E128: Transforming Lives Using Lean with Patrick Adams

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In this episode, I share an interview with Patrick Adams, founder of Lean Solutions based in Michigan. We met virtually during the pandemic in the Lean Communicators Network, and later in-person at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference. He hosts an annual conference called Lean Solutions Summit that will take place in a few weeks in Detroit.

We discuss how he transitioned from a difficult childhood to the military to manufacturing leadership and ultimately running his own process improvement firm. He was inspired to start a nonprofit called Remembrance Ranch, and he shares how he teaches and supports them with Lean improvements, so they can help at-risk teenagers get the help they and their families need through summer camps and year-long mentoring.

00:17 Meet Patrick Adams: From Military to Manufacturing
01:50 First Steps in Manufacturing
04:53 Learning Lean: The Just-in-Time Experience
09:14 Lessons from the Military
13:28 Advanced Continuous Improvement
16:43 Starting a Consulting Practice
18:27 The Importance of Coaching
21:02 Training and Hands-On Experience
21:27 eLearning Transition
21:44 The Importance of Live Coaching
22:40 Hands-On Learning and Real-Life Projects
23:15 Continuous Improvement and Community
24:30 Introduction to Remembrance Ranch
25:25 Personal Journey and Founding of Remembrance Ranch
27:20 Programs and Impact of Remembrance Ranch
32:25 Lean Principles in Non-Profit Organizations
37:57 Lean Solutions Summit
39:43 The Book: Avoiding the Continuous Appearance Trap
41:21 Final Thoughts and Resources

Listen to the podcast on this page, download it on your favorite podcast player (search “Lean Six Sigma for Good”) or watch the entire interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXr-_KSSSXw

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Have you ordered the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2)?” The book is made up of 8 chapters written about experiences from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners, to give you tips and tricks to help you work with nonprofits in your area. All proceeds donated to charity. Now available in audiobook as of Feb 2024. You can also order Volume 1 released in 2019.

Transcript
Note: may contain typos and errors, generated with AI


Brion Hurley

Welcome everyone. Today I’ve got Patrick Adams here. Patrick, welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone a little bit about your background, how you got into process improvement and setting up lean solutions? Just go through a little bit of your history.

Patrick Adams

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me on the show. Brion. I’m a longtime listener of your show, so I love checking out your guests and interesting stories and backgrounds. It’s fun to connect with like minded individuals that are interested in the same type of stuff. You and I both are process improvement nerds. Hopefully I didn’t offend you. Like to us as nerds, data geeks, whatever I appreciate you having me on the podcast, I’m looking forward to it a little bit about myself. I live in Michigan. Grew up here. I spent eight years in the United States Marine Corps. After high school, I did a little bit of college, but realized quickly that I needed some discipline. So I went into the military, which helped a ton and spent eight years and was actually medically retired from the Marine Corps. And when I got out of the Marine Corps, I. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. My time in the military was spent specifically in criminal justice. I was a military police officer and spent time training civilian police departments. But when I was injured, I was not able to continue in law enforcement. I was a little bit like, what do I do? Now my wife and I were a little worried about what does the future look like? For us in Michigan, you have to be able to pass a physical fitness test to get into law enforcement, so it just wasn’t an option for me. And at that time and I had a friend who had his dad was actually doing some HVAC work at a local manufacturing facility. He’s like, hey, I think my dad could probably get you in with your leadership background, maybe as a supervisor, I ended up landing a job. As a production supervisor, I started there on 3rd shift. It was a plastics plant and I know I knew nothing about plastics. I knew nothing about manufacturing, but I had spent enough time in the military to know how to lead people. And that’s really what I focused on my first few months sitting down with people, getting to know them, walking the floor, spending time with people, trying to figure out what is this. Machine do exact. Exactly. And how do you run it? What do you mean? We have a bunch of bad parts. What do we do with these? I had no idea at that time. That was a very steep learning curve for me. But I got into it and I really enjoyed everything about manufacturing. I loved leading the teams, developing people, and learning. It was a great experience for me. I fell in love with manufacturing.

Brion Hurley

Sometimes we hear this as consultants. What’s your experience in this industry or in this field? You don’t have the specific healthcare experience, you don’t have government experience, you don’t have this particular type of manufacturing experience. How can you be effective in that role? It was great for that company to realize that they saw the leadership skills. Had and. He can learn the other part of it almost made you a better leader because you had to rely on your team, I guess.

