We’ve talked about LEAN before on the show with our own experts, but you may wonder what it looks like in the real world. Today we’ll hear about using LEAN in the remodeling business from an award-winning design-build company that focuses on residential remodeling.
In this episode, Paul Kowalski shares his experiences in applying LEAN in his business with Victoria and Mark. His company recently implemented the process, and he says the results have already been eye-opening.
Paul Kowalski is the owner of PK Builders in Charlotte, NC, and a member of our Remodelers Advantage Roundtables group. PK Builders has a team of eight, including Paul, with four Project Managers, an Estimator, and a Draftsman.
PK Builders was experiencing growing pains in 2018 — bottlenecks in the design-build process, some cash-flow issues, higher overhead, so they called in Doug Howard for help. Paul says it was intimidating at first, but soon becomes second nature to look for ways to speed up processes. It started with 16 feet of paper festooned with sticky notes detailing steps in the design process. They began by diving into the design process, and he discusses how they did it, including:
- Explaining it to your staff
- Sharing in chunks
- Finding the hiccups
- Why the people closest to the work have the best feedback
- Getting over the intimidation factor
- Timelines and swim lanes
- Not including time for revisions
- Building in collaboration up front
- Unintended consequences
- And more …
Paul and his team are deep in the LEAN process, and excited to see what their future brings, including how it affects their positive cash flow. They’ll be looking at the Production process as their experience with LEAN continues. We’ll check in with Paul on how it’s going in the future.
Here’s that 16-ft. piece of paper!
Getting LEAN
See the video Paul talks about outlining LEAN principles from the Food Bank For New York City on YouTube.
If you want to learn more about LEAN, and download the free process mapping tool, go to leanremodeling.com.