Woodfin

Since 1977, Woodfin has served Richmond, Virginia, and the surrounding areas. They aim to be a trusted partner to their customers for all home comfort services, maintenance, and installation needs. They're also a leader in providing fuel oil, 24-hour emergency service, standby generators, plumbing, and electrical services. 

No matter what product or service each Woodfin entity delivers, ensuring top quality is paramount. Using KaiNexus to meet their continuous improvement needs allows them to ensure their product or service is top quality. 

Today you'll be able to hear from the Woodfin Team about the impact KaiNexus has made across their organization:

How KaiNexus Has Helped the Woodfin Team

Many organizations face challenges with visibility and collaboration on improvement work before coming to KaiNexus. At Woodfin, this was no exception. Before KaiNexus, they didn't have a way to communicate and collaborate across locations or even to execute on ideas well within departments.

Hear from Woodfin leaders on how KaiNexus has helped them to solve these challenges:

Lori McNeill, Billing & Credit Manager, shares that her department has made so many improvements since using KaiNexus that the efficiency has helped her team to tackle additional projects. With the time to accomplish this additional work, Lori was able to move up to her current manager role. 

Randy Wells, Safety Manager, has been with Woodfin for decades. As a leader, he has found KaiNexus puts more power in the frontline worker's hands. Instead of Randy needing to be accountable for all safety issues or improvements, the frontline workers can also take on this work. This process ultimately makes Woodfin a safer place to work as many people are now able to identify and execute improvements. 

Catherine Green, Retail Operations Manager, oversees the Pit Stop Convenience Stores improvement work. The store locations vary in distance, some almost two hours apart, so it can be challenging for the stores to learn and communicate with one another. Now with KaiNexus, they are able to have a weekly call to go over what is happening across locations without needing to travel to the store physically. 

Caitlin Olszewski, RVA Graphics & Wraps Manager, has found KaiNexus makes her job in marketing much more efficient. Teams across the Woodfin organization often need various marketing materials or collateral. By joining meetings where improvements or ideas are discussed, she can input the work into KaiNexus and take action on the requested marketing materials. This work done by Caitlin is now visible to the person who shared the idea, and they can see their idea come to life. 

How to Motivate Your Team to Use KaiNexus

As a CI Leader, you know firsthand how difficult it can be to engage your organization's individuals in CI. Additionally, it can be challenging to get these individuals to change the way they are used to doing improvement work, such as moving into a new system like KaiNexus. As a leader, it is essential to lead by example and make improvement work part of constant conversation with your team. 

Hear from Leaders at Woodfin on what they do to get their teams engaged in KaiNexus: 

Caitlin Olszewski, RVA Graphics & Wraps Manager, helps her team by not just 'talking the talk' but 'walking the walk.' Caitlin shares that she actively takes on "OFIs" herself (Woodfin calls their ideas 'OFI’s'), so she can show her team the simple process of submitting an "OFI" and how easy it can be to solve problems you may face in your organization. 

Bryan Vay, Director of Technical Services, and Lori McNeill, Billing & Credit Manager, try to make improvement work part of their team's consistent discussion. This approach ensures their teams actively participate in the conversation and problem-solving process. By being active leaders, Bryan and Lori can empower their teams to solve problems without "telling them the right answer." You could accomplish this by setting KaiNexus as an agenda item during a recurring meeting or when they hear someone discussing an idea asking them, "Have you put that in KaiNexus?"

Evan Graczyk, Continuous Improvement Manager, relies on the combination of self-guided learning along with in-person time to connect and ask questions about what they've learned. This approach shows his team this is a priority and that he cares about their success. By doing this, Evan is modeling to his team the importance of doing this work. Without Leaders making improvement work a priority, why would your frontline workers make it a priority, either? 

In a Continuous Improvement culture, it's always going to be that -- continuously improving. As we learn from Woodfin, one of the most important ways to sustain a CI culture is to constantly engage with your frontline users and show them that this work is a priority. Keeping KaiNexus top of mind is how KaiNexus will eventually become a habit in your organization, and improvement work will become second nature.