Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true Lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. Hello everyone. Our guest today is Dirk Fischer. Dirk is an automotive General Manager lean operations engineering supply chain and Quality Manager expert. With more than 25 years of experience. Dirk has also worked with multiple underperforming plants and helped guide them through turnaround activities. Welcome to the show dirt

Dirk Fischer  

I am very happy to be here and having this podcast together with you.

Patrick Adams   

Absolutely. Obviously, our listeners today can’t see the two of us. But if they were to go check us out on LinkedIn or or could see us right now. We’re almost twins here, the two of us are wearing glasses. And we both have made the decision to shave our heads. And we were just talking before we hit the record. This is part of our Lean initiative for our personal lives, right. Yeah, that’s true. Not having to take the time to comb our hair causes us to be more productive than our in our work lives. We’re removing that waist, although I didn’t I didn’t make the decision myself there. It was made for me. I don’t know about you.

Dirk Fischer  

Yeah, I’m not sure whether I would have taken the decision. But it just happened. You know?

Patrick Adams   

That’s right there. Where in the world are you calling in from I just based on your accent? And obviously I know your background, but our listeners do not. Can you tell us where you are in the world?

Dirk Fischer  

Yeah, I’m actually in Germany, in the southern part of it. Some of the listeners may know, Munich and Stuttgart, two of the bigger cities in Germany, Munich is I think well known for the Oktoberfest. So many Americans know Munich. So I’m somewhere in the middle between Munich and Stuttgart.

Patrick Adams  

Very nice. Okay. And, you know, I mentioned a little bit in your background about some of the work that you’ve done. But can you tell us just a little bit about your company J. Gao experts, you know, what you do and what you’re known for in the global aspects?

Dirk Fischer  

Yep. Yeah, very, I like to do that. Yeah. J No experts is basically the name coming from four words, which is global automotive operations experts. And that says a little bit about it. So we are positioned globally. So our network globally we are focusing on automotive mainly to one automotive so we are not having usually we’re not having car makers as customers. Usually it’s more likely to be once the big two ones. And we are focusing on operations and supply chain topics mainly, also, sometimes what we call in Germany, we call it product creation process. I think it’s better in English to call it product development and product and process development processes. So this is the main area where we are working in so it’s yeah, it’s it’s it’s the area where all the some of the good lean stuff really works well in operations and supply chain and also in product and process development. So this is where we are focusing on. We usually do interim assignments. So we provide interim managers if companies are searching for that. We do a little bit of headhunting sometimes. So if companies say well, it was nice that you found the interim manager for us. But now we would also like to have a permanent plant manager or production manager or whatever. So this is our major activity. We also do some kind of more like, yeah, some would call it lean consulting or coaching. This is sometimes part of our activities, which are not permanent roles. That’s more like a typical consultant work on a daily basis. The interim assignments are usually longer term, full time assignments. Well, that’s basically it. This is our core activity.

Patrick Adams   

Yeah, that’s great. And obviously in the show notes, we’ll put a lot of that information in there if anybody does want to reach out to you outside of this podcast, but Dirk the reason why you and I connected initially, you post a lot on LinkedIn, I post a lot on LinkedIn, we got into a conversation on one of our posts around system waste, and you had some some really amazing value add comments. Again, I can’t remember if it was a post that I made or you made but somehow we were in discussion and I just thought Dirk, we got to have you on the podcast to share some of this the you know these amazing insights that you have but for those that are listening in that maybe don’t know what we’re talking about from from a system waste standpoint, can you help us define what is system waste?

