KPI Fireside: A Continuous Improvement Podcast

KPI Fire
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

KPI Fireside is the podcast for business leaders, process improvement professionals, and anyone passionate about making things better. Through insightful interviews with industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers, we explore the stories behind successful Continuous Improvement journeys. Hosted by KPI Fire, this podcast dives deep into Lean Six Sigma, Strategy Execution, KPI Management, and Operational Excellence—helping you overcome obstacles and drive real impact in your organization.

  1. 6d ago

    Ram Sukumar on Scaling Continuous Improvement Across 13 Manufacturing Plants

    Most CI programs start with good intentions and stall at one plant. Ram Sukumar built one that works across thirteen. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Ram Sukumar, Director of Continuous Improvement for Hexpol Compounding Americas. Over the last six years, Ram has built and deployed the Hexpol Production System across 13 manufacturing plants in the US and Mexico, trained more than 1,100 employees across white, yellow, and green belt programs, and created a culture where CI is not a program that happens to employees but something they genuinely own. Ram is one of the most thoughtful and people-first CI leaders you will find anywhere in manufacturing today. 🔻 Why understanding the culture of a plant before you push a system into it is the difference between adoption and resistance 🔻 How Hexpol built a four-level belt program that starts with leadership training 🔻 How to standardize metrics across 13 plants so every managing director is learning from every other plant in real time 🔻 Why conflicting priorities kill more CI programs than lack of tools and how Hoshin planning finally solved it for Hexpol 🔻 How to scale AI into your operations without rushing in before your data and your people are ready 🔻 Why improvement is not an event or a program and what it looks like when your CEO believes that too 🔗 Connect with Ram Sukumar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramsukumar22/ 🔗 Learn more about Hexpol: https://www.hexpol.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Ram Sukumar on Scaling Continuous Improvement Across 13 Manufacturing Plants

  2. Sep 7

    Keshawn Cupid on The Next Generation of Continuous Improvement

    What if the biggest barrier to improvement in your organization is not the process, the tools, or even the data? What if it is the way people see the problem in the first place? In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris welcomes back Keshawn Cupid, founder of Modern Kaizen and a lean and operational excellence expert on the cutting edge of human-centered AI transformation. Keshawn works with organizations across manufacturing, consulting, and professional development, and brings a rare combination of emotional intelligence, lean rigor, and practical AI implementation to every engagement. His approach starts not with tools but with mindset and he has written two books on exactly that. 🔻 Why a growth mindset is the only mindset that makes AI adoption actually work 🔻 How to introduce lean to a skeptical team without ever saying the word lean 🔻 Why the absence of reported problems is never the same as the absence of real problems 🔻 How to ask "what changed?" instead of "what is wrong?" and immediately get better answers 🔻 Why on-time delivery is one of the most manipulated metrics in manufacturing and what to measure instead 🔻 How to use AI as a thought partner to challenge your assumptions before you commit to a strategy 🔻 Why repeatable and rule-based processes are the first ones you should be targeting with AI 🔻 What emotional intelligence has to do with whether your lean transformation actually sticks 📚 Making the Transition: Inward to Outward Mindset by Keshawn Cupid: https://a.co/d/068Xgklf 📚 The Synergy Mindset by Keshawn Cupid: https://a.co/d/0b9299fF 🌐 Modern Kaizen: https://www.modernkaizen.com 🌐 Kaizen Edge X: https://kaizenedgex.co 🌐 MK Train X: https://mktrainx.co 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Keshawn Cupid on The Next Generation of Continuous Improvement

