Quality Time With MoreSteam

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Melissa Sherman joins the show. Melissa is vice chair of the Michigan Lean Consortium. She is also an industrial engineer, longtime Lean practitioner, teacher, and consultant. Melissa spent years with utility companies before moving into consulting work that often brings Lean together with ISO standards. As you'll hear, she has the ability to make co...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Ken Robinette joins host Dan Swartwout. Ken is MoreSteam's Vice President of Business Development and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. He spends his days talking with OpEx leaders about what works and where things might be headed next. Ken has also been on the road at events like the ASQ World Conference and the IISE Healthcare Conference, where h...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Thomas DeMarco joins host Dan Swartwout. Thomas holds a master's degree in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences with a concentration in Applied Statistics. He is also MoreSteam's principal statistician. Thomas started his career helping engineers and operators at Eastman Chemical figure out what their data was actually saying, and he has been doing...

Kirk Harper is a longtime continuous improvement practitioner and the author of  The Book on Successful Transformation: Structural Readiness and the Governance of Integrity Under Pressure . More importantly, he has seen quite a few "big transformations" that looked great in a slide deck but fell apart in real life. On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Kirk joins host Dan Swartwout to ta...

Known worldwide as an expert in strategy and operational excellence, Billy Ray Taylor is the CEO and president of LinkedXL, chairman of the board of AME, and the author of The Winning Link. Before founding LinkedXL, Billy served as a global operations leader at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, where he led major manufacturing turnarounds and helped drive significant performance improvements and pro...

April Thomas first joined the show six months ago for Episode 40. A lot has happened since then. For example, April has been on the road sharing her expertise. April has presented at the ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference and the Virginia and DC SHRM Conference. Her message is the same everywhere she goes. The soft stuff can actually be the hardest stuff. And your organization's success with the so...

AI is making things faster. Find out why that's not always the same as making things better. On this episode of Quality Time With MoreSteam, Xander Hathaway joins the podcast. Xander studied computer science at Notre Dame. He earned his master's in information and data science from UC Berkeley. And for nearly five years, he has been VP of Product Development at MoreSteam, which means he spends his...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, we welcome back Rich "Raz" Razgaitis to the show. Host Dan Swartwout has known Raz since the second grade. Raz was also the second guest ever on Quality Time with MoreSteam. That was two years ago, and as you will learn, a lot has happened since then. Raz is the co-founder and CEO of FloWater, a company on a mission to restore clean drinking water ac...

What does a grocery store in Philadelphia have to do with running a billion-dollar operation? If you're 17-year-old Joe Baker, quite a lot, actually. Joe started bagging groceries at 17. By 24, he was the youngest store manager in company history. And by 32, he was running a billion-dollar business for Hertz in Los Angeles. Today, Joe Baker is the COO of Veritext and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, a...

This episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam focuses on leadership in service of others. Adelaido "Ad" Godinez is a retired Army colonel with 31 years of service. He has held senior roles across both the public and private sectors and brings one of the most impressive resumes the show has ever seen. As this episode shows, he's just as honest as he is accomplished. How is leadership affected by pres...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Jon Dario joins the show. Jon is currently the CEO of Edison Properties. He has also spent over 30 years translating operational excellence principles across industries most people think are completely different. For example, Jon ran Gap's busiest store in New York City. He oversaw 240 locations and $1.7 billion in business at Travelex. Plus, he's go...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Evan Unger joins the show. Evan is the Managing Partner at Schwartz + Associates. He's spent over 30 years helping organizations work together. Evan's held leadership roles at Merck and CommonSpirit Health. One time, he even facilitated the meeting where his own position got eliminated. It's exactly as awkward and fascinating as it sounds. Here's Eva...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Darren Walsh joins the show. Darren is a Lean leadership coach and author with over 30 years driving transformations across industries like medical devices, aerospace, and healthcare. Oh, and also video games. We definitely talk about video games. Darren wrote the book Making Lean and Continuous Improvement Work: A Leader's Guide to Increasing Consis...