Patrick Adams

There was no secret on the floor that I was new to this industry, but I had some good coaches that spent time with me, the team I was leading was also very welcoming and appreciated. The way I approached people, development and just. Listening and responding appropriately in many manufacturing traditionally.

Speaker

It’s a harsh environment. People don’t feel like they’re treated with respect. At that time. I didn’t know if it was just a manufacturing thing, but I had enough background to respond appropriately and I think people appreciated that. I was able to learn a lot while I was there. It was a great experience all around. That was my first exposure to manufacturing, but it wasn’t until I ended up leaving that company and I went to another. And that is here in West Michigan. That was an automotive manufacturer and we were doing plastics at the other plant blow molding bottles for Downey and some of the larger bottling companies. When I went to this automotive company, I was a production supervisor. I took a job on 2nd shift trying to get him into a first shift. Roll. I got off 3rd shift, got on to 2nd shift and I was overseeing a Weld department within this automotive manufacturing facility. I knew enough to be dangerous about manufacturing, and I was growing in my skills as a leader. The organization decided that implement lean manufacturing into their operations. It was a mandate from some of the bigger automotive companies. That said, if we’re going to continue to work with you, we need you to adopt these. I knew nothing about. Continuous improvement. Lean all of this was brand new to me. They hired an outside person to come in. His name was Justin and we called him Justin. Time Justin shows my area to become a model for the company. He spent a ton of time with me and I learned as much as I could. I love to learn new things, so he’s teaching me all these tools, these techniques, him and I both are coaching the team and we’re working together to transform. The area I was overseeing prior to Justin being introduced to me, I knew what respect for people meant. I knew how to lead, but I also wanted to grow in the company. It’s sometimes hard to talk about because I I made some mistakes. Some big mistakes like a lot of people do, and I came into this job and wanted to grow in the company. I started to watch the executive leaders or the plant manager anytime they would go into areas where they were really clean, they would focus on the production boards. Obviously they like to see things in the green, not in the red. There were certain things that I started to pick up and I’m like, we can do that. Stuff I came in on an off shift or a weekend. I tried to transform everything. Without the team I tried to do as much as I could myself, removed a bunch of stuff, put boards up, and did all these things the team came in and they were pretty upset they. Me did not respond well to that. I was trying to backpedal to figure out, and now what do I do? I thought this would be a good thing. It wasn’t a good thing they saw right through what I was trying to do. They knew I was trying to impress the plant manager and it completely failed on me. I had to do a lot of work to regain the trust of that team when Justin. Came in. He was a big part of. Of helping to make that happen with some of the changes that were made, it was great to be chosen as a model area because it helped me go from a baseline. I’m feel like I was an OK leader, made some mistakes, but to really accelerating my leadership journey and giving me some. Some tools on my tool belt that I didn’t have that helped us move quickly in the right direction.

Brion Hurley

Yeah. What were some of the tools or concepts do you think that were most impactful at that time?

Patrick Adams

One thing that stands out to me is value stream mapping. This department I was overseeing. We did really well and we could put parts through super fast. I’d be out there running machines doing whatever I can to help the team, made sure that our department had the best numbers. But what were we doing to the upstream and the downstream? We were starving. And causing downstream to struggle because we’re just over. Welding them, my team’s feeling good because we were doing exactly what we needed to do. Justin’s like you gotta step back and look at the big picture. It doesn’t matter how fast your department runs if if the entire value stream isn’t running fast because you can only run as fast as your slowest link. And so again, that was an eye opener for me as I’m like, yeah, that makes sense. We’re not going to deliver better or faster to the customer if just my department is going fast. I remember that specifically the other thing was 5S standard work that was fairly. New to me and it took me a while to really understand the impact that true 5 us not just sweeping the floor and picking up some things and throwing some labels on the floor, but really understanding that we cannot improve in chaos. We have to have standards in place, we have to have. Stability. If we want to grow, if we want to improve and good 5S all the way through helps provide that level of stability that you can then start to improve on, including standard work. Those were a couple of things to that I think. Really helped to stabilize, not just in my department, but across the entire value stream. That was a big eye opener for me.

Brion Hurley

I think that’s seems similar to when I do a lean class. It’s the system versus individual efficiency conversation and then standards and building off of standard for improvement. People like the 5S is a visual organization tool that they can adopt. It seems simple and engaging. To see tangible visual improvement to that process seems to lie. That nice.

