Lean Portland

At the 2023 Lean Global Connection virtual conference held in late November, Maria Grzanka, Dominic Stokes and Matt Horvat share their experiences setting up and participating within Lean Portland. They discuss project examples of teaching Lean to nonprofits in the Portland area, and what they learned and benefitted from those experiences. There is also a video of the presentation you can watch at...

When using Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts to monitor your process, you are comparing your current data to historical data to determine if the process is similar or different. The basis for this decision lies in the Western Electric Rules (now called Nelson Rules) for detecting out of control conditions. For example, if you detect 6 consecutive data points going upwards from the previous...

After making improvements to your processes, a best practice is to calculate the benefits to the organization. Calculating financial benefits is an important part of building momentum for improvement with upper management. However, this can be confusing for those not familiar with financial data, and is not done very often in organizations.   Brion Hurley will discuss commonly used methods fo...

Join us for a share out from our volunteer consultants about what we've learned over the past 10 years.   * listening to voices of our nonprofit partners (customers)  * unexpected benefits of helping others  * building community through building relationships  * turning the continuous improvement lens on ourselves   AGENDA:   * Improvements within Lean Portland to inc...

Case Study with Stephanie Hill: Prysm Piercing Shop   As a member and volunteer for the Association of Professional Piercers (APP) and having a partner who owns a body piercing studio, Stephanie Hill had the rare opportunity to share a Lean case study with a room of 200 international body piercers at an annual APP conference. Modified for the Lean Portland Happy Hour, Stephanie will share thi...

At our April 6th Happy Hour, we are delighted to feature long-time member of Lean Portland, Sheilah "Paddy" O'Brien, who recently finished writing her latest book, “Facilitating Rapid Process Improvement Workshops (RPI), a Self-Study Guide for Lean Leaders.” This is a follow-on to her first book, “Lean for the Nonprofit, What You Don’t Know Can Cost You."   With two books under her belt,...

Ernest Mayer is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Project Manager at Providence Health & Services in Portland, Oregon. He explains the Daily Management System (DMS) he has helped developed with local nonprofits, and how that transitioned into a rollout across Providence. He explains that DMS is more than a set of tools and metrics, it requires a culture change that starts with managers transitioning...

Creating flow is one of the principles of Lean Thinking. At first, we apply this principle to process work flows. What might we learn if we applied this to intrapersonal flow? How might we improve quality and reduce waste as we move throughout the day?   Lori Jorgenson is a vitality coach with the Taylor Group in Portland, OR. With her background as a personal trainer and world champion outri...

John Ashcraft joins our monthly Happy Hour to discuss the Lean journey he has helped lead at Free Geek (along with Amber Schmidt and the leadership team), with the help from Lean Portland. Their journey started in 2017, and at the end of 2020, they have almost tripled their output of refurbished laptops. You can watch a video of our talk at https://youtu.be/Jvb9--W_C7s Free Geek is a 501(c)(3) non...

At our December Happy Hour, Sam Pardue, founder of Indow in Portland, shares his work history and how he quickly transitioned his company during the pandemic using Lean methodology, called Clean Practice . Watch the full video at https://leanportland.com/local_events/clean-practice-uses-lean-to-protect-workers-during-pandemic/ Learn more about Lean Portland at https://leanportland.com/

Founders of the Lean Portland volunteer group talk with practitioners from Charlotte and Jacksonville to provide history of the group and recommendations for setting up their own volunteer group. Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpnbZ5BBZ3c Learn more about Lean Portland at https://leanportland.com/

Our guest for the September 2020 Happy Hour was Norman Bodek, the "Godfather of Lean" He had left the Portland area recently, and moved to Japan (was quarantined at a hotel in Tokyo at the time). You can watch this talk with the slides and video on YouTube Thanks to Maria Grzanka for facilitating and setting up the event! Learn more about Lean Portland at https://leanportland.com/

We are so excited to continue our Happy Hour series in the virtual world. One of the benefits of this space is that we can invite people from outside our local area. Hear how these three organizations are "helping people make work better."   * Tracy Defoe, Cascadia Kata Dojo, Vancouver BC  * Brittany Garza, Lean Pop-Up, Salt Lake City, UT  * Brion Hurley, Lean Portland, Portland, OR...

Since it's inception in 2005, and According to the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, Strategic Energy Management (SEM) takes a "holistic approach to managing energy use in order to continuously improve energy performance, by achieving persistent energy and cost savings over the long term. It focuses on business practice change from senior management through shop floor staff, affecting organization...

Lean Portland was asked to present on Continuous Improvement Resources at the Master Brewers Association of America (MBAA) District Northwest Spring Meeting 2019 In the presentation, we talked about Lean concepts, 8 wastes, played the Toyota and Food Bank video, shared benefits and key points of Lean, some examples we've helped with other nonprofits, and books and training we recommend. You can wa...

Here is a webinar that Brion Hurley held with the IISE organization that discusses the work done with Lean Portland and other IISE chapters who are trying to teach Lean and Six Sigma to nonprofit organizations Read the transcript, download the slides and get links discussed in the presentation at:  http://leansixsigmaenvironment.org/index.php/ec-046-process-improvement-nonprofit-volunteering/

Are you interested in developing a plan to test out your social entrepreneurship, nonprofit or mission-driven business ideas? Don't waste valuable time, resources or money pursuing your ideas, if you find that it doesn't work for the people you are trying to serve. The Lean Startup methodology (based on Lean Manufacturing principles) seeks to eliminate wasteful practices and increase value-produci...

Matt Horvat and Brion Hurley, along with Kelly Stevens from The Rebuilding Center, were asked to give a webinar to the Building Material Reuse Association (BMRA) members about Lean principles and our experiences working with reuse nonprofit organizations. Slides can be downloaded as a PDF here Links BMRA The Rebuilding Center Lean Portland Read the full transcript 

Is 'certification' right for me? Whether you're talking about Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Sigma, PMI, APICS, Prosci or countless other certification programs, how do you decide which one is right for you or whether you need it at all? Nicole Sisco from PSU Center for Executive and Professional Education will be on hand to talk about CEPE's certificate programs and answer questions. Team members from Lea...

This is a presentation on Lean Culture given by Maria Grzanka and Ernest Mayer from our Lean Portland team. We were asked to present at the State of Oregon Department of Human Services Annual Lean Academy Conference, held on August 14, 2018. It was setup by the Office of Continuous Improvement. The presentation is based on material from the Edgar Schein Onion Model and our personal experiences. If...

This is the presentation we gave at the Association of Oregon Recyclers (AOR) Spring Reuse Forum in March 2018, explaining how we helped apply lean concepts to the reuse nonprofit industry, with Free Geek and The Rebuilding Center. You can watch the full video presentation at https://leanportland.com/stories/free-geek-rbc-at-association-of-oregon-recyclers/ Presenters: * Matt Horvat, Founder of Le...

On December 6th 2017, Lean Portland interviewed Norman Bodek about his thoughts on Lean almost 40 years after he first founded Productivity Press in 1979. Hosted by Lean Portland and Portland Made at the Grovemade HQ. Introduced by Lean Portland founder Matt Horvat and moderated by Lean Consultant Kjell Van Zoen. EVENT SPONSORS Grovemade Portland Made Keaton Averman & Sven Shoultz of Rose City Dig...

Thanks for checking out our very first episode of the Lean Portland podcast. We explain what our intent is for our podcast, and answer the question "do you use the original Japanese lean terms in your work?"