Lean Six Sigma Academy

These 8 things could prove deadly to your lean and/or six sigma initiative.  How many do you recognize?

1. The number of people trained is a key performance metric. While this may be something worth tracking when first starting out on the continuous improvement journey, I’d say this metric is next to useless as a long-term performance measurement. You can train hundreds, even thousands, and bring zero value to the organization.
2. The number of people certified is a key performance metric. Similarly, if the number of belts or lean gurus certified is a key measure, I’d say you are in it for the wrong reason. Badges and certifications are nice, and rewarding, but handing out marble plaques and T-Shirts should not be the driving force of your efforts.
3. Tools are used for the sake of a checklist. This is a real problem in the six sigma world. In some cases, a magical checklist listing all the tools a green or black belt must use in order to certify exists. Often times this list forces the belt down a path they may not need to travel as far as what tools they use. If, for example, simple linear regression is not needed to solve a problem stop forcing the belt to use it.
4. You spend more time quantifying savings than working on the actual project. I’ve seen people complete a project in a month, yet they spend 2 months battling with their controller over how much the project saved. This is pure waste! Before you start the project make sure you and your controller are in agreement as to what the savings will be if the objective is met.
5. Boiling the ocean. Instead of attempting to improve the on time delivery across your entire plant with a single green belt project, why not focus in on one product variant after some Pareto analysis? You may actually succeed.
6. It’s a program and not a philosophy. Programs, by definition, end. Conversely, the ancient origin of the word philosophy (philosophía) means “love of knowledge” or “love of wisdom.” And true love, as the good book tells us, never ends. So, make sure your lean and/or six sigma activities are part of an overall business philosophy and not a flavor of the month program.
7. It’s all about their resume. If the sole reason an individual is interested in learning new lean and six sigma skills is to pad their resume you have a big issue. Do your best to understand an individual’s true motivation for wanting to learn new skills. This is a tricky one, since we want all employees to learn. If this problem is rampant there may be larger, more systemic organizational issues that need to be addressed.
8. You attempt to control gains. If I had invented the DMAIC roadmap I would have made one major change. I wouldn’t have called the last phase control. Instead, I would have called it continue! You see, I am of the opinion that no gain can be controlled long-term. You are either improving or digressing. So, stop trying to control things… instead never stop improving them!

Do you agree with this list? Can you think of anything I’ve missed?

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“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”
-Baltasar Gracian

Family Vacation

Over the Memorial Day weekend my family and I went on a much needed vacation. We normally go to Sea World each summer, but since my wife is almost 8 months pregnant driving in a mini-van for 4 hours didn’t sit well with her.

So, we decided to stay closer to home this year and check out the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, Texas.

We had an absolute blast. The water park is out of this world. There are plenty of things for kids to do and grown-ups need not fret – the Howlin’ Tornado water slide will take your breath away. Trust me on this.

During the weekend all of my kids, but especially my 3.5 year old daughter, taught me a valuable lesson.

Dynamite Comes in Small Packages

My youngest daughter (the picture is of her on the drive home) is small in stature. But what she lacks in size, she more than makes up for with courage. Allow me to explain.

At the water park there are some huge water slides. Some so big, grown-ups hesitate going down them. But not my little girl.

She set her eyes on one massive slide in particular and said, “Daddy, I want to go down that one.” I looked her in the eyes to see if she was serious. She was indeed.

So we grabbed a two person tube and started up the stairs. I kept checking with her as we walked up to make sure she was still good to go. She was.

A View from the Top

When we got to the top my heart was racing, partly from the number of steps we had to climb and partly because this bad boy is high – real high!

After a few more minutes it was our turn. First, I sat down and got situated. Then I sat her down in the front section of the tube so I could hold on to her. She is so little I had to cup my feet under her to keep her from falling through the opening!

After a small push from the life guard we were off!  I couldn’t see her face… but I could hear her laughing hysterically. In fact, she made similar sounds last summer when she learned to swim.

Be Not Afraid

Both of my girls (my oldest also faced down some fears of her own) taught me a very valuable lesson this weekend – be not afraid. 

You see, too often we grown-ups allow fears of failure to paralyze us. We tend to over-analyze solutions before implementing them to see if they will actually work. We also tend to listen to naysayers who spew things like, “That’ll never work. Don’t waste your time.”

