Last month, I spent a couple of days in Dallas at the 2019 Continuous Improvement Printing Conference, and it was a great event. They were celebrating their 30th Anniversary as a conference, which was a really cool milestone to be a part of.

We stayed for two full days of keynotes and presentations, although the conference also hosted plant tours, social events, and workshops. I’m hoping we’re able to make it out for all of those events next year, in addition to the presentations!

Monday opened with keynote speaker Sammy Obara of Honsha Associates. Sammy has many years of experience of continuous improvement with Toyota, and it was fascinating to hear his take on changing an organization’s mindset. He reframed the question “Why do we need to save an extra second?” to “Why do we need to spend an extra second?”. Even the smallest impacts can make a huge difference in the long run. I see this play out in my own work all the time - we’re a small team with big goals, so it’s absolutely critical that we maximize our efficiency. One thing I do to save seconds is to use a tool that automatically sorts my emails into folders, making it easy to filter through to get what I need quickly and come back to the rest later.

While all the presentations were great, I particularly enjoyed “Developing Better Coaching Habits” by Cheryl Jekiel and Taryn Davis’ presentation called “A Sustained CI Experience - Tools and Experience.” Each presenter brought a unique take on improvement and group activities that made the learning fun and interactive. There were so many interesting concurrent sessions that I was disappointed that I couldn’t make them all!

Now, aside from learning more about continuous improvement and finding potential organizations that could use KaiNexus, we love to meet and see our customers at conferences - especially when they are on-stage presenting.

In this case, The Standard Group, a printing company out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, presented on how they capture and manage improvement ideas in their organization. The Standard Group has been a KaiNexus customer since early 2017 and uses KaiNexus to capture improvements as well as incidents and “Good Catches.”

The room was packed for Nick Shonsky, The Standard Group’s Director of Continuous Improvement, as he walked the room through The Standard Group’s company history and their need to build a continuous improvement program. Sad that you missed it? Don’t worry; he’ll be hosting a KaiNexus webinar very soon! Sign up here to be notified about this and future webinars.

The best part about watching our customers on stage is seeing the engagement and attentiveness of the audience. Everyone is eager to learn more about the presenter’s processes, and questions are asked throughout the presentation. Seeing a presenter build a culture of continuous improvement on top of a technology platform is generally a new experience for most of the audience. I’m proud to help our customers improve their improvement efforts with KaiNexus!

Be sure to check your upcoming conference schedules for any KaiNexus customers on the list - and be on the lookout for Nick Shonsky’s upcoming KaiNexus webinar!