Jason Furness

Executive coach and CEO

Manufacturship

Jason Furness, CEO and founder of Manufacturship, is an executive coach who provides lean manufacturing training and lean consulting in a pragmatic, hands-on way that gets clients results in a fast and sustainable manner. Furness oversees the development and delivery of Manufacturship’s curriculum, leads the mentoring of business owners and managers, and sponsors all client projects. During his 20-year career he has led 30 transformation projects for small and medium-sized enterprises. Furness is the co-author of Manufacturing Money: How CEOs Rapidly Lift Profits in Manufacturing (Amazon Digital Services, 2015).

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 16:58
What Hobbies Can Tell You About Project ManagementWhen ‘it’ll be fun’ becomes ‘blunderful’
Thu, 06/13/2019 - 12:02
One of my hobbies is building and flying radio-controlled model aircraft. Not the small foam ones from Kmart but larger 2-m wingspan craft. It is a lot of fun and usually very relaxing. My birthday was a few months ago, and for the first time I was…
Competency Is a Progression, Not a Statement of AchievementDon’t aspire to mastery; perspire for mastery
Mon, 10/29/2018 - 12:03
All organizations are looking to increase the competency of their employees and, hopefully, of themselves. Looking at this from the base level up, in a practical sense our competency evolves with experience, expertise, and possibly, time. 1.…
Tales From the Real World: Finding the Weakest LinkReducing downtime in a cumbersome production system
Mon, 06/25/2018 - 12:02
I would like to share with you a tale from the real world. It’s an extract from the book Michael McLean and I wrote, Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2015). It offers an example of the “Five Focusing Steps” to improvement,…
The No. 1 Reason Why Continuous Improvement Projects FailThere is an effect we want to repeat every hour, every day, forever
Wed, 02/28/2018 - 12:02
In a previous article I wrote about the reasons why so many lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and other improvement programs fail. In this article I’m going to expand on reason No. 1: the Academy Award Syndrome. Academy Award Syndrome The Academy…
Identify and Remove Bottlenecks in Your BusinessManagers, heed these dangers while en route to a Black Belt
Tue, 11/14/2017 - 12:01
You have defined what you want as an outcome of the change program; you have looked at how to understand your financial statements and how to use them to assess options. You have looked at the obstacles that lay in your path. Now we are going to…
Four States of Mind, Part 2Getting to productive and profitable
Tue, 07/18/2017 - 12:02
Following on from yesterday’s column (which can view here), we explore the right-hand side of the diagram below and see the outlook you can adopt that is the most productive for you personally. Transitioning the thought processes of your team to…
Four States of Mind, Part 1The problem
Mon, 07/17/2017 - 12:02
I have been obsessed with how to lift both myself and others in pursuit of a goal for more than 30 years. Ever since I began to play competitive cricket as an 11-year-old, the issue of how to improve performance has been an almost daily question I…
Three Scenarios for Financials-Based ImprovementAre the desired changes actually worth the effort?
Thu, 04/13/2017 - 12:01
In a previous column based on our recent book, Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital, 2015), we explained how to maximize ROI. Here we describe some changes that business owners and managers can make on their way toward becoming a Black Belt in a…
A Black Belt Is a White Belt Who Never QuitYou can achieve real and sustainable transformation
Tue, 10/25/2016 - 16:35
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital Services, 2015) by Jason Furness and Michael McLean. See the article on the Manufacturship blog. I n martial arts, the level of skill of the practitioner is recognized by the…
Tie the RopeMaximize throughput, not production
Mon, 08/01/2016 - 15:46
For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re aware of an issue that’s holding your enterprise performance back, and you know what to do about it. At that point, there are seven key actions you can take to rapidly implement change, which in turn will…