Patrick Adams

Well, I started to think back to my time in the military. The more that I learned, the more that I look back. And I’m like, man, I’d love to go back knowing what I know now. There’s so much opportunity for improvement in the US government. But I also think about all the amazing things that were in place. They didn’t call it lean. They didn’t call it continuous improvement, but they had some really good things in place that really helped. Me understand and learn how to improve things and how to make things better no matter what it was. I think about one thing specifically. I go all the way back to boot camp. And I think about our M16A2 service rifles in boot camp. Every marine gets issued a rifle, and that rifle becomes like your life. You have to protect it. You have to take care of it. I remember the drill instructors driving this home. There’s a a rifleman’s creed we had to say repeatedly. Basically the importance of understanding. This rifle is so important to. And for good reason. In wartime, if you’re not taking care of your rifle, if it’s dirty, it could mean your life. It could mean someone else’s life. And so obviously, for good reason. Well, the drone structures did a really amazing job at first, setting the expectation of the importance of this, specifically around the cleanliness of a rifle.

Speaker

The.

Patrick Adams

Not just telling us. You gotta clean your rifle. But really, giving us clear expectations with very specific work instructions, the military has clear, detailed work instructions to establish a standard that everyone has to adhere to. Every part of that standard has a reason behind it, and the drill instructors would explain to us why you take it apart this way. Why do you have to clean every little intricate piece? Why is this? Important setting the expectation. Understanding the why behind it giving us a standard that we had to adhere to and then providing us the tools to be successful without the tools. You can tell me all day long that I need to do this, but if I don’t have the tools or doesn’t get done right, they gave us the tools, the. Work constructions and even the tools to clean the rifle were in the **** of the rifle and wrapped in a white towel that you lay out on the ground. It’s a shadow board. Of all of the pieces you’re taking apart with your rifle and you’re setting them in all these pieces on the shadow board, and then you clean your rifle and then you’re putting it back together. If you’re if you’re firing, pin is still sitting there on the on the shadow board, you forgot something, right? If you got everything gone, then you know you’re good. So I think about that every time I’m working on a car in my garage. I’m like, where did that bolt? I’m from. I don’t have a bolt left over. Right. They set the expectation.

Speaker

Yeah.

Patrick Adams

Like and then they enabled actions. They gave us time to clean our rifles. They didn’t just say, keep your rifles clean. No, they actually paused because this was such an important thing. We had to pause what we were doing, pause our training, take time to clean the rifles with the proper tools, with the proper standards, and then continue on. That’s another thing I’ve tried to incorporate. Not just telling people what they need to do and why, but also enabling it figuring out how do we enable this? Tell people, but then they’re working seven days a week overtime. How do we shut down the machine to clean it? We just can’t do that. We don’t have time. And then two weeks later the machine breaks down and now we’re down. For two weeks, enabling action right and then the last thing was sustaining the results, accountability and sustainment like having a real sustainment plan, continuous inspections and checking, inspect what you expect. So they would set us up, they would take the rifles apart, check everything, make sure that everything was clean, everything was there. And this reinforced the importance of the clean rifle. To this day I have some of my own personal weapons and keep them clean and know the importance and make sure that after I fire them that I’m cleaning them properly because I understand the importance.

Speaker

For that.

Brion Hurley

Let me pause for a moment to tell you about our sponsor. Creative safety supply is a great resource for free guides, infographics and continuous improvement tools. I recommend starting with their 5S guide. It includes breakdowns of the five pillars, ways to begin implementing 5S, and even organization tips and color charts from red tags to floor markings. It’s all there. Download it for free at creativesafetysupply.com slash 5S.

Patrick Adams

Let’s go back to my story. I was introduced to lean manufacturing. I was already in love with manufacturing and this escalated my interest in continuous improvement. I was fortunate enough to land at another company that had an amazing continuous improvement program. They had a VP of Lien that reported. Directly to the CEO, they had division, lean managers, group lean managers, plant lean managers and you think you might think that’s a little excessive. But the amazing thing is any direction was set at the top of the organization. We received the right information very quickly through our great communication channel in my plant. We had a site board you could figure out which value stream. Let’s just say there’s a quality problem. You could figure out where the quality problem was in which value stream you go to the value stream board. Look at all the departments or cells within the value stream. And see where the quality problem was happening. You could go. To the cell. And find a team improvement board where you would see why the problem was happening, how it was happening and then you would see their root cause analysis to see where they got to the root cause of it and then what they were actually doing to change that. So you could see the connection all the way through. I could do that in my plant. I could also go to a plant in Poland. Or Germany and do the exact same thing. The standards that were in place across the entire global organization. And the visual management cues made it possible. I didn’t have to know how to speak their language. I could see and walk the floor and do the exact same thing. It was amazing working for this company. I learned so much about what true continuous improvement culture looks like. I had a plant manager that I reported directly to. Spent time with me, walked the floor with me multiple times a day and coached me constantly. Everything that I was seeing and learning, he was driving at home, he was asking questions. He wasn’t telling me what to do, even though he knew he would ask me and he would pull it out of me and he would really help me to understand the why behind it. That was an experience that took me to. A whole another. Level definitely the best company I’ve ever worked for. Once I left that company. I didn’t realize how amazing we had it. I worked for another companies and even now I go into companies around the world and can’t believe how good we had it, how amazing that system was in this organization. I worked my way into a director level CI role at a couple companies and then my last corporate role. I was an internal consultant working as a salaried employee for this company, training, coaching, consulting, executive leaders within that company. Prior to that, I worked as a plant manager and a value stream manager. That that amazing continuous improvement culture company. So that was a great learning experience too. Then I was at this final company consulting coaching training on everything that I had learned from working at various companies, the military, everything over the years. It was. It’s funny because when I was at the company that had the true culture of continuous improvement, I remember them hiring consultants from the outside. And I remember thinking I could do that someday. I could see myself in that role. It wasn’t until I got into this last corporate role that I really was like, yeah, I can do this because I’m doing it internally for this company. About eight years ago, I stepped out of the corporate world and I started my own consulting practice, this one person trying to make it work. It was tough, a lot of ups and downs, some of you that are listening as independent consultants know what I’m talking about. A lot of busy time, just really difficult and it just kept grinding and I knew that the skill set that I had, the knowledge that I had could help many companies. So I kept pushing, jumping into companies, doing whatever I could to help. Eventually it paid off. Now we’re at a point where we. Have a a. A corporate office. We have employees, we we work with companies all over the world and all different industries. I love what I do. I love being able to go into a company. Help leaders identify the problems they’re having and provide solutions or help them to develop solutions that are solving those problems where they’re getting real, measurable results. It’s the best thing in the world. I couldn’t beat the. Job that I have.

Brion Hurley

It’s pretty awesome job. I wish someone had told me this was a. Real. Job. Sometimes you stumble into these things or get exposed to the right people to learn it, and it isn’t a incredible job. I tell people that all the time and you just go in and start helping people with their processes. You can walk. Away. But they’re there to coach and guide them and give them confidence that they can solve this and fix things.

Patrick Adams

Absolutely.

Brion Hurley

What was the? Training. How did you build that skill set up? Did you have to go through formal training or were you getting coached and mentored the whole time? Can you talk through that?

Patrick Adams

I’ll just call IT company continuous improvement because that’s what I call it in my book, the company that had the true culture of continuous improvement. I did have some formal training programs, which I did go through and was certified internally over the years and especially at that company, the coaching is what really made it happen. It was spending time with people who. Had tried things and failed. Who knew how to coach, knew how to ask questions, not just run around and be a problem solver, but be patient with me and allow me to make mistakes, try things and then ask me what did you learn? How did that go? Why did it not work? Well, can you try differently next time? That’s what we developed to me because that’s where the real learning was happening. I think about that now because I’m training for my private pilots license. I’m a lifetime learner, so I’m 46 years old and already thinking about what I’m going to learn next. The instructor that I was connected to was not a great coach. He was a great person, very personable. But he gave me a lot of the answers. He did a lot of things for me. In fact, he would take the yolk for me a lot. I just didn’t feel like I was learning. There wasn’t a good. System to what he was teaching me, and then I went to the instructor that I have now, who has a very structured curriculum that we follow. I know exactly what I can expect every time I go in for another lesson. We spend some time in the classroom, he said. He’s got a whiteboard. He’s got a little little baby airplane. He teaches me in the classroom. Then we go into the airplane and he’s like, hey, remember what we did on the board. Remember the airplane? Let’s do this and allows me to make mistakes to a point. There’s definitely been a few times that he’s had to take the yoke, understandably, keeping us safe. That’s another job for the coach. I remember when we were coming in for a landing. When you’re learning to fly, a go around is when you’re coming in. You don’t feel like you have a stable approach. If you don’t feel like it’s right, you go around. I didn’t feel like I had a stable approach.