So, just like it took my little girls lots of courage to fly down the water slides this weekend, it takes the same kind of courage for us big people to venture into unchartered waters, even though failure is a real possibility.

Sure it will be scary. And sure we may not have someone holding us up as we head down the “water slide” of life. But one thing is for certain… the same exhilarating feeling my girls felt for those 30 seconds is waiting on us. But we need to take that first step into the unknown.  Are you ready?

Let’s Hear From You

I’m always interested to hear from others as to the inspiration they’ve received from the little people in their life (children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, students, etc.). If you have a story to share, please do.

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A reader of the blog asked me the following question via email.  By the way, if you ever have a question please feel free to drop me a line.

I am a production engineer for 3 packaging lines and our overall indicator is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Our OEE is calculated using the maximum speed that the line will run for the particular product.

A welcome side effect of some recent machine upgrades is some of our products can now run faster, but due to planning rates (and people factors) this is not always required.

Would you advocate (or is it widespread) increasing line speed but not changing the specified speed to give an overall OEE boost?

Overview of Problem

I am assuming the line speed is being used in the “performance” piece of the OEE calculation. For example, at line speed “fast” we should be able to produce 100 widgets per day. Then, at the end of the day, we count up the widgets and see how many we have. If we have only produced 75 widgets our performance is 75%.

The problem with this, as the questioner alludes to, is that the demand for this particular product may not be 100 per day. It may, for example, only be 60 per day in which case they need stop the line after completing the 60th widget, lest they overproduce (the mother of all wastes).

Stopping at 60 is the right move but the team must now take a hit on their OEE metric since a “fast” line speed means they should be able to produce 100, not 60, in one day.

Recommendations

My suggestion to this individual, and anyone else battling this type of issue, is to remember that metrics like OEE (one of my favorites by the way) should be used to support the business – not drive the business.

Here are my specific recommendations.

1. Calculate takt time. Hypothetically speaking, if there are 8 working hours (28,800 seconds) in the day and we are asked to produce 60 widgets, our takt time is 480 seconds per piece (28,800/60).
2. Calculate the optimal crew size for the assembly line which is simply the sum of manual cycle time for one product divided by takt time. If, for example, the total manual cycle time for one widget is 16 minutes (960 seconds) our crew size is 2 people (960/480).
3. Balance the work so that each operator has no more than 480 seconds (takt time) of work to do at a particular process. This is where line speed enters the picture. The team will need to understand how fast the assembly line should run in order to accommodate this particular pace. A fixed position stop system, similar to the way Toyota operates, may be worth investigating.
4. Set up a hourly production board to track “plan to actual” allowing the team to determine if they are on track or need assistance as the day progresses (before it’s too late).

With all this said, the performance piece of OEE should be “judged” against what the team was supposed to produce on that particular day.

In other words, we set line speed to what we need it to be for that particular day. Some days we may run it faster and some days we may run it slower. In the end, it’s all about what our customer asks of us on that particular day.

Of course, this production team could also decide to study their demand and begin to smooth production using the lean concept of heijunka. This would allow them to stabilize the process and work more consistently day to day.

Would you approach it the same way? Do you have any other advice for this individual?

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As I mentioned towards the end of our most recent video the demonstration with the oranges, pebbles, sand, and water can be used to explain a far more important life lesson.

Before this, please allow me to thank you for your comments and emails regarding the video.  I read one email, from a gentleman based in the UK, to my “team” and boy were they inspired.  My oldest daughter asked me when we were shooting the next one!

Now then, let’s get to the alternative, and I dare say, far more important potential meaning of this demonstation.

The Bowl

The bowl is you. Like a bowl, you have a certain capacity.

The Oranges

The oranges represent the most important things in your life… such as your significant other, children, parents, siblings, air, food, water, etc. These oranges represent things that, if lost, would absolutely crush you.

The Pebbles

The pebbles represent important things in your life… such as your career, house, car, big screen TV, and your yearly family vacation to Malibu.

These are things we’d like to have but if we lost them, while less happy and maybe a little sad, we would still be able to cope.

The Sand

The sand represents everything else… the things we do that take us away from the most important and important things in our life. These may vary depending on your culture.  For me, watching TV is definitely sand in the bowl.

The Water

Finally, the water holds everything together.  My faith is my water. It holds everything together and fills in any gaps I have in my bowl (life).

The Moral of the Story

The moral of this story is to make sure to add your oranges to your bowl first while having something or someone in your life to hold it all together.

If you spend all your time and energy (a.k.a. priorities) filling your bowl with pebbles and sand there will be no room left for the oranges. And that, at least to me, would make for a sad life.

Video to Demonstrate

I first saw this particular demonstration done at a church function… here is a video (thanks for the link Lester) for your viewing enjoyment (they use big rocks and small rocks… oranges are more fun if you ask me).

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A few months ago, during the launch of the new and improved LSS Academy, we made our first free ebook available: The LSS Academy Guide to Lean Manufacturing. 

Honored and Humbled

I have been blown away by the number of kind emails I have received from all over the world. 

If you haven’t subscribed to the “LSS Academy Insider” and received your free copy of The LSS Academy Guide to Lean Manufacturing, no worries. 

All you have to do is visit the website (for those reading this via RSS) and subscribe to the our free LSS Academy Insider newsletter (see top left hand side of website). 

If you have any problems or questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Table of Contents

Here is sneak peak at the ebook table of contents.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: 5
ABOUT LSS ACADEMY: 7
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS LEAN MANUFACTURING?: 8
CHAPTER 2: FINANCE 101 BY TAIICHI: 10
CHAPTER 3: THE FORGOTTEN M’S: 12
CHAPTER 4: WAITING: 14
CHAPTER 5: NO STANDARDS, NO KAIZEN: 16
CHAPTER 6: STANDARD WORK: 18
CHAPTER 7: WHY FLOW COUNTER CLOCKWISE?: 21
CHAPTER 8: JIDOKA – THE FORGOTTEN PILLAR: 24
CHAPTER 9: HEIJUNKA IN THE FRONT OFFICE: 26
CHAPTER 10: WHY HEIJUNKA? – PART 1: 28
CHAPTER 11: WHY HEIJUNKA? – PART 2: 32
CHAPTER 12: SINGLE MINUTE EXCHANGE OF DIES (SMED): 35
CHAPTER 13: OEE – NOT JUST FOR TPM PROGRAMS!: 38
CHAPTER 14: VALUE STREAM MAPPING OVERVIEW: 40
CHAPTER 15: HOW TO CREATE A PQPR MATRIX: 42
CHAPTER 16: CURRENT STATE VALUE STREAM MAPPING: 45
CHAPTER 17: FUTURE STATE VALUE STREAM MAPPING: 54
CHAPTER 18: INTRODUCING THE KAIZEN NEWSPAPER: 61
CHAPTER 19: TWO TYPES OF KAIZEN: 64
CHAPTER 20: KAIZEN RULES: 1&2: 66
CHAPTER 21: KAIZEN RULES: 3&4: 67
CHAPTER 22: KAIZEN RULES: 5&6: 68
CHAPTER 23: KAIZEN RULES: 7&8: 70
CHAPTER 24: KAIZEN RULES: 9&10: 71
CHAPTER 25: REPENT, I MEAN HANSEI!: 72
CHAPTER 26: IS LAYING PEOPLE OFF REALLY ANTI-LEAN?: 74
CHAPTER 27: SHADOWS OR REALITY: 76
FINAL WORDS: 79
RECOMMENDED READING: 80
LSS ACADEMY SPONSORS: 81

LSS Academy Insider Benefits

In addition to the free ebook, there are some other benefits of being a LSS Academy Insider, including access to some LSS Academy Insider exclusive training videos I plan to launch in the future.  Best of all, it’s all 100% free.

Feedback Welcome

If you have already downloaded and read the ebook please feel free to leave a comment.  Of course you can continue to email me as well.  I love getting your emails.

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There are at least ten reasons one piece flow won’t work. But, I prefer to look at things positively. You know, the glass is half full. With this said, here are 10 benefits of implementing one piece flow.

Benefit 1: Improves safety. Research shows that overexertion is one of the main sources of injury in the workplace. When we transition to one piece flow we limit the need to lift heavy pallets and containers of material.

Also, one piece flow often reduces the number of forklifts moving about. Did you know there are around 90 deaths and 90,000 forklift related accidents each year in the USA alone?

Benefit 2: Builds in Quality. When we “make one, move one” defects are detected immediately (usually the next work station) forcing immediate corrective action.

