Welcome to Manufacturing Greatness: The 3 Reasons Behind Our New Name

Operations Kickstart is now Manufacturing Greatness!

After years of helping manufacturing organizations combat disconnect by connecting the top to the shop floor, my team and I are excited to keep up the same work under a new name.

Why The Change?

While change can be scary and uncomfortable, this shift felt right for three big reasons.

1. A Name That Feels Like Home

When I decided on the name Operations Kickstart in 2016, it combined many of my favorite things: my favorite Motley Crue song “Kickstart Your Heart,” KISS lettering, my Honda CR125 dirt bike, and my passion for helping organizations “kickstart” their operations. The name is also extra special because the logo and name was brainstormed with my mentor, the late great Rudy Gheysen and his daughter Lyndsey. But the Operations Kickstart never felt like home to me, leading me to search for a name that would fully describe my mission.

2. Symbolizing What My Clients Need

While looking for a new name, I wanted to find something to symbolize what I brought to my manufacturing clients . . . and I came to realize it wasn’t just a “kickstart!” Instead, I wanted to fully transform organizations and help them find small, continuous ways to improve connection, stay curious, and pursue greatness every day. Long-term change doesn’t happen with a kickstart, and I wanted a name that would reflect this realization.

3. Welcoming Diana

The new name also reflects a time of exciting change for me and my team, including the addition of Diana Soares as a partner in the business. Diana brings 30 years of manufacturing industry experience, and is an expert in building relationships and getting results. Diana is also a certified Genos Emotional Intelligence practitioner and a graduate of the Center of Executive Coaching. She has traveled North America working with plants to connect the top to the shop.

Let’s Manufacture Greatness!

With these reasons in mind, I decided on Manufacturing Greatness. It’s a name that symbolizes our mission of guiding manufacturing teams into greatness by bridging disconnect, fostering curious dialogues, and sharing the tools for finding stronger leadership and more productive outcomes.

To learn more, contact us and see how we can help you manufacture greatness in your organization!

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website