Dirk Fischer  

Yeah, I Well, I have created my own definition. So we have Be careful here, maybe I’m, if some, you know, crazy professors or whatever are listening, maybe they get now very angry with these kinds of fuzzy definitions, but at least it’s how I define it. But just coming back to the point, I think it was a post that you did about the seven wastes, the typical seven or eight wastes. Okay. And then I replied, I replied, in a way that I said, Yeah, of course, they this are the seven, eight important ways that that we know from lean and from Toyota Production System, but I think there is, at least from my experience with companies, there is a part in the companies that create much bigger waste, then then sometimes the small, rather small ways you can find them in production, you know, like the way they overproduction the inventory and the movement. And yes, of course, these are all important wastes, and we have to, we have to find and eliminate them or reduce them. But from my experience, what I have seen in the last 25 years, I saw actually very often much, much bigger problems in the companies and I call them system waste, because they are actually created by the system and how the system is today, designed and operated. So and what do I mean by that, you know, in most companies, and if I see other posts on LinkedIn, I think this is still true for many companies, because many people are posting similar things here, we still have very much the silo thinking. So you know, there is the product development team, and they operate in their silo, and they want to meet a spec of the customer. And that’s the only thing that is important. So it’s not so important, whether the production later can actually make the product in a good way in an efficient way. So, you know, that is a kind of a typical example. Another example is for example, the purchasing guys, they probably have to target to, to buy the cheapest materials, the cheapest components from wherever, yeah, and that sometimes they are only interested in the experts price, they are not really interested in what is what we call sometimes total cost of ownership. So what is the full cost of getting that component from a supplier? These kinds of things, I call it system waste, because it’s generated by the poor way we design and execute the business as a system. And I think it’s important that these we call it usually departments or functions or whatever, they really get a common understanding of, of what is what is the common objective and what really what each of these functions can do to make the system effective and efficient and not just an individual function or silo.

Patrick Adams   

So Dirk, what do you think is causing system waste?