In contrast, when batches of material are produced piles of scrap may result when a defect is detected downstream. Why?  The entire batch may have the same defect.

During my time with Motorola I vividly remember the day when hundreds of cell phones were scrapped. Since the circuit boards were produced in batches (very typical in the surface mount technology world I might add) they were not tested until the end of the assembly line.

Eventually, once they were tested, we learned a wrong component had been placed on each and every board. Only one component… no problem right? Just re-work them.  Wrong. That one tiny component (.04 ” x .02″ in size) was placed on each circuit board around 50 times. Ouch.

Benefit 3: Improves Flexibility. One piece flow is faster than batch and queue. This speediness factor allows us to wait longer to schedule the order (and still deliver on time).

Subsequently, we are better able to respond to last minutes changes from the customer.  And everyone knows, no matter what industry you work in, customers love to change their mind.

Benefit 4: Improves scalability. With one piece flow, equipment can be designed smaller and at lower cost since the need to produce huge batches of material at breakneck speed is no longer required. 

Benefit 5: Reduces inventory. With one piece flow, work in process (WIP) is reduced in dramatic fashion. This frees us cash as we don’t have to move, store, and manage piles of inventory.  And make no mistake, if you are in a for profit business, cash is king.

Benefit 6: Improves productivity. Many of the wastes so inherent with batch and queue production (e.g. motion, transportation, waiting) are greatly reduced with one piece flow. As a result, productivity increases. 

Don’t believe me?  Try one piece flow and compare your units produced (and sold of course) per employee before and after implementing one piece flow. 

Benefit 7: Simplifies material replenishment. One piece flow paced at takt time allows for material delivery to be done by timed milk runs or set quantity deliveries. This predictability makes the water spider’s job far easier to perform.

Benefit 8: Frees up floor space. As already discussed, one piece flow reduces the amount of WIP stored on the floor.

Additionally, in order for one piece flow to function, work stations must be connected and not isolated on their own island.

All this frees up valuable floor space which allows the company to grow their business without additional brick and mortar.

Benefit 9: Makes kaizen take root. One piece flow is hard since the buffers and buffers of inventory are gone. We cannot hide behind them anymore. Further, quality must constantly improve, machine reliability must increase, changeovers must be shortened, etc. In short, kaizen must take root.

Benefit 10: Improves morale. Employees want to do good work. They want to see progress. They want be involved. Implementing one piece flow brings all these things, and more, together.

And when this metanoia occurs, the organization is transformed into a fun and dynamic workplace where innovation and problem solving rule the day.

Can you think of other benefits of one piece flow I may have missed?  If so, please let us know by leaving a comment below.

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It’s safe to say the kinds words, comments, and emails for my one piece flow video have far exceeded my expectations. 

While most of the comments and feedback have been extremely positive there have been a few skeptics in the crowd.  For the record, I love skeptics!  Why?  They push me to be better and to think.  And thinking is good. 

Well, as of this evening, my new friend Eric H., of the GrimReader blog, has laid down a mind blowingly excellent analysis of my every move in the video.  Eric, as they say, has some serious eagle eyes!

Hi Ron;

Seems there are skeptics about. So I, hard-headed person that I am, watched the entire video again with a spreadsheet (similar data posted to my better half’s website).

How do we account for the ~60 second difference in the two processes? (Which I contend is the wrong comparison, more below).

Average time to fold:
Batch: 9 s
Lean: 8 s

Average time to stuff:
Batch: 4 s
Lean: 3 s

Average time to seal:
Batch: 2 s
Lean: 1 s

Average time to stuff:
Batch: 1 s
Lean: 1 s

So, over 10 repetitions, the lean method got a total of 10+10+10=30 seconds of advantage from the shorter time to fold, stuff, and seal.

Could the shorter fold time be due to thinner paper used the second time? Or to the fact that you seem to get better as you go (you start with times of 9-10 s, but end with times of 7-8 s). The shorter stuff and seal times, though, are due to the fact that you are already holding the item from the previous step. You gain 1 second each time from not having to find and pick it up. That’s part of the point, so I contend that it’s unfair to count those against you as if they were a parlor trick of some sort.

Still need to account for 30 seconds, though.

