James Franz was my guest on the Business901 podcast and this is a transcription of the podcast. If you have been spending your time improving your processes and wondering why you are not getting the expected returns, this is for you. Jim is the co-author with Jeffrey K. Liker on the latest of the Toyota Way books: The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement: Linking Strategy and Operational Excellence to Achieve Superior Performance.
James Franz has over 24 years of manufacturing experience and learned lean as a Toyota Production Engineer in Japan. He started at the Motomachi plant and then moved to NUMMI and then finally worked in Georgetown, Kentucky. After leaving Toyota, he then went to Ford to apply his lean knowledge beginning in production engineering. He was sent to Ford of Australia for 3 years and led their Stamping, Assembly, Casting, and Powertrain facilities to global leadership in lean for Ford. Jim also teaches for the University of Michigan’s Center for Professional Development’s Lean Certification course.
About the Toyota Way Academy: The Academy’s mission is to teach the Toyota Way using the Toyota Way. For more information visit: www.toyotawayacademy.com
Related Podcast: Sustaining Lean using Continuous Improvement: The Toyota Way
Related Information:
Coaching Lean eBook with Dr. Liker
Dr. Jeff Liker on PDCA and Lean Culture>
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA