Our guest is Hugh Alley, an experienced lean practitioner and industrial engineer, who has experience with the Toyota Kata method of improvement. He has recently applied this approach to a nonprofit food bank in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada called Loaves and Fishes. This approach was based on the KataLab approach developed for the food bank Moisson Montréal by Jean-Marc Legentil, Marc-Olivier Legentil and Sylvain Landry.

He shares the following information during our interview:

* His background in Industrial Engineering and how he self-taught when he didn’t know how to solve a problem* The four steps of the Toyota Kata approach* Why it should be called Toyota Kata, not just Kata* How to rethink failure as an outcome that wasn’t expected* The confusion about Toyota Kata on how to identify the next experiment* The format for a 2-day KataLab implementation at a food bank:* Day 1 AM – Intro to Toyota Kata training (with puzzle exercise)* Day 1 PM – Discover current condition over a few rounds of exploration* Day 2 AM – 3 rounds of experiments to improve, run process for 30 mins, analyze and reflection time, then setup next experiment* Day 2 PM – Coaching Kata process learning and practice* How they were able to double the output of food produced at the food bank with half the people and half the space* How they were able to use KataLab to reduce lab waiting time by 50% in 13 weeks without spending money or adding people* The 5 core skills that every supervisor and frontline leader should have

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You can watch the full video of the interview here…

Links

* Email: [email protected]* LinkedIn Profile – Hugh Alley* Books Mentioned:* Hugh’s book, Becoming The Supervisor (Productivity Press, June 2020), a story focused on developing the core skills of front line leaders* 5 skills are Instruct, Improve, Set priorities, Foster performance, and Listen* Tiny Habits: https://amzn.to/3CDjxgU* Reinventing the Factory: Productivity Breakthroughs In Manufacturing Today: https://amzn.to/3pYgU5K* The Machine That Changed The World: https://amzn.to/3mCT25K* A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System by Shigeo Shingo: https://amzn.