Question:What do you call a root cause analyst?

Answer: A whys guy!

I had been summoned from my Chicago suburban home and office to visit a company in Wisconsin—Land of Cheese—to discuss the possibility of providing some lean training requested by the director of operations, Brent Favor. This was a company to which I had previously provided some training and consultation on ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.

Upon my arrival that cold and blustery winter morning (no wonder the cheese never grows mold up there), I was greeted by Brent. After passing through the halls and cubicles riddled with Green Bay Packers paraphernalia, we sat down in the conference room to discuss his specific needs.

After some idle chit-chat about the drive up north, the weather and the Bears-Packers game, Brent said that he’d like for me to prepare a proposal to provide kaizen and total productive maintenance (TPM) training to a number of employees.

“And why is it that you would like kaizen and TPM training?” I asked him. He said, “Well, we would like to be more like Toyota, and I have been given the goal of saving $400,000 from lean activities by the end of the year.  I figure that these training classes would help us get there the quickest.”

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