  3. Aug 31

    Alan Lucien on Building a High Performance Team

    What does it actually take to build a business you love running for 25 years without burning out, selling out, or losing yourself in the process? In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Alan Lucien, co-founder of EZ Process Pro, the ERP platform purpose-built for furniture and mattress retailers. Twenty-five years ago, Alan and his wife Jill could not find software that understood their family furniture business, so they built their own. That software now powers over 1,000 stores across the country, processes billions of dollars in annual furniture sales, and helped one customer scale from four showrooms to over 200 before selling for a billion dollars. 🔻 Why the two most important jobs of any leader have nothing to do with being the smartest person in the room 🔻 How to hire for core values instead of just skills so you never have to manage a cancer in your culture 🔻 Why every question someone brings you is a sign you are the bottleneck and what to do about it 🔻 How to run a weekly meeting that people actually want to show up to, including the push-up rule 🔻 How to set quarterly rocks that are objective, measurable, and do not blow up when life gets in the way 🔻 Why Alan asks "is that true?" before every major decision and what Navy SEALs taught him about honesty 🔗 Connect with Alan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-lucien-9a633b9/ 🔗 Learn more about EZ Process Pro: https://www.ezprocesspro.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Alan Lucien on Building a High Performance Team

  4. Aug 24

    Dr. Alan Barnard on Finding Your AI Bottleneck

    If AI is so powerful, why are most companies not getting results from it? The answer has everything to do with whether you are solving the right problem. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Dr. Alan Barnard, CEO of Goldratt Research Labs, decision scientist, and one of the world's leading experts in theory of constraints. Alan co-founded Goldratt Research Labs with Dr. Eli Goldratt, the creator of theory of constraints, and has spent decades helping organizations apply systems thinking to everything from supply chains to healthcare to AI adoption. 🔻 Why AI applied to the wrong bottleneck produces zero improvement no matter how powerful it is 🔻 How to tell in one question whether you have a doing bottleneck or a waiting bottleneck 🔻 Why intentionally creating a bottleneck can actually increase the overall output of your system 🔻 How to go from assembler to architect in the way you use AI so you stop being the constraint 🔻 Why outcome prompting beats method prompting and what context and constraints you have to give AI to get useful answers 🔻 How our emotions evolved as a decision making hack and why AI may need to develop something similar 🔻 How theory of constraints applies to your own health, energy, and the way your mitochondria functions 🔗 Connect with Dr. Alan Barnard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dralanbarnard/ 🌐 Books, white papers, and resources: https://www.standontheirshoulders.com/ 🌐 Eternity Health: https://www.eternityhealth.ai/ 🌐 Goldratt Research Labs: https://www.goldrattresearchlabs.com/ 🌐 Harmony Apps: https://www.harmonyapps.com/ 🌐 Dr. Alan Barnard: https://www.dralanbarnard.com/ 🌐 Coaching with Dr. Alan: https://coaching.dralanbarnard.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Dr. Alan Barnard on Finding Your AI Bottleneck

  5. Aug 17

    David Norris on Building a Culture of Improvement

    Most organizations treat continuous improvement like a project. The ones that actually get results treat it like a culture. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with David Norris. David Norris is the founder of Elevated Strategic Solutions, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations unlock capacity, improve performance, and align strategy with execution through operational excellence, continuous improvement, and data-driven decision-making. 🔻 Why improvement that skips the people always reverts the moment something goes wrong 🔻 How to use new employee onboarding to plant a CI mindset before old habits take hold 🔻 Why "we don't have time for this" is the single best signal that improvement is overdue 🔻 How to turn a budget request into a CI conversation before a single dollar gets approved 🔻 Why tracking both direct and indirect costs is where the real savings are hiding 🔻 Why CI and finance need to be working together if you want leadership to actually buy in 🔗 Connect with David Norris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-norris-17016b146/ 🌐 Learn more at Elevated Strategic Solutions: http://elevatedmtnsolutions.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    David Norris on Building a Culture of Improvement

