Our guest today is Curt Burnett. Curt most recently served for 3 years as the Technology Innovation Director for the Quad-Cities Manufacturing Innovation Hub.

Prior to this role, Curt had 37 years with the John Deere & Co. in Advanced Manufacturing and Operations Leadership.

Quad-Cities Manufacturing Innovation Hub was established as a network of resources focused on building the Quad-Cities' capacity and its reputation as a leader in manufacturing.

In this episode, we're going to talk about five books that have helped me shape my thinking and really prepare me for a future in leadership.

As manufacturers, we're living in a world that the military has labeled a V.U.C.A. world, which stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. As a new business leader, we’re faced with many new challenges.

The world is changing and we need to continually learn new skills to successfully create our future. How fast we and our organization can learn may determine whether we can remain relevant and competitive.

Just executing what we know how to do today will not be sufficient to create our success tomorrow.

As you think back, the skills and technologies present today did not exist when we were engaged in our formal educational years.

In this episode, we'll look at a framework to develop your front line to fearlessly execute the day-to-day operations. This will free you up to put more time and attention in growing the organization.

A lot of change that's going to be needed will be from you, the leader. This can be scary, but I assure you that when you change or look to grow, you’ll in turn affect your most important asset — your employees.

This episode is about how to improve your processes, and it's the operations you're actually looking at today. We'll be reviewing the seven wastes in manufacturing that were developed in the Toyota production system.

These are the things that as you look at them can help you eliminate frustrations you experience in the work, and just as importantly, it helps your employees to have a better workflow and less frustration in their work.

In the book, Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork and Start the Work That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier talks about the good, great and bad work we do and why.

Today, I talk about how you can begin incorporating great work into your daily schedule so you can skyrocket your factory to success.

Welcome to Leading the Factory Forward Podcast!

Our goal with this podcast is to help you deliver great products, earn a great living and learn how to make yourself and your organization even better.

If you’re a successful manufacturing leader and preparing to reinvent themselves and their factory for the future.

We know life is busy and that time is limited when it comes to exploring all the possible things that you might do to improve.

I’m your host, Lynn Friesth and I’m here to help.