Tag Archive for: LEAN

Lean Leader Course Launches in February

Registration is now open for the 2023 Lean Leader Course, a program to equip individuals to help lead a nursery/greenhouse transformation. The series begins in-person February 9.

The Lean Leader Course consists of four dynamic in-person workshops, on-site tours, and hands-on assignments to develop Lean and Leadership skills. Graduates improve their communication, get better results from their team, and adopt powerful tools to reduce waste in their organizations. 

“I was blown away with everything I learned,” said Stacia Lynde, Propagation Manager with Bailey Nurseries’ Dayton site. “And what a great group of people to network with! The future is bright in our industry knowing they are a part of it. Thank you for everything you taught us. What an experience. I’m a much better manager because of this course!”

Participants will join other business leaders on hosted tours of companies well into their Lean transformation. Students will see Lean concepts in action, such as standard work, visual controls, one-piece flow, and more, then participate in discussions immediately afterward for insight and application.

“This course gave me the best framework to make effective improvements,” said Elizabeth Brentano, Robinson Nursery Potting Line Manager. “I learned a thorough approach to change and gained the tools to communicate effectively with others in the company.”

In-class sessions begin on Thursday, February 9 and will be held at the Oregon Association of Nurseries, 29751 SW Town Center Loop West in Wilsonville, Oregon.

For more information and to register, contact Elizabeth Peters, 503-250-2235 or epeters@petersco.net. Details are available online here, or click here to download the brochure.

Nurseries Work Together to Solve Labor Challenges and Reduce Waste

Rising labor costs. A shrinking labor pool. Competition for skilled workers. Businesses across the U.S. are deploying Lean to deal with these critical issues. Some West Coast companies are taking this further by developing Lean leaders together.

Lean is a proven method for eliminating waste that results in more value to customers, delivered at a lower cost, in a shorter time, with fewer defects and less human effort. Deployed effectively, Lean not only reduces waste but increases employee engagement—a critical factor in retaining workers.

The Lean Leader Course involves a small group of people who learn principles and methods, and then apply them to processes in each other’s businesses. Students complete online and in-class training, then serve on improvement events at different sites throughout the year.

These “kaizen events” involve direct, hands-on changes at the hosting company with a professional facilitator. The team makes rapid changes to immediately gain improvements and reinforce learning.

During the group’s first event in 2022, Bailey Nurseries’ Yamhill Propagation site hosted a kaizen event to reduce waste and develop standard work for liner pulling and processing. 

Three teams right-sized the crew, standardized setup time, developed standard work and reduced product touches. More important, the event team engaged the crew in improving the flow of the overall operation. 

The process now requires four fewer crew members to accomplish the same amount of work. Lead time was reduced by nearly 20 percent.

“The Peters and Lean Leader Course members helped us identify the waste and eliminate unnecessary steps,” said Scott Cowan, West Coast Container Manager with Bailey Nurseries. “This has resulted in streamlined processes and the ability to better utilize our production labor.”

Some results from last year’s Lean Leader Course:

  • Reduced product touches by 60 percent, cut searching time by 57 percent and improving productivity by more than 30 percent in a shipping operation at Bailey Nurseries’ Dayton operation.
  • Increased productivity by 53 percent by eliminating searching time and standardizing work for pulling product at JLPN of Salem.
  • Cut product touches in half and increased productivity by 52 percent in a container planting operation at Robinson Nursery of McMinnville.

Lean Leader Course enrollment for 2023 is open to new students starting in November. To learn more, contact Elizabeth Peters at epeters@petersco.net. 

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The Peters Company helps horticulture companies make dramatic improvements to productivity, safety, quality, teamwork and cost by applying Lean. They can be reached at info@petersco.net or 503-250-2235, or visit www.petersco.net.

Lean Practitioners Share Their Knowledge at the 2022 Farwest Show

Don’t miss your chance to learn about Lean directly from top nursery growers and practitioners in horticulture! Farwest 2022, the “biggest green industry show in the Western U.S.” is August 24 – 26 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon.

Here are three opportunities to learn how Lean can have a big impact on your business (click on each title for details):


(PANEL) Simple Improvement Projects Every Business Should Take On This Year

Lean has transformed green industry companies here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve assembled a group of Oregon’s most effective nursery, greenhouse and garden center leaders who have applied Lean thinking to their businesses. They will share Lean-based, simple improvement projects that you can apply to your organization. Come and glean wisdom from these outstanding leaders, and bring your questions for the Q&A session afterward. Moderated by Elizabeth Peters, Vice President, The Peters Company.

Panelists:
Mark Bigej, Chief of Operations, Al’s Garden & Home
John Lewis, Owner, JLPN
Chris Robinson, Nursery Manager, Robinson Nursery
Ben Verhoeven, President, Peoria Gardens


Measuring for Change—the Lean Way!