Speaker

Did.

Patrick Adams

But. My instructor did feel like it was good enough and I was going to go around and he’s like, no, you’re not going around land it. I had to think quickly. About how to adjust myself to get to a stable point where I could land the plane safely. I probably learned more about landing a plane in that moment than in the 30-40 landings I had done prior. He took me out of my comfort zone and he caused me to really think about what I needed to do to stabilize the plane as quickly as I could given all the things that we had learned, he felt confident. Obviously, he kept us safe. I did land the plane safely. Coaching is key. Having a good coach? I can’t go learn how to golf. And practice the wrong way to swing every time and think I’m gonna get better. I gotta have somebody that’s correcting me. That’s asking me what I’m learning. That’s directing me on the right path so that I can improve what I’m doing and get better. And that’s really what made me a better professional myself.

Brion Hurley

That’s great. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people who take training, go through a course and even take an exam. They might have a certification or recognition of some sort, but they don’t have that hands on practice or experience, so they really struggle. They might know what should be done, but how to actually get a team to move in that direction or make those changes. It’s. A completely different skill set. So I think that hands on experience is really valuable.

Patrick Adams

It is, yeah. At Lean Solutions, we reluctantly added some e-learning classes to our training offerings. It’s not my favorite thing to offer. I love on site in person training, but we did offer some e-learning based on client requests. We will never allow anyone to take an e-learning course without. Backing it with live. Coaching. That’s the key. Anybody can hit the enter button and get through an e-learning. Course and pass. It, but do they really understand what they watched, what they read, what they saw? Maybe, maybe not. But with a coach asking you questions and having you apply the learnings in a real work area where you have all these distractions and things happening that are normal to. A work environment. That’s when you learn. That’s when you understand coming back to the coach and going. Yeah, we tried to do some 5S in our area, but then the customers calling for this and we had a bad part here and the supervisors screaming at me and how am I supposed to do this? Let’s talk through this because this is the reality of what it looks like in your work environment. How do you do this? How can we understand the expectations, enable the action and sustain the results? You’re able to talk through that with coaching. You watch a video. It maybe won’t. It’ll just fall on deaf ears.

Brion Hurley

Yeah. Hands on real life projects show that you understand this practice it. Try it out, see how it relates, and even just getting that reassurance from the coach. That’s OK, that’s normal. This is going to have. It’s not going to go smooth. You’re going to get pushed back. You’re going to get resistance. It’s going to fail. It’s OK that reassurance is really helpful for people going through it.

Patrick Adams

So.

Brion Hurley

Especially if you’re trying to roll out a new program, it’s easier to go with the current system that everyone else is doing, and that’s how a lot of these things don’t make it or really get any momentum.

Patrick Adams

Exactly.

<< Summit 2025 Video >>

Patrick Adams

Want to talk a little bit about Remembrance Ranch? Your podcast focuses on the good, and I think it’s important that all of us take time to reflect on the good things happening around us. Be grateful for the blessings we have and give back. That’s something I practice. It’s something my entire team. Practice. Is because it’s important that have the ability should be taking care of our community, taking care of the people around us. I talked about this extensively on an episode with the Gemba Academy, where I got into my background a little bit, spending ones interested to learn more about my home life. As a kid, we dove pretty deep into that with Ron and the Gemba Academy. Podcast.

Brion Hurley

I’ll link to it anyone wants to check that out, but yeah, I highly recommend that was an awesome episode.