Dirk Fischer   

So, I think that the system waste is basically caused by a misalignment of various functions that we have in our companies. And that’s one part of it, another part of it is that it is caused by the design of our organizations the way we design the collaboration in our in our organizations, the way we communicate, what what kind of processes or systems we are using for for communication and how to set up the meetings and how to execute meetings and things like that. So, this is, for example, part one of my seven major problem areas that I call poor art design, collaboration and communication. Number two is poor strategy development and execution, okay. So, very often I see problems in develop the strategy itself, and, and some companies they do this even not so bad, they do this quite good, but then later they they face problems with the execution, you know, in in Lean, we have a very good, very good concept for that Hoshin Kanri, or policy deployment, but I don’t see that very often used in a very good and effective way. So that’s definitely also one of the problem areas, which for me, number two poor strategy development and execution, okay. Number three is what I have called here poor leadership and people development. So, this is yeah, we all know that a successful Lean transformation or successful change towards lean requires very good leadership and also requires a lot of very good people development approaches. And this is also something I very unfortunately, I still very rarely see, after all these years still, so that’s definitely a problem area number four is an interesting one, because this is where you think that shouldn’t be a big problem, but actually, sometimes it is. And this is what I call financial controls and silo KPIs. So, so I very often I saw that basically in cost accounting, they did some strange things that actually lead to very, very bad decisions on some products, where they then went to customers, they wanted to increase the price, and in the end, they lost the business for that. And then, when we looked at it from a, from a different viewpoint, we saw Well, it was not really necessary to go into that discussion with the customer because that product generated still quite a significant contribution margin. And the way the cost accountants allocated the overheads was just done terribly wrong. And that led to a terrible decision about silo KPIs, it’s, of course, another big problem, we all know the story that if everybody in a plant or in a company is highly efficient, that does not automatically mean that the company is sufficient or that the system is efficient and effective. So that’s definitely one of the big problems number five is poor sales and marketing here, I very often was faced with the situation that you know, this Miss was the boss coming in and the target was to win this business, whatever it costs Yeah. And it turned out that Yeah, with this business, we will probably never make any money. So this is also something that can cause really big big problems for the company. You can call it waste, you can call it a big problem, whatever, it creates a lot of waste at the end. Number six is poor product development and industrialization process. So with poor product development, it’s basically you know, many product designers sometimes do not understand that the product also has to be manufactured in an efficient way. And at the high quality level, that is something where where I see a lot of mistakes done in the companies in the past where we had this Some call it throw it over the wall ball philosophy and also I designed my product and now I fold over the wall to production and they should somehow look how they make it. Right. And also the industrialization process is is sometimes really full of many many yeah let’s call it even mistakes you know, where very often I see that old mes manufacturing thinking is actually fill the prevailing thinking of how to design a process and and things like flexibility and and finding lower capex solutions and still meet the productivity targets. This is very often possible but if the people are not tasked with this if the people are not given the conflict and I mean positively conflict is in my world the conflict is something positive because if we are able to solve the conflict, usually you’ll get some good innovation out of it right so that’s that’s problem area number six and finally, number seven is to operations and supply chain management. And yeah, we we still see many many shop floors not managed very well. No shop floor management, no no effective gemba management game awards. No, no good PDCA is no good problem solving on the in the plant. That’s one big problem I still see. And then of course on supply chain, as I mentioned earlier, if if you focus on best or lowest X work price from your suppliers, I’m not sure whether this at the end is giving you the least cost you I think a good supply chain management system has to understand the concept of cost of ownership, total cost of ownership and not just the concept of experts price. So the end and this these problems that I have mentioned here, if this all is not done in a very in a in an underlined unsynchronized way that is not following the right philosophy the right strategy of Lean you can call it lean strategy If each of these areas can create so much more waste, then you’re probably the kind of waste we both would probably detect. When we go to a plant and look at the manufacturing processes. And there’s a waiting time, there’s overproduction theories, over over engineering, there are movement problems, there are defects. And yes, of course, these are all big problems, don’t get me wrong. And I’m saying on this slide, I’m saying we have to fight these, we have to fight and eliminate and reduce these waste as much as we can. But I think on a corporate level or on a company level, these other problems that I have listed, they cause much more waste for many, many companies than the seven, the seven wastes that we get, we all know from TPS and lean. Sure.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, and I would agree with you that there are so many things out there that definitely contribute to the wastes. And obviously the seven that you identified, I have to imagine that there’s listeners out there that you know, either are experiencing a few of them, or maybe even all of them. I mean, those are very prevalent, or, you know, all those wastes are seen, at least by me personally, I see them all the time. And so, you know, I have to imagine that the listeners that are out there are thinking to themselves as you’re going through those Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right. So, to your point. Now, what do we do with those? What are the next steps, if we know that we have some of those causes in our system that’s causing the system waste, which then inevitably is going to cause some of the other wastes? What do we do about it? What are the next steps for someone that’s listening that says, Yes, I have those in my system? Yes.

Dirk Fischer  

Well, that’s of course, a good question. The next question. So, I think step number one is as usual is awareness. So, first of all, we need to recognize that we have these problems and of course, sometimes a person in a certain function does not have the What should I call it cannot really look in all of these areas, and does not really have the insight of that. So, maybe such a person does not see all these kinds of problems, but I was privileged with my with my experience, because I you know, I was working very often as an interim manager, and I mean, when do you call an interim manager, you call an interim manager, not because everything is working perfect, you call them only if you have problems. So. So you come in you look and of course, you look at the outcome and the outcome is poor quality, poor delivery, performance, customers unhappy, put business on hold, and these are the the outcomes of all that. And then if you start asking, if you start digging into the problems, you automatically find out all these things that I have mentioned earlier, that where these problems are actually coming from so so number one is, of course, awareness. So people have to recognize that we have these problems, and also for example, the product designers, they have to recognize, hmm, holy shit, maybe I really cause a problem here sometimes so that that requires some kind of reflection. Now the ability to reflect and to be self critical. It’s not nice. Of course, nobody likes that. But very often.

