feeling, “this can only be done in Japan, its complex, our culture will never follow this.” Looking back, we really never understood Lean like the way it was explained by Paul’s videos or in 2 Second Lean.

After 7 years of doing this, I was sent back to Houston to take over operations of a company that makes repairs and accessories for the group. This was my chance to implement everything I learned and make an even greater company. I started implementing Continues Improvement Teams (CIT). Building teams together every week to solve a particular topic, but it required paperwork, indicators, and even simple, was complex for the shop floor. I continued with this for 2 years throughout the 5 locations until one day I had an honest conversation with one of my plant managers. I deeply appreciated his honesty. I asked him why the CITs were not working well and his response knocked me off my feet. He told me, “Alex if you want to know the truth we only put on a show when you come because we know it’s important for you and we don’t want to put you down.” I was totally shocked! I had failed to show them any better! The more I talked with my plant manager he made me realize that it was too complex. We just want to make improvements not get together to talk about them. I was at a loss. What I thought was a solution wasn’t having any effect in the shops, and what made it worse, I did not have a plan B. I appreciate my plant manager for opening my eyes. I remember we both had an agreement that we needed to find a way to create this continuous improvement mindset.

During this time, I had just hired an engineer from Brazil that came from one of our plants. He was very open-minded, full of energy, and had many ideas. His role in the company was Vallourec Performance Analyst (VPA). His position was to help implement Lean initiatives in the organization (Value Stream Mapping, Lean Road maps, 5S, Six Sigma, TPS, etc.). I was not convinced we were ready for it, but I wanted to give it a try as this engineer was an awesome guy. He was always trying to learn new things while keeping our corporate standards, and he found some FastCap videos and immediately brought them to my attention. I still remember him telling me, “Alex, I knew that the day I showed you this it would get you hooked.” I was really amazed by the dynamic and empowering culture at FastCap. I had never seen it before. I continue to watch more and more videos from Paul Akers. I got more and more interested and listened to his audiobook 2 Second Lean. At one point I watched a video where Paul invited people to spend a week working with him and his team. He called it the “FastCap Experience.” As soon as I got to the office, I told my engineer to come with me. We started doing a video for Paul Akers. Without any practice or preparation, we recorded a 1-minute video speaking from our hearts and expressing our curiosity to learn. To my surprise, Paul answered us in 15 minutes with a message that inspired–it was fantastic! He made us feel special and that we had the right attitude to learn Lean. To this day I know that this was not normal and that this was an authentic experience.

Paul welcomed us to come to FastCap but to check-in with him in 2021 because of the COVID-19 situation. We have continued to ask Paul for help and he has continued to answer our questions. In minutes he has advised us with wisdom and guidance. He recommended we start with a small team that was willing to try it out and create a learning club to read 2 Second Lean and exchanging points of view. Since then we have created the learning club and we meet every week. We treat it like a party and we have a total of 10 people who participate in the club.

Something magical started to happen in the learning club. The team started doing Lean in the bathroom–and that’s when everyone got excited to do Lean! We understood why Paul said to start in the bathroom. It is a common place to share all key aspects of learning and to be humble about achieving the same goal. This was about respecting each other and leaving things better than we found them. Every week we assigned two people to clean the bathroom. Once we created the schedule, we had a machine operator (a 20-year veteran of the company) try out our bathroom process. We had so much fun that at the end of the week he told me something I will never forget, “Alex, this is the best experience of my 20+ years in the company.” I was speechless and wanted to cry with excitement. I asked myself, “How could I...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.12.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-3652-0 / 9798350936520