You lose between 2 and 5 seconds every time you move the pile around between steps. Also, you have to manage the pile several times during a task, something you don’t have to do nearly as much with OPF. This also has a factory corollary: storing, moving, retrieving, and looking for WIP.

But those are the wrong numbers to compare. The real advantage, though, is the fact that you are knocking out a complete product roughly every 15 seconds with OPF. Every 15 seconds, the lean manufacturer fills another order. Every 15 seconds, he has the opportunity to inspect WIP and final product for defects.

Heck, let’s even spot the batch production method the 3 second difference (most of which is legitimate gain) so that they both average 18 seconds. The lean producer would be still be fulfilling another order every 18 seconds. The Batch producer doesn’t get any orders filled until 3:47. What if they were hours rather than seconds? With 40 hours in a week, that means that the lean producer is shipping twice a week while the batcher is shipping every 6 weeks. Do you like the idea of cash flowing in twice a week, or every 6 weeks?

For the sake of the skeptics, next time you do something like this, make sure you do the lean method first so that your task times improve more for the batch method. Heck, handicap yourself for the lean method; use one hand and your teeth or something. 18 seconds beats 3:47 like a rented mule.

Update: The Fashion-Incubator blog readers have also chimed in with some passionate feedback.  Check it out.

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First of all, Happy Easter!  My family and I were in Oklahoma the last few days.  As is very typical with me during road trips, I began to think about this blog.  I am not sure if this is entirely healthy (me always thinking about this blog) but I guess that’s a story for another day.

Ahhh, Quiet Time

In any event, this quiet time (yes, the kids were sleeping) allowed me to reminisce on what we have discussed over the past year or so on the blog. 

I quickly came to the realization that I have written quite a few “series” related to various lean and six sigma topics.  So, to save you the time of digging through the archives I thought I would share a few of these with you this evening.

Let’s start with six sigma related series tonight… and then later this week we will dive into lean.  So you guessed it, this will be a 2 part series where we talk about series.  Cool, eh?

Descriptive Statistics

In August of last year I wrote a series on descriptive statistics.  Don’t lie… makes you want to yawn, right?  Thanks to all the crappy stats professors out there this topic definitely has a bad reputation. 

Well, with this known, I attempted to gain it some much needed street cred back.  In part 1 we started off talking about the 3 measures of central tendency.  Then, in part 2 we got all crazy and dove into the 3 measures of dispersion. 

 Control Charts

If you think of yourself as a “lean guy” or “lean gal” you may wonder what benefit (if any) this six sigma stuff can be to you. 

Well, while control charts are not a six sigma only tool… they are heavily stressed during a six sigma practitioners development.  With this said, if you are into lean and not using control charts you are missing out on one very powerful tool. 

In part 1 of this series, we started slowly as we discussed the history of control charts.  Then, in part 2 we talked about the controls charts used with attribute data – namely the p, c, and u charts.  Finally, in part 3 we learned about my personal favorite, the Individual and Moving Range control chart.

Fun with Confidence Intervals

When people mention the words confidence intervals I cannot lie…  I get excited.  But, alas, I realize I am a little weird.  So in order to make this topic a bit more digestable for normal people… I wrote a 2 part series. 

In part 1 we dipped our foot in the water and explained the difference between population and sample statistics.  Then, in part 2 we got into things far more deeply. 

Simple Linear Regression

One of the first series I attempted focused in on the very popular topic of regression.  This is another topic those mean college profs did their best to make us hate.  Well… hate no more friends. 

In part 1, of this 3 part series we learned about some of the basics of regression.  Then, in part 2 we talked about two very cool concepts – R Sq (adj) and P values.  Finally, in part 3 we talked about residuals and the ultra important differences between correlation, causation, and extrapolation.  If you click on only only one link in this article.. click this last one.

Hangin’ with Taguchi

While not a traditional series, the articles I wrote on Taguchi methods have been quite popular as determined by their number of page views.  So I thought I would conclude with these.

My first Taguchi related article touched on the famous Taguchi Loss Function (in addition to why so many folks seem to hate Mr. Taguchi’s guts).  Next, we discussed one of my favorite process capability measures, the Taguchi Index – Cpm.  Finally, I later shared some insight into my favorite design of experiment – the Taguchi L18 DOE.

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Next up we I will share some of the lean related series from the past year.  But the links above should keep you plenty busy until then.