Patrick Adams

I appreciate it. I’m an open book so I have nothing to hide, love to talk about all the great things that have happened and anything I can do to help others head down the same path. When I grew up, I had a pretty rough life. My parents were divorced at a young age, had a lot of negative stuff in my life. When I was younger, I ended up in runaway homes I was in. Rehab at a very young age, the Marine Corps was a big part of giving me the discipline, the certain values in in my life that I wasn’t given or didn’t learn as a child that had a big impact on. I mean, there was a time in my life where my wife and I were struggling. I had another military friend that brought me to church and introduced me to God. This was a huge pivot for me. I was just getting out of the military, and I remember thinking to myself and asking God, what do I do with my life? I felt like God spoke to me very clearly. And told me to start an organization giving back to kids that are growing up a lot. Like you grew up and I didn’t know what that meant, but I felt like I had. Had all these experiences mentors in my life when I was younger that I didn’t realize were positive until later on and all these things happened to me, even in the military, I just felt like if only other kids that had similar experiences to me could have some of those positive things in their life, the mentors. The outdoors, the survival skills that I learned in the military, it helped me become the person that I am. I took all of those things and sat behind my computer. A lot of that happened on 3rd shift when I was typing it up, I felt like. I was being led and I ended up with this business plan for this organization that became Remembrance Ranch. It took many years. That was back in 2005. It wasn’t until 2010 that we ran our first program. So five years of talking to people about this place that I felt God had led me to create. We had a founding. Board in in 2011, we ran our first programs with six boys. The rest is history. It’s started out as a, you know, a five day summer. Camp this year they ran six different summer camps. One was to Montana to a cattle ranch, pictured rocks in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Horsemanship camps. So lots of different summer camps. But the cool thing about Remembrance Ranch is it’s dedicated to help troubled teens. Have a transformation in their life at lean. Solutions were transforming organizations and leaders at Remembrance Ranch or transforming kids into successful adults to so that they can give back into their communities in a positive. Way it it starts with a summer camp where kids are introduced to the organization through their schools, and then there’s a whole year of in home case management where mentors going in the homes with the families and there’s mentors that are going in the schools and working with the teens and their schools on goal plans, helping them work through some of the struggles they’re having. I think one of the. A couple of cool things that I always see when the schools are inviting the case managers and the mentors into meetings with the parents. Because the kids request it, they have built up so much trust and the parents want us there too. It’s pretty cool to see that happen. We’re helping. To guide the school in creating a good goal plan for these teens that is going to help them be successful and graduate from high school and be a successful member of society. The other thing I think is really cool is now we’re starting to get teens that have gone all the way through the program. So when they start in the program they’re in. School and when they end in the program, they’re in high school. They graduate from high school, they’re in the program, sometimes for five or six years, coming back every summer for camps that build on each other and then mentorship. And the cool thing is these teens that have graduated are 18/19/20 years old. This year, I think we had, I think, 6 or 7 teens that are now full time staff. And so they’ve come through the program and now they’re out on the trail walking alongside these young kids that used to be them. They’re mentoring them, coaching them, transforming them and. It’s just an awesome thing to see. It’s an awesome. Thing to be part of.

Brion Hurley

Yeah, that sounds great. What better way to speak to someone than say I was just like you. I know what you’re going through. I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re feeling. And I was there. And look where I’m at. This is what it can look like. This is where you can end up without that vision. It’s really hard. And someone sets that in front of you and it opens your eyes.

Speaker

Hmm.

Brion Hurley

The potential and opportunity now I see this greater amount. It’s hard to find those kind of opportunities or see that. But once it’s there, it’s a huge boost to the confidence or the excitement around it.

Patrick Adams

Think about benchmarking tours where you go and see a company that has established a model, right? And that’s what these young kids have become a model person. They still struggle just like organizations do on their lead journey. We’ll never have perfection. We talk a lot about that with these kids. We want to know where we’re heading. We want to have that true north where we’re heading. You probably won’t ever. Get to perfection, but. What’s the next step? What’s the next thing you want to accomplish? You want to get into high school, you want to get your grade point average up. You want to play a sport, you want to graduate from high school. It’s all these target conditions that you’re working towards for them to be able to see the model and hear from the model and understand that it is possible. I think for me that was something when I was younger, it was hard for me to see what could be until I went into the Marine Corps. And for any of you that are Marines or know the Marine Corps, they impress perfection and everything that you do. I remember seeing these drill instructors at that time. I’m like, man, they’re so disciplined. Just watching them hearing. Them I remember thinking that’s what I want to be. That’s what I want to look like. That’s what I want to do. And I think it’s the same thing for these kids just knowing and being able to see that it’s possible. And then being given the tools to make it happen and being supported, enabling the action and then following through this is a year over year of us coming back and checking in with them. How’s it going? Ohh, you took a step back. That’s OK. What did you learn? What do we gotta do differently this time? It’s just a continuous refining process towards perfection. Whether it’s an organization or a person. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same principles that work to make things better, and that’s why we’re here.

