Speaker 1: I love to work, but I also like to put smiles on people's faces. If there's a child out there that's in need, I need to help this person out. When we're down to our last box, and you have like seven families standing on the line, and you just have that one box, and you don't know what exactly to do, that kills me.

Speaker 2: George is a great leader. He knows what he's doing, but they didn't really have a system kind of set up, because if you have a good system, I think the work takes care of itself.

Speaker 3: We call TPS the Toyota Production System. The summation of many, many small, simple, cheap improvements can have a very big impact.

Speaker 4: People are starting to understand that these basic principles of the Toyota Production System apply to any kind of process. It doesn't have to be a manufacturing process.

Speaker 1: We have our way of doing it, but if there's a faster way for us to go out and get food out to people faster, then I'm all for it. I'm all for it.

Speaker 4: What about a different box size, so that we're not shipping so much air?

Speaker 3: If we could go to a smaller box, we would have the benefit of being able to put more meals on the truck to serve more people. The side benefit being, it's not so difficult to handle.

Speaker 4: The thing that struck me was how difficult it was for the volunteers that were there to pack that box. I mean, they were walking long distances. They were carrying heavy weight. It was kind of disarray, just the table in the middle. Everybody was scrambling to get stuff open. And I'm like, this is not really too productive. I mean, it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: So by putting everybody on one side of the line and having the material come from the opposite, we think we're going to get a smoother flow.

Speaker 3: Let's go for it now. I don't care if I leave work late. I don't care.

Speaker 4: You know, I don't want you to have to walk 15 feet to go get those two cans of corn. I want those cans of corn to be readily available to you in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, so that you can pack it in the box. Wow, this looks a lot different, doesn't it? It's cool, yeah. Does anybody remember how long it was taking us to pack one box when we first started? Three minutes. Three minutes? That's exactly right. It was around three minutes. Three minutes for a box. What do you think we were packing one box? How long and how many seconds today? About 11 seconds.

Speaker 3: Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement. And what this philosophy means is we always want to strive step by step to make a process better. Outside Toyota, a problem can sometimes have a negative connotation, like a bad thing. I find that in many cases it's better to say we have something that we can improve.

Speaker 4: Sweet.

Speaker 2: Much faster. Way faster. Yeah? Much, much faster.

Speaker 3: Very good. We've got plenty of homework.

Speaker 4: Yeah, plenty of homework. The list is a lot shorter than it was when we started.

Speaker 3: How long did you guys wait?

Speaker 4: We waited for like about a minute. That's it? Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's nothing. I know.

Speaker 3: Unfortunately we had Sam, but there'll be other cases where this needs to be done. And hopefully you've learned some of the basic principles so you can set something up from the beginning.

Speaker 1: One thing I did learn from these guys is how to structure things one by one, you know? Not just take it as a whole thing and just be like, it's a mess. But instead I can take it step by step by step. All right. Thank you.