State Of Readiness

I invite Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman of the Board and Acting CEO of RealWear to “State of Readiness”.  We start with discussing what RealWear is all about – and it is one of the coolest systems I have seen for employee-enablement.  RealWear had designed and developed ruggedized head-mounted wearable Android-class tablet computer that frees a worker’s hands for dangerous jobs.  Being hands-free, it ...

We welcome Philip Holt, Vice President of Operational Excellence at GKN Aerospace, for a conversation.  We start off the program discussing Philip’s two books, “Leading with Lean” and “The Simplicity of Lean”; the latter having won the Bronze Medal in the Axiom Book Awards.  We take a walk in Philip’s shoes for a spell and follow his journey.  It starts with Philip gaining his Undergraduate Degree in Polymer Engineering and afterw...

I welcome Pavle Sabic to my first-ever audio and video production of State of Readiness. 

We talk about the human side of business; how to get more joy out of work, how to make it more joyous for others.  And we talk about a company’s workforce and how organizations are constructed needs to change.  Pavle invokes Peter Drucker with “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and agrees that culture is more important than strategy.  To...

Daniel has spent his entire professional and personal career in the field of Industrial Engineers.  In this episode, we explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “Black Swan” event, on the way businesses might operate post-pandemic.  

We start by discussing how telephony in education and the corporate world will be embraced more readily to its becoming ubiquitous.  While both Dan and myself have been working virtually long...

For 20+ years Joe has been empowering organizations, teams, and individuals to continuously improve processes and outcomes toward their goals and ultimately achieve Excellence in their chosen business, function, or discipline.  What makes Joe unique is that he has led successful transformation programs across several Fortune 100 companies – and he has experienced the deployment and sustainment phases both as a senior leader of ...

Cindy is as self-made a person as anyone I have ever met.  After graduating high school and not having any particular skills that were as yet discovered nor the grades or money to get into University, she joined the United States Navy as an enlisted person.  Perhaps she knew, and it’s just as likely she did not, that this single decision to join the Navy set her on a professional trajectory that is nothing short of amazing.

Once in...

With fifteen years of international work experience, Caroline Bondier joined with KONE Corporation in 2011 as a CRM Business Analyst and has moved up the ranks of leadership to her present position as the Director, Process Development and Program Management for KONE’s Modernization Business Line.  After some struggle to find work, Caroline started her career in document coordination at NOKIA as a subcontractor before moving on to t...

I welcome Dale Bayley, the Lean Director of the Filtration Group of Parker Hannifin to this edition of State of Readiness.  Parker Hannifin is a an publicly-traded American corporation (NYSE: PH) founded in 1917, revenues of $14.3B(2018), 58,000 employees globally,  and specializing in motion and control technologies which Dale joined in 1978.

Dale grew-up in a blue-collar, hard-working family.  And when Dale joined Parker, as an p...

In this edition of “State of Readiness”, I interview Céline Felan, Vice President of Business Transformation at Community Brands, a software company that provides a suite of offerings for membership-based organizations, private schools and churches.

Being born in Paris, France and raised in the Netherlands, Céline now calls Austin, Texas home – where she quickly learned and understood the phrase “grabbing the bull by the horns”.  I...

I welcome Tyrone “Ty” Muse to this episode of State of Readiness.  Ty is the CEO and President of Visions Federal Credit Union, a not-for-profit financial institution with $4.2 in assets and he will share the journey of his career from working with Jack Welch at GE Asset Management, to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Goldman Sachs.  But in particular, Ty will share the challenges he faced when he joined Visions; changing it from what i...

In this episode, I welcome Michael Rabbitt, Head of Business Transformation, Argonne National Laboratory, a world-class research laboratory.  Having a BA in Operations Management and Information Systems and earning his MBA in Human Resource Management, Michael will share his journey; how his interests evolved over time, the experiences he gained in change management, and his observations and the changes he had to make in moving fro...

I welcome Stephane Jeanmart, Chemistry Operational Excellence Lead at Syngenta, a global agrochemical business headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.  In this episode, Stephane shares his journey from being formally trained in Chemistry, a discipline of predictable outcomes governed by formulas and exactness, to a less exact discipline that is Operational Excellence which is largely about people.

Syngenta was formed from the spin-off...

In this episode of State of Readiness, I interview Carl Kirpes, responsible for Crude Oil Strategy & Analysis at Marathon Petroleum Corporation. Carl and I met some years ago at an annual conference of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers when he was just graduating from Iowa State University – and we have stayed in touch over the years. Listen in as we follow Carl’s career; from being a walk-on player on the Iowa ...

In this episode of State of Readiness, we speak with Steve Waszak, Vice President of Operational Excellence at Green Group Industries about organizational alignment.  For Steve, establishing organizational alignment was key to the transformation that he facilitated during his first two years in his role in OpEx.  We discuss some of the things that need to be in place including the challenges associated with trying to get and keep e...

In this episode, we will have a conversation with James Considine; the Chief of Staff and Head of Business Programs for the Aging and Caregiving business at Philips, where he oversee the enterprise PMO, Continuous Improvement, and Enterprise Reporting & Analytics.

Over the last several years, James has held a variety of operational/operational excellence roles building on his training in continuous improvement.  From 2008 to 20...

Our guest in this episode of “State of Readiness” is Donald Kuk; continuous improvement expert extraordinaire.  He started his continuous improvement journey in the mid-1990's at General Electric when he was personally selected by Jack Welch to join Jack and a select group of others senior leaders at GE in the very class to be trained in Six Sigma – taught by the original Six Sigma Guru himself, the late Mikel Harry.  Since the...

In this episode, I interview Peter Evans, Continuous Improvement Director for Lego Group.  I have known Peter for a couple of years.  And we seem to keep running into one another at Operational Excellence conferences – which are the circumstances of our first meeting.  I have always found Peter to be an affable gentleman and have always appreciated his insights and the experiences he shared.

I grew up with Legos.  Loved playing wit...