Topics from George Koenigsaecker Articles

CEO's, executives and leaders - the following articles will help you understand continuous improvement and its bottom line impacts.  They are written by George Koenigsaecker, a principal investor in several lean enterprises, and is President of Lean Investments, LLC, a Private Equity organization with an emphasis on manufacturing.  Koenigsaecker is a Board Member of the Shingo Prize, the international award for "lean enterprises," and is a board member of The Association of Manufacturing Excellence, Ariens Outdoor Power Equipment, R W Baird Capital Partners Advisory Board, Simpler Consulting, Watlow Electric Corp., and Xaloy Inc.

From 1992 until 1999, he led the lean conversion of the HON Company, a $1.5-billion office furniture manufacturer. During this period, his efforts resulted in a tripling of volume, and culminated in HON Industries being named by

Industry Week

magazine as one of the "World's Best Managed Manufacturing Companies."

Prior to joining HON, Koenigsaecker was with Danaher Corp., where he was President of the Jacobs Vehicle Equipment Co. (whose lean conversion is featured in the book

Lean Thinking

by Jim Womack and Dan Jones), and Group President of the Tool Group, the largest business unit of Danaher. In addition to leading the lean conversion of these operations, Koenigsaecker developed and implemented the "Danaher Business System," a comprehensive lean-enterprise model.

In addition, Koenigsaecker has held senior management positions in Finance, Marketing, and Operations with Rockwell International and Deere & Co. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.

Start with:

Leadership 2005

Manager’s Guide 2001

- restudy the process over & over

- How he found out about lean, some examples

- Make problems visible so they must be solved

- Discipline

- Build the lean office

- Too busy to apply lean

- Learn by doing

Seeking the Lean Machine 2004

- 3 phases

- Reconfigure production tech.

- Right sized Machine design & build

- Auto unload

- Sheet metal & press brakes

Leadership 2005

- stats, 3% success

- due to lack of senior leadership involvement

- productivity gains 400%, understanding how much waste exists

- typical results & payback time

- financial effects

- required kaizens

- 4 levels of learning

- Free up the best person

- No successful instances where CEO did not have hands on

Strategy Deployment 2006

- 4 key areas

- ROI, income statement

- Improvement efforts expected results each pass

- 2 parts to strategy deployment

- Not knowing what org will look like

Sustaining Lean 2007

- firefighting, today’s predominant culture

- leadership change

- process improvement payback 90 – 120 days

- learn through personal application

- 1st step for leaders

- Required kaizens for managers

- Necessity for leadership participation regularly

- Continuous improvement is never ending

Perseverance Pay Off 2008

- 10:1 payoff investing in employees

- Organizations should not focus on any one quality improvement tool but on the appropriate tools for each specific problem.

- Reducing lead times to grow 3-4 x industry rate

- Strategies for a recession

- Freeing up working capital

- Cost of labour, revenue per square foot

- Rarely lay off people, engaging in productivity measure

- Freeze hiring during recession

- Dealing with slower sales

Interview AME 2010

- Danaher

- Change senior leadership behaviour**

- Measurement & payback

- Financial effects

- Works anywhere

Author of Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation