Lifetime’s Journey to Visuality
November 8, 2011
Hosted by Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
What is the key to sustainability? This is a question Brent Allen, VP of Strategic Improvement, asked himself repeatedly over his career at Lifetime Products (Utah). Overtime, he realized that many lean tools can trigger good results. But results don’t last if they are not operator-led. In today’s show, Mr. Allen discusses this with host Gwendolyn Galsworth, leading visual workplace expert and award-winning author. He explains why Lifetime chose workplace visuality and how the company uses it to widen leadership ranks to include operators as self-leaders. As a student of world-class manufacturing for nearly thirty years, Brent knew most supervisors would love to get operators to take on more responsibility and make more decisions. The question is how? How do supervisors learn to transfer the doing from themselves to operators? This, Brent shares, requires finding a balance between structure and free will, two elements workplace visuality offers in abundance. Tune in. Call in.
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Business Channel
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak offers the best in practical tools, methods, and strategies for improvement leaders who want to apply workplace visuality and harness its remarkable cultural and bottom line contribution. Visuality: you can’t get to excellence without it.
Each week, award-winning author and foremost visual workplace expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, targets new learning and applications through a range of formats, case studies, interviews with business leaders and topic experts.
Whether yours is a factory, hospital, military depot, bank, office or dry cleaners, get informed, get inspired, get visual.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, PhD, is president and founder of Visual Thinking Inc. and The Visual-Lean Institute(r), a training, consulting, and research firm in visual workplace technologies. Over a period of 30 years, Dr. Galsworth has codified the field of visuality into a single coherent framework of thinking and application called the 10-Doorway Model.
In 2005, Dr. Galsworth established the Visual-Lean(r) Institute where in-house and external trainers are licensed in nine core visual workplace courses.
Four of her nine courses are now available as on-line training systems (English/Spanish), with more to come. Galsworth is author of seven books, including two Shingo Prize winners: Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking and Work That Makes Sense, available from her website and Amazon.
Dr. Galsworth began in the 1980s as the head of training/development at Productivity Inc. She worked closely with Dr. Ryuji Fukuda to adapt the CEDAC(r) method for western companies, and with Dr. Shigeo Shingo to develop, among many things, poka-yoke for the West. She was principal developer of Visual Factory, TEIAN (operator-led suggestion systems), and the X-Type Matrix.
A Fellow on the Shingo Institute Faculty and former Baldrige and Shingo Examiners, Galsworth has led study missions to some of the world’s finest companies, including in Japan. Dr. Galsworth lives in New England where she happily works, hikes, and writes.
