Learnings of a Lean Pioneer

Jim Lancaster, Owner and CEO of Lantech, talks with Josh Howell, LEI President, and Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy, about his lean journey and the decades-long transformation at his packaging-solutions company. Lantech, a lean pioneer, was highlighted in Jim Womack’s and Daniel Jones’ 1996 book Lean Thinking, and has steadily improved, growing the business 75% since 2020 despite economic and market factors that have derailed other companies.

Jim, author of The Work of Management, started at Lantech in high school when his father, Pat, was CEO. After college he worked in the financial industry, and then came back to Louisville to help run the family business. “I was very involved [as a participant] in the very first part of the lean transformation that we made back with Shingjutsu and consulting firm TBM way back in the early 90s... I grew up in the sales side of our business for the first four or five years before taking over and running the company in 1995, which is when I really started leading the charge on lean as opposed to just participating in the workshops... I’ve been around [lean] since the early 90s, for a really long time through its various terms and various epics. The core principles have not changed, and the value has not changed.”

In this frank, engaging conversation, the trio discuss:

• Jim’s growth as a lean leader and how important it is to bring others along in their learning, giving them the confidence to make change, especially as Lantech grew and he could no longer be personally involved with every process and problem.
• The need to accumulate incremental improvements and prevent successes from deteriorating so that each “chunk” of improvement adds to what has already been accomplished.
• Lantech’s management system, which consists of a problem-escalation process; 90-day rolling averages for quality, cost, delivery, and safety, with performances compared daily to trigger problem-solving; and process improvements using A3s and key task monitoring.
• The power of experiential learning, especially as changes fail and individuals “stub their toe” and cope with difficulties, and, as a leader, the need to patiently let them face their frustrations and work to “see the problem differently.”
• How the company survived the pandemic and had to reteach many lean principles to get over the necessary workarounds that were put in place to get through COVID.