  6. Aug 10

    John Hetherington on Why a 2x Growth Target Breaks Most Operations

    Most companies chasing a big growth target are solving the wrong problem. And the real constraint is usually hiding in plain sight. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with John Hetherington, founder of We Deliver Your Vision and a process optimization consultant with more than 25 years of experience helping CFOs and COOs turn ambitious boardroom targets into measurable operational results. John started his career at Deloitte and Ernst and Young, leading large-scale finance transformation programs before building his own firm around one simple idea: find the single constraint holding your operation back, remove it, and prove the business result actually improved. 🔻 Why the first thing a company thinks is broken almost never is the real constraint 🔻 Why automating a bad process with AI just helps you fail faster at larger scale 🔻 How to use three metrics instead of ten to actually hit your growth target 🔻 How to apply the three R's to decide whether a process is actually ready for AI 🔻 Why asking "how are you feeling about this?" is one of the most powerful questions in operations 🔻 How to manage AI like a new hire instead of handing it the keys to everything at once 💬 Comment "flow" on this episode to receive John's free five-step production flow framework for assessing your constraint and growth targets. 🔗 Connect with John Hetherington on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhetherington1/ 🌐 Learn more at We Deliver Your Vision: https://www.wedeliveryourvision.com/ 🎥 Watch John on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnHetherington.channel 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    John Hetherington on Why a 2x Growth Target Breaks Most Operations

  7. Aug 3

    Marc Levinson on Shipping Containers & Lessons for AI

    What can a steel shipping container teach us about artificial intelligence? More than you would think. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Marc Levinson, historian, economist, and author of The Box, the definitive history of the shipping container. Marc formerly served as finance and economics editor at The Economist, an economist at JP Morgan Chase, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 🔻 Why standardization is the hardest problem in any major innovation and how the container finally solved it 🔻 How a single change in how goods move can hollow out entire cities and create entirely new industries in places nobody expected 🔻 What Malcolm McLean's biggest wins and biggest losses teach us about betting on new technology 🔻 How to think about the jobs AI will displace before assuming everyone will simply adjust 🔻 Why the countries that handled the shift best had one thing in common that the US largely did not 🔻 What individuals working in disrupted industries can do right now to stay ahead of the wave 🔗 Learn more about Marc Levinson and his books: https://www.marclevinson.net/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Marc Levinson on Shipping Containers & Lessons for AI

  8. Jul 27

    Jhana Li on Founder Chaos to Scalable Systems

    The fires showing up in your business every week are not bad luck. They are a signal that something in your operations is broken underneath the surface. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Jhana Li, founder of Spyglass Ops, a firm that has pioneered the operator placement model, embedding a fractional COO directly into a business while the search for a permanent hire is underway. Jhana has been a COO for two startups, an operations coach for hundreds of founders, and has built one of the most practical and no-nonsense frameworks for how growing companies should think about the operations function, from the first ops hire all the way through to a fully scaled team. 🔻 Why every recurring fire in your business is data, not a crisis, and what it is actually telling you 🔻 How to know whether an operations problem is a systems issue or a people issue 🔻 Why managing to outcomes instead of inputs is what unlocks real team autonomy and AI adoption 🔻 How to build a job scorecard that works for hiring, onboarding, and performance all at once 🔻 Why really good operations looks like nothing and how to advocate for it anyway 🔻 How to tell the difference between an ops manager, a director of ops, and a COO so you hire the right level 🔻 Why AI layered onto broken systems just helps you sprint faster in the wrong direction 🔻 How to democratize SOP ownership so documentation never falls behind again 🔗 Connect with Jhana Li on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhana-li/ 🎥 Follow Jhana on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theJhanaLi 📱 Follow Jhana on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejhanali/ 🔗 Learn more about Spyglass Ops: https://bit.ly/4ftmOFR 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Jhana Li on Founder Chaos to Scalable Systems
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About

KPI Fireside is the podcast for business leaders, process improvement professionals, and anyone passionate about making things better. Through insightful interviews with industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers, we explore the stories behind successful Continuous Improvement journeys. Hosted by KPI Fire, this podcast dives deep into Lean Six Sigma, Strategy Execution, KPI Management, and Operational Excellence—helping you overcome obstacles and drive real impact in your organization.

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