The capability to change is a scarce resource – rarer than gold. We all fight it. Books have been written on the subject. Consultants have made careers on “Re-engineering”, “TQM”, “Lean Manufacturing” – I know a little about the latter… This list is long. Yet, giant consultancy, McKinsey, has found in studies that a majority of companies achieve less than 5% change in “Re-engineering efforts”.
We will touch on some lean management tools and theories like the change equation: C x V x N x S > R change (Tom Peters) that attempt to quantify or standardize change. However, this will largely be a qualitative story on change having made nearly every mistake imaginable. What has worked as a distressed company turn around - fix it guy and what has not. So, quit trying to change - improve your wife (or husband as it may be), we can barely change ourselves. It starts with us.
Bios:
Joe McNamara is the President-Owner of Ttarp Company since 2013. Ttarp Co. designs and manufactures automated machinery for the foam converting industry. A distressed company at the time of acquisition, Ttarp has grown 350%+ in revenues and skilled employees since. Prior to Ttarp Co., Joe was VP of Global Operations of ITT Control Technologies based in Valencia, CA. Prior to being VP of Ops., Joe was GM of ITT Heat Transfer (now Xylem) in Cheektowaga, NY. He led the introduction of lean six sigma into the $400M, ITT Fluid Handling Division as Six Sigma Champion with 12 six sigma BB’s in the U.S. and Canada. Outside of work, Joe and wife, Karen, are active in their St Mary’s Parish of Swormsville. Ironman Triathalons and Ultra-marathons have been replaced with grade school, assistant basketball coaching, skiing, and playing catch with his good student and capable 11 year old twins.
Joe is an ITT certified lean manufacturing master and six sigma champion. He received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from University of Notre Dame and an M.S. from the University of Pittsburgh. Joe is a licensed P.E. and co-author with close friend, Charlie Protzman, of “One-Piece Flow vs. Batching – A Guide to understanding how continuous flow maximizes productivity and customer value”.
Charlie is an internationally renowned TQM / TPS/ Lean author, speaker, trainer and implementer of BASICS Lean® and Agile (flexible and iterative approaches) improvements. Charlie has published 20 books to date with more in the works and received two Shingo Prizes. Charlie spent over 13 years with AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) and has been implementing TQM/TPS/Lean principles and thinking since 1985. He was the first Lean Master and a Strategic Operations Manager for Honeywell and received several special recognition and cost reduction awards. Charlie was an external consultant for the Maryland World Class Consortia and a contributor to the resulting World Class Guidelines. He has been a keynote speaker at the MWCC in 2020 and at the Chinese Industrial Engineering Institute in 2014 and in December 2018 for Benchmark Lean and Agile DevOps conference in 2019, 2023 and 2024.
Charlie started Business Improvement Group (BIG) in 1997 and has spent the last 28 years implementing successful lean product, and transactional implementations and World Class Kaizen events across the U.S., Europe and Asia in all types of industries. He has taught his trademarked and copyrighted BASICS Lean® approach to students from all over the World.
Charlie is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Charles W. Protzman, Sr. who, as part of the CCS, under the direction of MacArthur, in 1948 surveyed over 70 Japanese companies and in 1949, taught CEO's of over 50 prominent Japanese telecommunications companies an eight-week course in American Management Techniques and then recommended Deming’s visit in 1950.
Charlie has a BA and MBA from Loyola University in Maryland
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