“In God we trust. All others must bring data.” This quote by W. Edwards Deming refers to the significance of data measurement in doing business. This seminar answers questions like: How do we choose what to measure? Which metrics give us the best prospect of achieving our goals? How can we use data to manage and motivate labor effectively — and how do we use all this information to improve our business? This seminar looks at measures for different levels of a company. It offers an approach to implementing metrics and common pitfalls to avoid. Measurements drive behavior. What is driving your business? Presented by Rick and Elizabeth Peters, The Peters Company. 


SPANISH ONLY – Case Study: Applying Lean Principles to Pulling Orders at JLPN

In February 2022, JLPN hosted a rapid improvement event focused on its process of pulling customer orders. Learn how the team applied Lean principles to reduce motion and defects and increase productivity while improving communication and teamwork in their order pulling process. Presented by Carlos Vergara, Lean Manager, JLPN.


Visit https://farwestshow.com for complete information. Hope to see you there!

Click here to register now

Is Going Lean the Antidote for Your Labor Shortage?

These days, labor shortages top the list of daily challenges for just about every green business in the U.S. and Canada. But Chris Robinson says his company has not only won the struggle but is becoming an industry leader by centering its efforts on creating both lean production processes and a lean working culture.

In this story by Greenhouse Grower magazine, business leaders share why Lean is “a big advantage to growers who are having trouble finding labor.”

https://www.greenhousegrower.com/management/is-going-lean-the-antidote-for-your-labor-shortage/

Lean but Clean

Published in Digger magazine, May 2021

Early last spring we sat in the office of an Oregon nursery client. As Lean consultants for this company, we were there as the owner faced a crisis. He worked through scenarios and pondered how to survive a possible massive interruption to their greenhouse business.

We had just flown in from a client in Ohio, where restaurants had been shuttered and the airport was like a ghost town. No one knew what would happen next.

Uncertainty was a common theme throughout 2020. Wholesale growers didn’t know if their customers would be deemed “essential” — or if they would be forced to close their own doors to protect employees and risk total crop loss.

For nurseries who have begun to adopt Lean principles — also known as the Toyota Production System (TPS) — uncertainty is something to become comfortable with.

Lean’s approach is “learn-as-you-go.” Team members are trained to solve problems daily. Then, when a real crisis hits, habits of responding and learning from those responses are already in place to help deal with big problems.

Ben Verhoeven, president and owner of greenhouse grower Peoria Gardens in Albany, Oregon, said Lean has helped the nursery adapt.

“The Toyota Production System has given us a way to look past all of the difficulties and limitations of the pandemic,” he said. “It is really forward-thinking; it’s about the future, not the past. That is healthy for our company and the mental health of our team.”

Plug and seedling grower JLPN Inc., based in Salem,  Oregon, started reducing their exposure risk with Lean well ahead of the pandemic.

“By deploying Lean five years ago, we focused on doing more work with less resources, and making it easier to complete a process,” said John Lewis, president and owner. “We were already doing many things in smaller teams than we did historically. Processes such as container grading and seedling grading are completed with teams of 5–9 people versus 8–12. The smaller teams decreased cross-exposure and improved the safety of our employees.

“When the restrictions of COVID-19 came into play, our practices already in place allowed us to essentially operate business as usual, which was a massive win.”

Lean, the pandemic and waste

Lean is described as “the relentless pursuit of the elimination of waste.” Waste is defined as any activity that does not add value in the eyes of the paying customer. There are seven identified forms of waste:

  • Transportation of product, information, or raw materials
  • Inventory of product, information, or raw materials
  • Motion, or movement of people
  • Waiting of people, product, information, or raw materials
  • Overproduction – producing more than the customer needs
  • Overprocessing – doing more than is needed
  • Defects – rework or scrap

The pandemic forced nurseries to change their processes, often to proect the health and safety of workers by preventing the transmission of the pathogen. This has resulted in both increased waste, and reduced waste, in nurseries.

“Clearly, we have increased motion and overprocessing with all of the extra cleaning we are doing this year,” said Shane Brockshus, the chief operations officer for Bailey Nurseries, the Minnesota-based breeder and grower that also has farms in Oregon and Washington.

“We have limited people in certain areas and on certain jobs — examples being our container shipping dock and a sticking line in propagation — to allow for distancing. This has meant either moving people around more to do the work, or just slowing down a process. We are sending extra vehicles out to the fields to limit passengers. We have people spending a lot of time managing masks, putting up barriers, creating hoop houses for distanced lunch spaces, etc. These are all important safety measures that we take seriously for the health of our employees, but they are also new burdens to the business and our managers that we did not have before COVID-19.”

Peoria Gardens “saw increased motion and transportation, as we had to stretch out some of our processes — transplanting and propagation in particular,” Verhoeven said. “We’re batching more in our shipping, which leads to more inventory and product waiting. Shipping loads were not level, with some very busy days and some very slow days. We also saw a few defects due to pushing production as fast as we could. We had to order excess inventory of tags, in order to respond to the higher demand and the long lead time required.”

Change presents opportunity

Most Lean nurseries view the pandemic as an incredible moment in history.

“We saw the pandemic as an opportunity to think broadly about larger wastes and how we could eliminate them,” said Verhoeven. “Some changes made during the pandemic are ones we want to keep, and some we want to stop. We pictured our business as a house, and we’re moving to a new place. What do we want to unpack – and not unpack when all this is over?”

“[Bailey Nursery’s Production Manager] Scott Cowan has worked hard at timely cleanliness of our container farm,” Brockshus said. “This, combined with the improved ship-through of the farm, has things more orderly and organized, which results in decreased waste in most all our processes.”

Green industry trade associations across the country were effective voices for keeping the industry running in 2020. Because of that, most nurseries experienced higher sales volume this year, as consumers sheltered at home and played in their gardens. This kept nursery inventories low, which Lean leaders recognize as significant waste reduction.

“Something to celebrate has been reduced inventory to take care of every day,” Brockshus said. “We have been blessed with higher sell-through of container and greenhouse inventory. This gets product off the ground and at the right time, which directly reduces defects.”

But the constantly depleted inventories kept growers on their toes, as they were forced to adapt and keep product available and moving.

“We’re working harder to put the voice of the customer into our production planning,” Verhoeven said. “Our old way would have been to forecast 6–8 months in advance of the shipping season and ride with that through the year. This year, during the heavy season, we were re-visiting the plan as often as three times per week because customer demand far outstripped our forecasting. While that might have been over-processing at the time, we’re building more flexibility into the production plan to respond to customer demand.”

Adapting to change

Change is at the heart of Lean. Many refer to it as “continuous improvement.” The companies that master this improvement will gain a competitive advantage.

Like our nursery clients, we have had to change as consultants. We have moved our training classes to online delivery, and we’re finding new ways to deliver value to Oregon Lean Consortium members, even as they can’t be together in the same room, face to face.

One way the group has adapted is developing ongoing private discussions with top executives at the member companies. Leaders discuss their challenges and how they overcame them.

A recent topic was leadership development opportunities that have arisen since the pandemic. As employees need to self-quarantine, either from known exposure to COVID-19 or showing cold/flu symptoms, nurseries have stepped up their cross-training of staff so work can continue.

“This experience has highlighted the importance of multi-skilled employees,” said Verhoeven. “We take safety very seriously at Peoria, so you can’t come to work with even the sniffles. This means we have more people on sick leave, or coming in and out of quarantine. We currently have one person on a travel-based quarantine. We deal with all the absence by training up as many people as possible. Our goal is that three people are able to do every job, and one person is able to do three jobs.”

Nurseries deploying TPS use the cross-training matrix as a visual control for advancing critical skills needed in different areas of the business. This matrix shows the skills mastery level of each person in a visual format for all to see.

Improvement events look different

An important Lean practice is running regular improvement workshops, called “kaizen events.” These are rapid, highly focused change activities by selected individuals from inside and outside a process. The team makes dramatic improvements to productivity, safety, quality, or lead time in that area of the business.

Kaizen events have been a challenge this year, with six-foot physical distancing, sanitizing requirements and occupancy limits.

Traditionally, Oregon Lean Consortium members work together to run kaizen events in each others’ businesses. This year, all consortium activities are moved online and members have opted not to visit other companies. We’re still facilitating kaizen events, following strict safety guidelines. However, member companies are not able to enjoy the benefit of sharing the experience.

Some nurseries are developing their business strategy using policy deployment.

“This year JLPN decided to focus less on specific process-flow kaizen events and to launch policy deployment,” said Lewis.

“Having a Lean mindset is making the challenge of introducing policy deployment much easier,” said Lewis. “Now we can focus on a macro-win scenario for JLPN that will be made easier by our previous Lean activities.”

Policy deployment is a strategic decision-making tool that unifies and aligns resources on the critical initiatives needed to accomplish business objectives. It unifies and aligns people and establishes clearly measurable targets and accountability.

“It is the difference between the owner having a bunch of ideas that wouldn’t have fully come to fruition, and the team coming up with their own greater improvements, then committing to making them happen,” Verhoeven said. “Policy deployment really helped us in 2020 to prepare for the pandemic. We introduced new services like pre-pricing. It helped us pick and load our deliveries to make them easier for customers to receive. These are all things that wouldn’t have happened this year without a robust policy deployment in place.”

Uncertainty will always be with us

We are so impressed with the resiliency and optimism of Oregon nurseries deploying Lean. These leaders challenge us out of the status quo — and that’s the same challenge the pandemic has offered us, as well. It’s given us the chance to envision the improved condition of our industry, and discover new ways to provide more value to our customers.

“In spite of everything that has happened, we have made some big, exciting improvements,” Verhoeven said. “I’m so proud of our team. I’m impressed that we can still make changes when so much is in flux. We’re working hard toward a better future rather than gnashing our teeth about an uncomfortable present.”


Elizabeth Peters is vice president of The Peters Company, a lean consultancy. She has challenged leaders and facilitated hundreds of improvement events in various types of businesses and industries since 2009.  She can be reached at 503-250-2235, epeters@petersco.net, or www.petersco.net

Bailey Nurseries – 5S Team Report-out

A group of West Coast leaders with Bailey Nurseries formed a learning group that took our Lean Foundations Online course together and applied 5S principles to areas of their multiple sites. One team prepared this engaging video and presented it to the group as their report-out. We really enjoyed it and hope you do, too!

Lean Foundations Training Now Available On-Demand

The Peters Company today announced the first on-demand release of their most popular training for industry professionals, “Lean Foundations.” The course is available in a new learning management system at https://learn.petersco.net.

The course was reviewed by more than a dozen volunteers from a range of industries—including several leaders with the Oregon Lean Consortium. 

“We could not have reached this milestone without the exceptional feedback and support from our reviewers,” said instructor Rick Peters. “We’re humbled and grateful for them. Their insights elevated the course to benefit future subscribers.”

Online Course Delivers Critical Knowledge to Reduce Waste and Improve Productivity 

View the course description

Subscribers to Lean Foundations will walk away from this fun, interactive course armed with the critical principles of Lean—also known as the Toyota Production System. The course unveils concepts that have helped organizations across the globe develop their workforce and dramatically improve their bottom line.  

“When our team took the Lean Foundations course and began to employ what we had learned, we began creating a uniting culture that had a positive long-term effect…on not only our people, but the quality of our products,” said JLPN owner John Lewis.

On-Demand Skills to Overcome Challenges 

Online learning with The Peters Company imparts the knowledge and tools businesses need to reduce waste and increase profitability. 

“Most businesses face enormous challenges today,” said Peters. “Rising costs, low availability of labor, increasing taxes and regulatory challenges, and now significant hurdles with the pandemic. They’re just trying to run their business. This online training offers crucial knowledge to address these challenges.” 

Lean Foundationswill prove to be a great introduction of Lean principles to a broader audience,” said Jerrin Victor, TerViva Vice President. “I would highly recommend this as an introductory course.”

The course is available to individual subscribers at https://learn.petersco.net. More courses and workshops will be added this month—including the Spanish Language version of Lean Foundations. Corporate subscriptions will be launched soon for organizations with ongoing training needs throughout the year.

For more information, visit www.petersco.net or contact Elizabeth Peters at epeters@petersco.net.

‘Lean’ nurseries boost productivity

Photo By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press – Published Jan 10, 2020

Mateusz Perkowski of the Capital Press newspaper recently highlighted ways nurseries have effectively applied Lean principles in the past year.

The story quoted three businesses who have deployed Lean principles to identify and reduce waste in processes: Peoria Gardens of Albany, Weyerhaeuser Turner Regeneration, and JLPN of Salem. Here’s an excerpt:

“In retrospect, the inefficiencies at Peoria Gardens near Corvallis, Ore., were hiding in plain sight.

Though the problems now seem glaring, the nursery’s managers and workers never noticed simply because that’s how things had always been done, said Ben Verhoeven, the company’s president.

The company’s eyes were opened to these issues last year while participating in the Oregon Lean Consortium, which helps nurseries and other businesses adopt the waste-cutting principles of “lean” production.

By “co-locating” all the necessary equipment in one place and clarifying each worker’s role in “sticking” cuttings into containers, Peoria Gardens developed a continuous flow of filling the plug trays with new plants. Trays were made available as needed, reducing the wait time and unnecessary inventory.

With these simple changes, the nursery was able to cut its “sticking” crew from 20 to 11 people, a labor reduction of 45%. Meanwhile, the amount of time required to plant each cutting decreased from about 8 seconds to 4.5 seconds per plug tray cell.”

Read the full story online here.

Oregon Lean Consortium Reports 2019 Year-End Results

Members of the Oregon Lean Consortium reported significant improvements when they met for final reports in Wilsonville on December 11, 2019.

Leaders from seven Oregon nursery, greenhouse and supplier companies worked together for one year with a professional facilitator to develop skills and apply the principles of Lean in each others’ organizations. The following gains were among the reported improvements:

Read more