Optiprise Inc

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Welcome to Optiprise! We are proud to be the preeminent global proponent and resource for leading enterprises through a Lean transformation based on the Toyota Way.

Our Mission: Enable our client partners to apply the power of Lean and the Toyota Way to actualize a profound cultural transformation giving a sustainable competitive advantage.

We start by capitalizing on our unprecedented 25 year association with Toyota to gain a profound understanding of the Toyota Way and Lean principals.

We then rigorously analyze and distill the essence of the Toyota Way into our Lean approach through the academic process – part of our long association with the University of Michigan, the leading public research university

We cross check this with an unmatched network of collaborators and resources in academia and industry – individuals with a profound knowledge of Lean and the Toyota Way.

We learn by doing –With eleven years of engagements we learn and kaizen our approach through working with real enterprises in real situations. We continuously improve our practical, hands on approach to implementing Lean, consistent with the Toyota Way, for manufacturing and product development as well as other processes in a wide variety of industries.

Finally, our ultimate objective is to partner with you to holistically transform your enterprise to Lean. We use the approach we learned from Toyota sensei (master teachers). We guide, challenge, and coach you to reach for your vision. through education and development of people.

Our unprecedented access to all aspects of Toyota – relationships that span decades, thousands of hours of interviews, access to Toyota facilities and projects around the globe – allow us to understand Lean and the Toyota Way in a way that other consultants simply cannot match

Our 25 plus years of academic analysis and study at the University of Michigan, and long standing association with the leading authorities in Lean academia as well as the pioneers in Toyota gives us an academic rigor that other consultants do not have. Simply, Dr. Liker, the leader of Optiprise, is recognized as the world’s leading authority outside Toyota on the study of the Toyota Way.

We have over 11 years of Lean transformation activity, partnering with companies and enterprises in all parts of the globe. This gives us a depth of experience and exposure to practically implementing Lean in a broad variety of industries and cultures. One size definitely does not fit all, and particularly if your situation demands a unique and customized approach we have the breadth and depth of experience to meet the challenge.

We are “first principal” based in everything we do. This shows in our approach to our initial engagement with your enterprise. We quickly get to the gemba (the actual situation and place) to work with teams to improve their processes. This is the best way to get your team engaged and to understand the opportunities for improvement.

The Deming Circle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) is the foundation of improvement activity at Toyota and is the basis for the Optiprise approach. Every cycle of P-D-C-A should be a learning experience for your organization. Each engagement, each project is an opportunity to get to the next plateau of improvement. An incredibly powerful part of the P-D-C-A cycle is to conduct reflections during and after a project. What went right? What could be improved next time? How can you capture the lessons learned for your organization? At Optiprise our job is not done until we have helped you close the P-D-C-A cycle.

Although our approach is customized to fit every situation, we fundamentally believe in starting at a practical level with a project and a team. However, we never lose sight of tying all activities into helping you achieve a more holistic transformation first thru education of the team, then the larger group and finally the enterprise.

As part of this overall strategic goal, we will assess your organization, but only after we have established a relationship with your staff and experienced the “gemba” or actual situation at your enterprise thru working on a project. Our goal is to “walk the talk” – and a critical part of lean is to go to the place and experience the actual situation. An assessment can have profound value – but only after we understand how your organization actually tackles a real project.

We prepare your leaders. As we have learned from Toyota without leaders who model the way any lean activity will have few benefits beyond the specific improvements of a particular project. Coaching leaders to become teachers of problem solving and continuous improvement is the only guaranteed way to achieve sustainable improvement.