About The Founder

Throwing It Over The Wall...
Running Around And Catching It!

• Setting Up Manufacturing
• Working With Suppliers on Quality, Cost, Delivery Standards
• Successful Transition to Production Product

Cost Reduction - The Purchasing Method

• Reduce costs on switch machine
  • Material Changes
  • Supplier Changes
  • Lot Size Changes

Real Training & Experience Begins

• Reducing costs the correct way...eliminating waste!
• Learning & Applying Continuous Improvement Methodologies
  • Lean (Principles, Kaizen, JIT, TPS, SMED)
  • Others - Theory of Constraints, Agile, TQM

Learning and applying the basics to a single-product line.

Reduce DPMO on Product

• Dramatically reduced defects 

Fixing What I Just Implemented...

• After learning about process, we re-aligned the entire department to integrate flow & pull.

Successful Transformation #1

• Plant Consolidation - Combining 290K of total space into 90K!
• Major Throughput Improvements
• Major Productivity & Cost Savings

My First Consulting Gig

• Very High-Tech Experience
  • Major Quality, Delivery and cost improvements to the delivery mechanism for DNA sequencing!

Time For Digital Servicing Experience

• Applying Lean Principles & Concepts in the Global Banking Arena!
• Part of a Larger Six Sigma Integration, but my expertise was more Lean than Six Sigma
• Started in Credit Card Servicing
• Very successful transition to service, especially compared to peers from manufacturing environments.

Standards Are The Gateway To Improvement

• Standardizing The Call
• Creating A Measurement System and management system to measure quality and delivery
• Re-aligned coaching routines and habits 
• Weekly Quality "Gage Sessions" for associates, managers and QC to align the coaching quality.

Multiple Sales & Service Models Implemented

• Consolidated servicing for both clients and client managers across the United States for "valuable" customer segments
  • Premier & Private Banking (Personal)
  • Small Business, Business Banking & Commercial (Business)
• Grew from call centers to fully integrated contact centers servicing all the channels.

Re-aligning the Improvement Systems

• Developing correct metrics that measure both process and people accurately
• Modified the management routines to focus on quality and delivery improvements separately, together!
• Instituted a coaching program to train the manager's and associates

Real-Time Control Gen 1

• What Is Everyone Doing Right Now?
• What Should They Be Doing?
• How Do We Tell Them?
• It was obvious to me...
• Business Audibles & Real-Time Control Is Born
  • The Only way to answer the questions above!
  • Not everyone was ready for this, but our business did!

Integrate With Middle Offices

• Now that we can move people around easily with our real-time communication system...
• It was time to integrate with our Middle Offices, allowing us to pull capacity to/from our entire team.
• Now we are utilizing resources more effectively...It's time for our final transformation, the entire business.

Business Transformation #2

For our final implementation of all the pieces we have been working on to build an entire business correctly, it was time to wrap-it up into an official transformation, where day 1 everything is different.

• Major System Planning & Integrations
• Scorecard Changes
• Communications

When all was said and done, we were saving over $1M/mo and ahead of budget 6 months early.  This afforded us the time and money to invest in continuing what we started.  

Lastly, and not to brag, our LOB ended up with 100% associate Satisfaction with their job...in a contact center! 

That is what this is all about and what I always try to replicate when I have the control! 

Charged With 2 Questions...

1. Why Aren't The Sellers Selling
2. Why Are We Spending >$500M on Account Maintenance?

With no measurement system, they were filling out a "ticky" sheet regarding their servicing - everyone had their own way of capturing this.

• Engaged the System Architecture team to develop a measurement system based on the screens the 
• Now they can finally know what people are actually doing in the banking center! 😉

Untangling A Mess...Working With Mortgage After The Banking Crisis

• Major measurement system issues between associates, manager's, QC & QA throughout the application and entire underwriting process.
• Initial Gage R&R got 0%
• Created a Mortgage Risk Template/Heat Map with Senior Risk Professionals, to visually identify risky areas of a loan, ensuring proper attention is paid.
• Dramatic Improvements in consistency across all the pilot teams.
• Final Implementation delayed 
• Problems are Stirring
  • Major Frustration working in a dysfunctional group without any real authority, just influence and I was just getting fed up and needed a change.

When you know what needs to be done and people aren't willing to do it...it's time to move on.  Plus, I've learned everything I need to about banking.

Out On My Own...Kinda

• Many people in my network
• Current gig waiting for me already.
• Easy decision to make!
• Formed in Wyoming...
  • Why? Because I really didn't know any better and got bad advice

Corporate Contract "Gigs"

• Banking Risk Assessments (Union Bank)
• Six Sigma Program Development (Cisco)

Ugh...Contract work is definitely lucrative, but not satisfying!

Wow...Not much different from the "small businesses" at the chamber!

• Holding Company Mentoring on Business and Processing Methodologies (Evolution Business Group)
• Marketing Technology Startup to Pre-Investment Stage (SelfieCam, HaloCam, iBlossom, Stori Inc. - lots of pivots)
• Strategically guiding the overall process development as they grow
• Implemented multiple CRM platforms

Small Businesses Are Really Small...You Better Be Flexible When It Comes To "Payment"

• Most only need some marketing help
• All need process discipline
• Most have no money, so we worked things out for trades!
• Chamber of Commerce Marketing Committee

Great experience seeing how the cities and chamber's of commerce balance their attention on the corporations and the small businesses.

HOWEVER, they really don't have the same interests!

Division Transformation

• Global food and fragrance company looking to implement a Lean/Six Sigma program- with an emphasis on Lean. 
• Major opportunities and problems identified post assessment, which caused major re-alignment.
  • They were basing data on bad measuring systems and no process or operating standards, which gave them incorrect "signals"
• Implemented basic standards, measurement system and basic visual controls (IDEX)
• Re-prioritized projects and re-started, going the right direction.
  • We lost about a month, but it could have been way worse!
• Contract expired before full implementation
  • This could have been ugly if I didn't get the direction changed immediately!

Lessons Learned...Never again will I do work that I didn't personally assess first!

It Is Now Time...Time To Get Serious!

• Time to formalize my own improvement programs from everything I've learned
• Time to focus on the clients I wanted to work with
• Time to work with clients that aren't afraid to be judged!

Lastly, time to move my business officially to California and quit playing around with taxes!