Distribution & Retail

RYAN CARTIER

Business / Lean Practitioner

Ryan took a position leading the embedded distribution center for a brand growing 9 retail stores across Canada. He started by implementing visual management & standard work to identify problems immediately and ensure on time delivery.

Rare among companies, this organization had a strong cultural foundation on customer experience and all employees including the CEO & executives consistently participate in a certain amount of store immersion shifts. This provided Ryan exceptional overview of the entire value stream from distribution to store and their guests, enabling him to identified $1.4 million of waste and counter measures targeting $500K which he submitted to management on an A3, and was planning to pilot in his distribution center.

Since the time this was drafted, one set of stores was discontinued, and the distribution center has relocated; however the concept of removing unnecessary travel applies to ALL distribution facilities.In an unrelated example, as early as 2014 (like… — Since the time this was drafted, one set of stores was discontinued, and the distribution center has relocated; however the concept of removing unnecessary travel applies to ALL distribution facilities.
*In an unrelated example, as early as 2014 (likely earlier), Amazon took the same concept of eliminating picker travel further, eliminating it with robotic shelves which moved to the picker.*

Around this time he was also drove an ‘unload to slot effort’ which freed up 23 pallet locations and over 17 shifts of labour annually. As a result of this though, Ryan’s role was changed to Continuous Improvement Lead, Distribution and he no longer had a buffer for the A3 pilot.

Seeing other opportunities, he

Led distribution center Supervisors and Team Leads through Value Stream Mapping
Facilitated introductory Lean training for all Canadian Distribution Center associates & management
Reduced e-commerce order fulfillment lead time 86%, from 252 to 33 minutes

lululemon Order Fulfillment Reduction.JPG

Also rare was this company’s cultural foundation on nurturing employee personal development, which created fertile ground for adoption of continuous improvement. Since then part of his ambition is to combine this level of employee personal development with continuous improvement.

How I Started in Business – Initial Investment & Startups

Leading the 1st Lean implementation – Low Volume High Mix

Lean Healthcare

Distribution & Retail

Leading the 2nd Lean Implementation – High Volume Low Mix

1 Off Custom Manufacturing - No Volume High Mix

Lean Product & Process Development – Technology Startup Ramp-up

Leading the 3rd Lean Implementation – LPPD heavy industry

ACL Repair & Regrown - InternalBrace Ligament Augmentation