Brion Hurley

I think if we’re not impacting people’s lives, then what are we doing? It should be helping make their work better, safer. Give people opportunities to make more money, do good things for the environment, help our communities get people out of trouble. All these things can be fixed with the same kind of approach. We just got to. Get everyone familiar with these methods and techniques that are coaching and reinforcing and helping people along that journey. So many opportunities to apply these concepts in everyday life. Pretty awesome.

Patrick Adams

So true.

Brion Hurley

I thought I saw some video you were sharing 5S organization or standard work maybe.

Patrick Adams

So my wife will tell you it gets overwhelming because for me, everything I do, I’m always thinking about continuous improvement for the staff at Remembrance Ranch, we lean Solutions, dedicate a ton of time to Remembrance Ranch and a lot of that is training and coaching the staff to understand lean principles and how they can help. I remember the program manager when he first hired on, we went through Greenbelt training, which for us it’s heavy, heavy, lean, not a lot of 6 Sigma, but a lot of continuous improvement. Remember, he chose the inventory, all of the backpacking gear, and he wanted to have it organized well and have a good system to know when he needed to reorder things. It’s amazing to see not only what he did. During his project, but how he’s used that as a springboard to pour those learnings into many other areas of the organization. I think the video you’re talking about was probably the trailer they use. They pull a trailer behind them on every backpack.

Speaker

So.

Patrick Adams

Trip when we would go out on a backpacking trip, we would stuff and full unload everything and go through everything. Try to get everybody everything they need, stuff everything back in there. Hey everybody, as some of you may know, I have the opportunity every year to volunteer with an organization that works with at risk teenagers from the West Michigan area. And this week we’re doing a backpacking trip with these teenagers and I got to just show you how we have this trailer set up. It’s. Pretty slick, so each one of these locations is for a tote and you can see the tote number. You can see the what actually goes in the tote and then when you look down here, I’ll just show you an example of one of these totes. So you can see you got a picture here, you got the actual. Example of what goes in there and then when these totes come off. You can see they have the tote number and even a picture of the tote right here. Visuals are pretty amazing. Even the way that they organize all of the work, everything gets taken out of the trailer. This trailer is completely flexible. They can pull everything out of here and put it outside and do their pack out, which is what they’re getting ready to do. And then. Get everything back inside in an organized fashion. Everyone knows exactly where. Go very little training. Very little time spent explaining things. It’s very simple, very easy, very visual and it helps these guys do the work that they need to do to serve the teams that they serve in a really, really big way. So pretty amazing. Remember, everybody keep it simple, keep it visual and continue to improve. When it would rain, it would just be a mess. Now they have this system of organizing everything in the trailer. They only have the things in there that they need when they do a trailer turn, meaning it’s time to. Either do a pack out to go out on the trail, or bring everything back. There’s a system they follow. Every tote has a picture of what goes in that tote. A picture of what goes in there, the amount that goes in there. The totes come off the wall easily. They all get set outside. There’s a whole system and everything gets put where it needs to go super fast. Everything is organized. And you look in there and you’re just like, I don’t even understand how we did that and how it all looks so organized when he gets back to the office, how the team is able to, then whether it’s cleaning everything or replacing the used items, there’s systems for everything. It’s so cool to watch them. And do this, and a nonprofit organization. They don’t have a lot of money. They don’t have a lot of time to waste. This helps them focus more on their mission of transforming the lives of these teenagers rather than taking time to to clean a trailer and spend time figuring out what’s what. They don’t have to worry about that anymore. They bring in a lot of temporary staff in the summer. They have tons of. Of follow-up events, activities happening throughout the year, they have all these different summer camps you would think with the small staff they have, it would be impossible to manage all of this and yet they do it so well. It used to be that stuff took away from their mission and now they have the funds they need to run the organization. They’re able to make such a bigger impact on the teens they’re working with. It’s just amazing and it’s cool to see too. I’m working with an organization in downtown Grand. Methods this year, through some strategic planning, it’s a nonprofit that works with immigrant women who have come into the country legally and now need help figuring it out. And so they provide training. They have this really cool area where they can come in and get help with resumes or anything they need. It’s cool. To see everything I learned, applying lean principles to remember. Branch, now applying to other organizations, helping them to make a bigger impact on whatever the mission is that they have. Again, it’s not about Tooting my horn, it’s just it’s really back to the principles and how amazing these principles can be in any organization. If you apply the principles correctly, you’re creating a culture of continuous improvement and not just masking things, not just throwing tape on the floor. But really, understanding the principles and applying them correctly, the impact that these principles can have on your organization are just priceless.

Brion Hurley

How do people learn about the ranch?

Patrick Adams

Remember, it’s ranch dot. Org is the website that you can check. About the organization there, they’re very active on Facebook when they run summer camps, they have scheduled Facebook lives, which are really cool. So parents can jump on and say hi to them and you can see them in action. So they’re really active on Facebook. But remember, trench.org would be the website to check out if you’re interested. It’s an amazing organization that stewards their funds. Well, and is making a huge impact on the lives of teens.

Brion Hurley

Yeah, it’s really cool, Patrick. What else you got going on? Big conference coming up.

Patrick Adams

Yeah. We have our Lean Solutions summit, our annual global summit coming up September 24th and 25th in the Motor City, Detroit, MI starting in Detroit and travel around the US to different locations to get a little closer to other people. The cool thing about the Conference Center in Detroit is it’s the Western Conference Center. It’s right in the Detroit International Airport. You get off your plane and walk into the Conference Center from the airport without having to grab an Uber or cab. Or similarly, you catch the last. You know, and you got to jump on that plane 30 minutes later. You’re literally just walking right out and jumping on the plane. So it’s a great location for those that are flying in from out of state. We would love to have you come join us. The lean competition is probably the highlight for me. I mean, great speakers, workshops this year. We also have the Michigan Lean Consortium. Running a mini competition with college students and that’s pretty cool. I think Ohio State. Michigan, the University of Michigan. They’re big rivals for football. Wait till you see the lean competition.

Speaker

It’s gonna be fun.

Patrick Adams

I would love to have anyone join us if it’s a money thing, give us a call. Some companies are holding on to their funds right now. If you want to come learn and see what continuous improvement really looks like, come join us at the summit. It’s a pretty amazing. Experience all around.

Brion Hurley

We’re big learn.

Patrick Adams

More you can go to leansolutionssummit.com to learn more about the. Summit. You can go to our website, find leansolutions.com and click on global summit. Either way, you’ll get there. You can Google Lean Solutions Summit jump on the website. Tons of information there. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to answer questions. e-mail office at find Lien Solutions if you have questions or want to connect.

Brion Hurley

Talk to us about your book. You touched on a fake lien and the real lien systems and culture.

Patrick Adams

I published a book a couple of years ago and it was. Based on two companies I worked for, I talked quite a bit about one of the companies, continuous improvement and the other company had what I call a continuous appearance culture. Everything was about appearance, we just need to look good when the leaders come out. That was a mindset embedded throughout the company. Maybe you resonate with that where you throw tape on the floor. And call yourselves lean. Where you have value stream maps on the wall and you say it’s lean. The company I worked for had very high turnover. Their KPI’s were in the dumps. People hated to work. There was a very toxic culture the other company and had an amazing culture. People loved working there and their metrics were great. When I wrote the book, avoiding the continuous appearance trap. I compared the two companies. I tried to figure out what questions anybody can ask to see if they’re living in a culture of continuous appearance. Or a culture of continuous improvement. Then what is the road map to work towards a company of continuous improvement? There’s no set road map. You’re not going to find. Follow these 10 steps. Follow these five steps. Every organization is different. Every team is different. Every culture is different. I pose questions because I want you to figure out. What are the right steps for your organization for your department and throughout the book? I think any reader can do that. So that’s the way I. Set it up.

Brion Hurley

Awesome.

Patrick Adams

And that’s available on Amazon. You can also get it on our website, find leansolutions.com.

Brion Hurley

And then people can connect with you through the website or through LinkedIn and I’ll link.

Patrick Adams

I’m very active on like, yeah, we talked a lot today, Brian. I take the questions and the opportunity to come on and talk with your listeners. I hope that whether someone’s working in an organization for profit or nonprofit or those hearing this.

Brion Hurley

Up all Yep. Appreciate your time.

Patrick Adams

You know that all of us can make a positive impact on our communities, no matter what you’re doing or where you’re at. We just have. To take small steps. And learn as we go. It’ll all work out. I appreciate it, Brion.

Brion Hurley

Thanks Patrick.

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