Quality Time with MoreSteam is starting 2026 by bringing back one of the most popular episodes from 2025. Host Dan Swartwout opens the show with a look back at the amazing lineup of guests who joined the show last year, from Shingo Prize winners to Lean Enterprise Institute board members to college professors and healthcare leaders. Then, Dan introduces one of his favorite interviews from last yea...

Grant Gemberson just wanted to push that year-end Kaizen event into January and get on with his holiday to-do list. Instead, Gemberson received an unexpected visit from three ghosts: the Ghost of Projects Past, the Ghost of Present Performance, and the Ghost of Future States. (You know where this is going, right?) In this special holiday edition of Quality Time with MoreSteam, host Dan Swartwout s...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, host Dan Swartwout shares highlights from a recent MoreSteam webinar with company president Peg Pennington. That webinar was titled "Driving Strategic Alignment with the Lean Management System." It was one of MoreSteam's most anticipated (and successful) webinars of the year. During her presentation, Peg focused on a familiar problem. The strategy se...

Steve Adams brings decades of real experience to Quality Time with MoreSteam. He graduated from West Point and served in the Army Corps of Engineers. Eventually, Steve spent thirty years at Procter & Gamble, where he drove improvement on a global scale. Along the way, Steve even got Deming's autograph. Yes, the W. Edwards Deming! Host Dan Swartwout talks to Steve about solving problems and the com...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Dave Harry joins the show. Dave is well known throughout the world of continuous improvement as "The Process Whisperer." Before becoming a Lean Six Sigma legend, Dave spent years as a US Navy helicopter pilot. He even gave Paul Newman a helicopter ride! (Yes, the Paul Newman.) As Dave explains, helicopter pilots understand Six Sigma better than most...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Kim Scibelli joins the show. Kim is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt who leads supply chain and operations at AVS Bio. And after coaching teams through transformations for years, Kim has learned that you can't "pizza party" your way to culture change. Why do people say they want things to get better but resist when changes actually happen? Kim talks about...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Dr. Lars Maaseidvaag joins the show to talk about one of his areas of expertise, process modeling and discrete event simulation. Lars has worked in continuous improvement for over 30 years. He's also from Ann Arbor, Michigan, which creates some good natured tension when he talks to Ohio State graduate (and your host) Dan Swartwout. In easy-to-underst...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, April Thomas joins the show. Most Lean Six Sigma professionals didn't start their careers as hospice social workers. April did. April is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt whose mission is to be an advocate, a catalyst, and a coach for transformational change. Being a hospice social worker taught her about empathy and helping people through difficult transi...

Brent Godwin of The Lubrizol Corporation steps into the spotlight on this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam. Earlier this year, Brent attended MoreSteam's Best Practices for Operational Excellence Conference (BP4OpX) for the very first time. At the conference, leaders in operational excellence and continuous improvement share b est practices during keynote presentations, workshops, and peer-t...

Dan welcomes back Eric Olson to Quality Time with MoreSteam. Eric is a professor of industrial technology at Cal Poly State University and lead of the Future of People at Work Initiative. In this episode, the conversation shifts focus from AI to workplace dynamics and lean education. At the start of the conversation, generational differences in today's workforce take center stage . Then, Eric and...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Dan Swartwout welcomes Taylor Pack, Senior Manager of Process at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Taylor started her career working retail at Cracker Barrel. She became a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt through her experience at Bridgestone and the U.S. Coast Guard. Now she uses continuous improvement to help grant more wishes for children with critical...

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, host Dan Swartwout welcomes Josh Howell, President of the Lean Enterprise Institute. Josh went from Starbucks barista to leading lean transformations at thousands of locations worldwide. Now he's working alongside lean legends Jim Womack, John Shook, and Peter Ward. Josh shares how his store was randomly selected for Starbucks' "model cafe" experimen...