Dirk Fischer   

I mean, this is a start, this is the start, we need to have, we need this kind of awareness of self reflection, and of understanding what is what is my work actually causing for others? Yeah. And I had a big discussion with some product designers some time ago. And I said, look, it’s not enough. It’s not enough to just develop a product which meets the customer specification. That’s, that’s, that’s only one requirement. Yeah. But there is another requirement we want, we want to make this product, we want to make it efficiently we want to make a target cost, we want to reach the the quality, the scrap levels, all the things that we have, that we have calculated, and what was the basis for the business case, let’s call it like that. So people need to understand that there are these dependencies, and we need this awareness of the problems. We need this awareness of the dependencies and and then so that’s step number one. Step number two is of course that you have at least if, if you start with this and if you come into such a situation where you face these problems, you need some people at the top of the company who oversee all this, these areas and dysfunctions. They really have to recognize this problem. And they also have to agree together that well, yeah, really that that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s where we are causing our major problems. So now let’s start working on how we change it. And I mean, the good thing with with with lean over the last 20 years is that we have not stopped only on manufacturing, we have now so many good materials on on Lean product development, you know, one of my favorite books is Toyota product development system, which is really great, which explains by the way, why Toyota is not only good in manufacturing, they are also very, very, they have a very good approach to the to the product development and the process development process in the company, which then leads to later efficient processes and manufacturing processes, assembly processes, and so on. So they really understood how the things connect, how they connect to each other and how they are dependent. So I think it requires really people who have, who have the awareness of those who are able to self-reflect and to admit, maybe my department, maybe the functions I’m responsible for, they are not really, they are not really supporting this. So that’s definitely important. Maybe before heading that maybe that should be step three, maybe step two, should be that you need to define for all what is actually our, our, our strategy. Now what do we want to achieve? And then how do we do product development in purchasing and quality planning in controlling insects? What have we to do in order to support this common strategy and these common goals? And I wonder if this is done properly? And that’s not an easy one? If it would be easy, I think we would not see these problems. So often. But I think that is probably a very good start. I think to be honest, I think many companies will have problems doing that. On their own, I think they would need at least at this stage, they would need some help, some kind of you can call it moderation. You can call it consulting, you can call it coaching whatever you want. But I think at this point of the process, they should really have somebody understanding what the Lean Enterprise or what the lean company a lean organization actually wants to achieve. And then from this, yeah, target condition, you can call it organizational target conditions, we all know target condition from cut out, but let’s call it organizational target condition that has to be defined. And I think if this is clear, I think the people will then also understand, Okay, what does it mean for me? How, what do I have to change to come closer to this common target to this common vision? Yeah, I think that is that is, that is the thing that is really necessary. So just to summarize it, it’s awareness. It’s defining this organizational target condition that everybody agrees with. So you of course, you need, you need to have the give me the word, the consensus here. If you don’t get the consensus, you I think the whole thing will generally fail again, and then you need Yeah, the the awareness and the self reflection in finding out okay, what are we doing that is? or what have we done in the past that was not supporting it? And now, what do we have to change in the future to support it? I think that probably that would be a very good start. Sure. Yeah, for improving them.

Patrick Adams   

No, I think that’s great. And I don’t know what the how, you know, what the, the German words that you would use to explain that, but I know in, in English, you call it a holistic business excellence? Correct?

