Kay is a Management Consultant, Improvement Strategist and Coach, Change Leader, Author and Speaker who partners with organizations to identify, value and capture lost opportunity and remove the organizational barriers that prevent sustainable change. Her simplified approach to improvement gives clients repeatable common-sense processes for increasing productivity, reducing costs, solving problems and changing a culture. Her first book titled "Building An Opportunity Culture" is available under Products/Books on this website.
Kay is certified in quality improvement and is a CMC (Certified Management Consultant). Only 1% of all consultants are awarded this certification, which is earned through client testimonials, ethical practices, and a working knowledge of consulting processes that maximize client value.
She is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants, National Speakers Association, American Society for Quality, Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, and Arizona Book Publishers Association. She is a past member of the Arizona Quality Alliance, Institute of Management Accountants, Industrial Minerals Association of North America (Best Practice Chair), Arizona Mining Association (Public Relations Chair), Arts and Business Council of Greater Phoenix, and the Gilbert AZ Economic Development Council.
· Focus on Lost Opportunity (production, cost, support groups)
o Broadened the Definition of Opportunity to raise awareness and focus on lost production, excess costs, and the cost of poor support from departments.
o "Disected" availability and utilization ratios into controllable and non-controllable subsets. Linked the controllable ratios to budgets and expansion capital.
o Used Process Optimums to quantify hidden process potential and integrate it into budgets and capital requests.
o Created value stream capacity models that highlighted system bottlenecks and hidden capacity. Placement of expansion capital was re-evaluated based on the findings from these models.
· Key Measures
o Tied Key Measures to lost opportunity, improvement potential, cost reduction and customer/supplier requirements.
o Established linkages between low level and high level measures to connect people to performance.
o Changed how departments worked together, how success was measured, how problems were solved.
· Project Management
o Emphasized follow-through by all departments to minimize delays.
o Completion date changed to include sustainability step - training and documentation required to capture and sustain improvement.
· Repeatable Start-Up Process (entire operation).
o Reduced delays by an average of 5 months and rework by several million dollars.
o Increased level of interaction between internal departments and state agencies.
o “Big Picture” training, expectations for collaboration, value added by all participating groups.
· Customer/Supplier Relationships
o Captured Process Requirements during interactive supplier/customer sessions. This activity changed the expectations for internal and external customer support – set new expectations for cooperation.
o Comprehensive Permitting Process - Included all parties/departments that touched the process, including outside consultants – reduced rework delays by 5 months via a checklist approach for each phase.
· Removing Barriers to Change, Culture Change
o Changed culture within operations, within maintenance and between operations and maintenance – on site daily with 3 plants over 12 months.
o Resolved management-induced conflict and confusion within and between departments.
o Set new expectations for proactive choices made by superintendents and supervisors.
o Emphasized follow-through that was consistent with words - avoided mixed messages.
o Designed and implemented missing processes to enable supervisors to meet expectations.
o Improved supervisor confidence through coaching on planning and training processes.
o Improved superintendent confidence on communications (with unit managers, finger-pointing, with supervisors), problem solving, “normalizing” perceived power within departments.
o Guidance in sponsoring and “clearing the roadblocks” for functional process improvement teams.
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