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 If you enjoy this podcast, please follow us on your favorite podcast app. Any ratings you could give us, or shares across social media would be greatly appreciated! 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.