Brazil

On the weekend his team (four of them) visited Ubatuba They had lunch right on the beach. I think he said they ate fried shrimp. ?

He ventured into this jungle...

He thought he was Tarzan.

He didn't have me holding him back from being adventurous...

Ryan spent 11 days in Brazil for work. His new position as part of the Lean Manufacturing Team involves some traveling. They are rounding all of the C&D facilities in the US and Abroad and providing a pretty intensive training. They then maintain contact and support with the facilities and continue to encourage growth and change in the area of lean manufacturing.

I am getting the question all the time, "What is Lean Manufacturing?" I don't think I'm explaining it well. So, I googled it. Here are the two definitions I came across that put it into more concise terms.

"Lean manufacturing or lean production, which is often known simply as "Lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Basically, lean is centered around creating more value with less work. Lean manufacturing is a generic process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) (hence the term Toyotism is also prevalent) and identified as "Lean" only in the 1990s.[1] [2]. It is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven wastes in order to improve overall customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved. The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker,[3] has focused attention on how it has achieved this." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

Here, let's try again...

"A business philosophy and/or strategy that focuses on eliminating waste, which includes all steps or processes that do not add value to the final product or service. It is usually employed along with the concept of kaizen, or continuous improvement." www.windowanddoor.com/article/resource/industry-glossary

So, that's what it is. Some of you may have connected with that but I'm sure you can all imagine that their training process is not without obstacles and a lot of people just plain don't get it (I can see why). But this is very valuable to the company and they are already seeing some success and potential for success.