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My friend, and fellow blogger, Mark Graban of the Lean Blog is asking us to help a child in need.  Specifically, he has a launched a virtual toy drive for children staying in a hospital.

I don’t ask much of my blog readers — but if you’re looking for an opportunity to make a donation, please consider your local children’s hospital. You can either buy new DVD’s or new toys of all sorts. Different hospitals list their own policies on new versus used and the types of items they recommend donating (for example, stuffed toys are often not preferred because of cleanliness issues).

We spend a lot of time talking about respecting people in the lean world.  This is a perfect opportunity to practice what we preach. 

Here is a link to the full article where Mark shares some ideas for how you can help.  Please consider doing so. 

The final exam for those of us on the Japanese Kaikaku Experience was like none other I have ever taken.

We were buried in 122 degree Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) sand and asked to recite the 10 kaizen commandments wearing nothing but our cotton Yukatas.

OK, it wasn’t really an exam and we didn’t have to recite anything. This activity was more for us to reflect, relax, and mentally prepare to get back to business in our home countries.

We were actually at a sand bath hall called “SARAKU.” In the Kagoshima dialect (where we were) SA means sand and RAKU signifies happiness and relaxation.

This sand bath is the only natural sand bath in the world. The sand is infused with hot spring water that comes naturally from the beach. And let me just say this… it is hot, really hot… but oh so very relaxing.

When you are laying there under the sand your fingers actually start to pulse. It was actually very nice. I stayed under for around 15 minutes which is longer than my wimp tour guide Brad who only stayed under for like 14 minutes! And to think I had such high hopes for him.

Review and Reflection

Our last day was spent reflecting and discussing what we saw and experienced this week. We visited 5 plants in total and saw everything from a Toyota Highlander being assembled to toilet seats being produced at a company called TOTO. I will write more about TOTO in the coming days.

With so much to take in it will take me weeks, maybe longer, for it to all sink in. But for now, I’d like to share some immediate take-aways from the week that was.

Toyota is amazing

Without a doubt, seeing Toyota in action was the highlight of the week.

While the other 4 plants we visited were excellent, Toyota stole the show for me. 

I briefly wrote about our visit there in this article… but it doesn’t come close to doing justice to what we saw. 

It starts with 5S

If there was one consistent theme in all 5 plants it was their superb level of 5S.

One plant we visited actually made their own castings followed by heavy machining – yet the place was as clean, if not cleaner, than any plant I have ever been in (including Motorola and Nokia plants all over the world).

The picture is of one person’s stand up only desk. How does your desk compare?

Energy efficient

The Japanese are very energy conscious. For example, if the line operators go on break the factory lights are immediately turned off in that work area. In many places, including hotels, motion sensors turn lights on and off.

Additionally, each plant we visited used highly efficient light bulbs.

Finally, one plant actually powered their plant by solar panels. On the day we were visiting their solar panels were providing 125% of their power needs. The excess 25% was being sold to their neighbors at a discounted rate.

Employee involvement

Several of the plants we visited were passionate about their employees making improvements.

One plant actually allowed the various cell areas to decide what metrics they tracked. The only things they had to track were whether or not they were making money and quality performance.

Visual management

If there is one word to describe how each of these plants handled visual management it would be simplicity.

At Toyota, for example, a simple electronic production board displayed 4 numbers. The first was the daily production goal. The second was how many cars they should have produced thus far. The third was how many they actually produced. The fourth was the ratio of actual to plan in a percentage. Simple, but very effective.

By the way, their goal was 97% effectiveness – not 100%. I will write on their rationale for this in the near future.

It’s about Flow

In addition to 5S, the level of flow exhibited in each plant was out of this world. Not every plant used kanban, but they all ensured things flowed in near perfect fashion.

And, not to worry, the plants that didn’t use kanban in the traditional sense definitely had their production signaling process mastered.

NGK, for example, didn’t use kanban yet they had approximately one days’ supply of inventory in their plant. How do you like them apples?

We can do this

The last thing I came away with was although Toyota seems to be in another universe… there was nothing I saw at the other plants that we cannot do in the west.  And to be honest, there is nothing Toyota is doing we can’t do either.

It won’t happen tomorrow or be easy. But we can do it. I can’t wait to get back home to get cracking.  America, here I come… and look out as I am highly motivated!

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