KC OPS

Thank you to Schier for hosting KC OPS this month! The discussion this time focused on developing leaders within your organization. Key takeaways included the importance of seeking individuals who are humble and self-motivated for potential leadership roles, and communicating effectively what leadership opportunities exist and specifically how the development process will work. During development, regular feedback and constructive criticism was highlighted as critical. Also explored was the role of failure in leadership development. It was emphasized that setbacks can be attributed to both individual missteps and systemic flaws, both offering valuable opportunities for growth and improvement. Overall, really good stuff!

This month's KC OPS meeting featured a fantastic discussion about applying lean principles on the production floor. Thank you Etched | The Nameplate Company for hosting and Justin Shuster for sharing insights from their lean journey, which led to an informative conversation. A great example of building and sustaining a continuous improvement culture with ideas and projects coming from all levels of the company. Really impressive!

This month's KC OPS meeting focused on effective delegation and holding team members accountable. Benefits discussed included increased employee engagement, building trust, and creating space for innovation. Key points were understanding team strengths, providing resources and authority, accepting potential mistakes as part of the process and celebrating successes. Regular check-ins, feedback, and being clear on the positive and negative consequences of success or failure from the outset were emphasized. Thanks to Structura, Inc for hosting and the fantastic shop tour!

Sometimes things go wrong. It's true! Utilizing non-conformance reports is a great way to report, investigate, and address discrepancies between the actual condition of a product and defined quality standards. Great KC OPS meeting focusing on this important topic. Exceptional presentations from Zahner and Schier Products set the stage for a highly productive group discussion. The meeting highlighted systems to track and trend data accurately, working closely with vendor partners on quality control, and fostering a culture where the team feels safe to report issues promptly and accurately. Thank you, Zahner, for hosting – it was a fantastic meeting!

What a great KC OPS meeting today! Started the morning with a presentation introducing?how TrippNT’s Lean journey has transformed their company. They invited us to participate in their morning company meeting and led an informative shop tour. One of my favorite parts of the morning meeting was the video shorts celebrating big results made with little changes. Afterwards we had a great round table discussion around building a continuous improvement culture. Really interesting to see different types of companies, some product focused and some project focused, sharing best practices and discussing culture challenges and wins. Not surprising that starting small and focusing on it being ok to make mistakes came up several times as being foundational to success. Thank you TrippNT for hosting KC OPS!

Production Planning and Production Scheduling. Production Managers from different companies and different industries sharing the systems they use to forecast production resources at the higher level and to organize production activities on a day to day basis. Software solutions, spreadsheets, dry erase boards, best practices and continuous improvement all were in the discussion. Really insightful and with some great takeaways. Thank you Fabricor Inc for hosting! We appreciate the hospitality and the tour!

Awesome KC OPS meeting and tour at TVH Parts Co. this month! The topic of discussion was cross-training, specifically the cultural aspects of employee buy-in and what long term success looks like.?Really strong points around creating transparency, investing in team members and celebrating milestones publicly. Thank you TVH for hosting!

Thank you Hufft for hosting KC OPS this week! Great shop tour and really good round table discussion around quality control. Prototyping, using Checklists and Quality at the Source all came up in the conversation as well as how to maintain a culture focused on quality. Building trust and encouraging a safe environment to report on and discuss quality are critical. Good stuff!

Those dang bottlenecks! Interesting conversation between production managers from different industries talking about real examples identifying bottlenecks, causes, solutions and the outcomes of those solutions. Really good stuff. Joe Dehart gave a great production tour of Katalyst as well!

Thank you Zahner for hosting KC OPS! Very informative tour focused on managing production in a custom projects environment. Fantastic meeting and great weather as well!