Dirk Fischer   

Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually one of my favorite terms. I use it very often. And that’s basically what I called it some minutes ago, I called it this organizational target condition. So what the hell should this be? I mean, you could also call it holistic business excellence, but then you can ask again, what the hell should you speak about? So and I mean, for me, I have a definition of holistic business excellence. And actually, I I wrote it down some time ago, because it’s not so easy. It’s a longer, longer definition. But basically, it’s about several things here. It’s first, first of all, the way I define holistic business excellence. are in holistic business. An excellent system for me is based on the principles that were mainly influenced and developed by Deming, the Toyota way. And where I actually learned a lot, is also Theory of Constraints. I know there are some lean guys, they still live in the world of VR, lean and theory, constraint of constraints is something else, I somehow I’m somehow looking for ways how to combine it, because I think they, they really support each other. And for me, it’s not that I separate them, I look for the commonalities, and I look for the overlaps. And I think if you do that, you really found you really, you really find to the more powerful approaches, but that’s a different topic. So for me, this is where Lean where holistic Business Excellence systems are, are based upon and then what should they aim for, for me, they a holistic Business Excellence system aims for the full and creative commitment of all teams and all functions in order to develop a market desired innovation, because this is where it starts, I mean, if you if you have nothing that the market wants, probably that’s the biggest waste of all because then nothing Yes. So, this is this is one important thing you need this, this is gathered his market desired innovations to stay in business and to get business and then that’s part number one and part number two, then is to continuously improve quality cost delivery, safety, moral, these are the classical ones cute QC DSM, but I usually I often add flexibility process flexibility, that is some some some something that I very often miss, if I look into companies, they they completely miss this expert of need flexible Processes in Manufacturing, so that we can actually adjust to the demand. So, very often, they are very efficient in a high demand situation, but they are very inefficient in a low demand situation. So, so I think flexibility and line or equipment flexibility is a very important aspect, then, if we leave flexibility, there are two more which are more very important for me, and this is the environment. So we more and more have to take our responsibility, with environmental goals, that we have energy consumption and all these kinds of things. That’s very important. So this is also where we have to focus on or where we have to improve as much as we can. And the final one is net working capital, which is more like a fight and sounds more like a financial thing. But you know, cash is king and if you run out of cash, you have a big problem. And therefore, I think a good Continuous Improvement System is clearly targeted also to improve the networking capital situation all the time. So, this is basically you see that a lot of aspects that I try to attack here, but I think that is what is necessary. They are all very equally important. There’s no I mean, I cannot say quality is not important, I cannot say cost is not important, or delivery is not important, or safety is not important. And I can also not rent them to be honest. I mean, I mean, what does it help me if I deliver zero defects, and in every unit I sell, I make a loss of $100. You know, that does not help me to deliver zero defects. So it all has to come together. And this is what I mean when I talk about holistic, right? Every aspect has to be met and not just one or not just a few. So that is still the first part of holistic business excellence. There’s a second part of this the business excellence and this is about what I call the stakeholder groups, I say that or I, I define four core stakeholders in an organization or in a company and the four core stakeholders are of course the customer, the employees, the shareholder or I prefer owner to be honest because shareholder I think the word has sometimes not a very good meaning. So I prefer owners or responsible status shareholders, maybe that’s another one. And the final one is the society. You know, and every organization has these stages. quarters and the stakeholders, again, these four core stakeholders, they have what I call legitimate expectations. And I mean, what are they? I mean, it’s clear the customer wants a high quality product. And on time, yeah. And at the prices prepared to pay for. So that’s legitimate expectations of a customer, what are the employees, the employees they want? Yeah, they want growth, they want to see that they’re the company’s growing, they see a chance for them to grow, they want to be challenged, they want to be developed, they want to see that they have a chance to to make a career, you know, I mean, this is all legitimate expectations, and they have to be met. stakeholder group number four is the owners or the shareholders. I mean, it’s clear they want some returns, they want some returns on their investments they want they want, if it’s if it’s responsible, shareholders are responsible owners, they also they want a good reputation, they want to know that the name, if it’s sometimes it’s still their name, the company has still has the name of the family. So they want a good reputation. And of course, they want to be financially successful, otherwise, it does not make sense for them to continuously invest into the company. And then there is a society. And I mean, what are legitimate expectations of society? Well, we should not, we should keep our environment clean, we should not push out any kind of toxic materials or whatever, we should properly pay our taxes, you know, we should develop our communities, we operate in the plants, we should be a good partner, in the community and in the society. So for me, this is all what I call legitimate expectations, and, and a holistic business system and a company that says we want to be excellent.

From a holistic business systems standpoint, I think they have to meet all these expectations. And that’s not an easy one. I mean, this is not a shortcut. This is the difficult way. And I think this is the only way to become a sustainable organization and to have a chance to survive longer than the next few quarters. Sure that I mean, this is probably my definition of holistic business. Excellent. So I’m not sure what I, I brought it across in a very good way. But that’s my definition of it.

Patrick Adams  

No, I think you did. And I am sure there’s a lot of people listening in that that, again, are are making the connections with their own organization that they’re working in and understanding maybe where some of the gaps are for their own organization, you know, where there may be working in silos, departments apart from other departments, and they don’t have that holistic approach. And so that I’m sure there are many that are, are saying yes, again, to that, and you’ve already given us a couple steps awareness being the first one, is there anything else that listeners should think about, as far as you know, how to get there, how to how to move their organization closer to being a holistic business, you know, especially maybe someone who doesn’t have decision making authority at the organization or isn’t in an executive role or a business owner? What impact can they have from the place that they’re in to help drive this, you know, this idea of holistic business approach?

Dirk Fischer

Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s, that’s, of course, a difficult one, because I have been in such a situation myself, over many, many years. And to be honest, it’s sometimes really frustrating. Sure, but even if you have a limited area of responsibility, there is a certain area of responsibility and what you can do and what I always tried to do is, at least in my area of responsibility, I wanted to make sure that I behave, act and think. Yeah, like in such a in such a way, so

Patrick Adams   

give other departments like meaning that you’re, you’re thinking holistically, so you’re in concluding and inviting the other departments in.

Dirk Fischer    

Exactly, exactly. So for example, when I was when I was a production manager, and I had a problem in production, and we were working on the problem over several days, and at one point, we have tried a lot and he said Look, maybe maybe we need to talk to the design guys, to the to the engineers, the product engineers, we need to involve them here now maybe they can help us. Then of course I went to them. And I said, Hey guys, look, we have these problems we have, I don’t know 5% Scrap rates and we have tried this and we have tried this we have tried this. We have tried this, but it looks a little bit better in the beginning. But now we are back on five percent. So please, can we do a workshop together? Can we have a meeting? Can you come and look at the process? Do you see something? It’s actually yeah, being proactive, you know, I mean being you can always be proactive and and and start this initiative. Yeah. And I mean, it’s definitely wrong to sit there and say, we cannot solve it. So let’s continue like that. I mean, that’s not an option. Yeah. If, if, if you have the problem, and if you tried a lot, and what one of my famous statements is very often in the past boss, let’s let’s, in Germany, we call it let’s grab your own nose, you know, before you go to the others, or clean clean before your door before your door before you go to the other side. About their doors. Yeah, so I don’t know if you have something similar learning English. So of course, very often, we looked at the beginning, we looked okay, what can we do to solve the problem, but it can be in some cases that you come to a point we are really, very, really then have to involve other departments? And then of course, you have to go there, you have to involve the minister. Hey, guys, we have a problem. Probably purchasing is a good example. I mean, how often do some components or materials from some supplier cause problems? I mean, if you are not approaching them, if you are not involving them, how should they know that there is a problem? So that’s definitely something that everybody can do. Is this kind of being proactive? And try to solve the problem in trying to bring the people together? Who probably have a chance to solve the problem? This is basically if you say that is what you can do bottom up? Yeah, or what everybody can do. If you look a little bit top down? I think a big part of the problem is that many, many people do not even know how it should be. And that sounds maybe a bit crazy. But if you are, if you are not having the right, target conditions defined, yeah, I think that’s a big problem in many, many companies, there is not a very good understanding of how it should be or how it could be. So therefore, they are not even aiming for it. Because they are not aware that there is a different way, or there’s another way, or there’s a better way, or there’s various degrees, we should have higher targets, we should not just focus on on the financial goals, we should, we should also focus on the employee expectations, the customer expectations, the society expectations, that I mean, very often people they make it too easy. And this is where I said earlier, I think this is the part where some people really need help. And, and I’m, I’m the last one who’s shouting for consultants. Actually, I got annoyed by consultants very, very often. But in such a case, and for such a topic, I think it’s really, really necessary to bring in this help. Because what I found out, I never had to, if I was in such a situation, and I was talking to the people, and I explained to them how it should be or how it could be and what the target condition should be. I never heard no, we disagree. Or we think it’s wrong. I never, I never heard that. Actually, the opposite was that they actually said wow, yeah. Finally, finally, somebody says it’s finally somebody is able to, to articulate it. Yeah. And then the funny thing is, if if this is done, and and if it’s somewhere on the wall, and if you if you then come into a mode of where people actually start thinking and questioning themselves, okay, what do I have to do, to come to this direction or to understand to support this direction, that was actually never a big problem, very often people are looking for that. I mean, I always have a problem. If people say, people have a problem with change, I never experienced that, that people have a problem with change, actually, the opposite is true. If you want to change to the right things, you know, if you of course want to implement change, that makes no sense for nobody. Of course, they are reluctant and they have good reasons to be reluctant there. But if you come in and if you listen and if you understand what the problems are and if you get the feedback from the people that what you have articulated or what you have found out is actually the core problem that they agree with. There’s no problem changing it. They want to change. They want to be part of the change. They want to support it. Yes. more, some less, of course not everybody is as you know, how you call it in English. Some people are more silent, some people are more outgoing. So, of course, there’s a difference. But to generally like to change in that direction, I think that that’s, that’s, that’s very important if if this is not happening, if this is not coming from the top, it’s, it’s a big problem, it’s really a big problem, and it will fail, I think it will fail. It has to come from both sides, right?

Patrick Adams   

Right. Now I completely agree with Dirk, and you know, what an amazing way to, to wrap us up today with some motivational words about, you know, top, top down and bottom up. And just the, the aspect of bringing everybody together, you know, to bring not only to bring everybody together, but to bring the organization together holistically towards business excellence. So I appreciate your time today. And just the value that you’ve brought to our listeners. I mean, we seem like we could probably go on for quite a while talking about a few other topics as well. But I so much appreciate you coming on and just filling us in on system waste and holistic business excellence. Is anyone interested to learn more about what your company does and or be interested in hiring you or bringing you in? Where would they go to find more information about your company?

Dirk Fischer   

Well, they can do this basically two ways. You can contact me directly on LinkedIn, for example, yeah, I am very active on LinkedIn. I frequently post several posts a week on lean Toyota Deming, whatever, that’s one thing, or they can contact me, or contact us through our website, which is W W. W GAO experts.com. The website is probably not saying all of the things we are doing. Or maybe it’s not so, maybe not so interesting regardless of what we have discussed today. But for example, if some people want to, to understand a little bit more of my crazy thinking, they can just look at my LinkedIn profile and look at the posts I did over the last year, maybe two years, okay. And they all go in that direction. Patrick, they all go in that direction. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes they are more tool specific where I’m explaining standard work, for example, or smet or value stream mapping. But very often I go exactly on the topic of holistic business excellence and what kind of leadership is required, and how these things fit together and how to make a system effective and efficient. And not just the silos.

Patrick Adams   

Sure. Now, that’s great. And what we’ll do is we’ll drop your, your LinkedIn profile link, as well as your website into the show notes. So if anybody is interested, you can go directly to the show notes, click on one of those links, and you’ll be able to learn more about Dirk and what they’re doing. Derek, it’s been great. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate the value that you brought to the listeners today. I hope to have you on again in the future.

Dirk Fischer    

Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much for my help. I hope I did not talk too much. And I hope it was interesting for the audience and I would love to have a part two with you.

Patrick Adams   

Absolutely. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai