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The Allied Advisors Podcast

The Allied Advisors Podcast

Written by: Justin Goethe
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The Allied Advisors Podcast is designed for mid-market manufacturers looking to scale and sharpen their competitive edge. Each episode features in-depth conversations with lean manufacturing experts and top-performing manufacturing executives who share proven strategies, hard-earned lessons, and real-world success stories. Our goal is simple: every listener walks away with practical insights they can apply immediately to drive growth, improve efficiency, and lead their teams more effectively.

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Episodes
  • Small Problems, Big Levers: Lean, AI, and Growing Pains with Jamie Flinchbaugh

    Small Problems, Big Levers: Lean, AI, and Growing Pains with Jamie Flinchbaugh
    Oct 14 2026
    Episode SummaryMost big problems in a manufacturing business started out as small ones that nobody solved. In this episode, Justin sits down with Jamie Flinchbaugh, founder of JFlinch and author of People Solve Problems. They talk about why leaders keep reaching for big levers like AI, reorgs, and acquisitions, when the real momentum usually comes from breaking problems down and understanding cause and effect.Jamie explains how to connect daily huddles to monthly KPI reviews so leaders can trust that their teams have the ball. He also explains why process metrics invite curiosity while output metrics drive accountability. The two dig into a practical approach to AI for mid-market manufacturers, what breaks first when a company doubles in size, and how to bring skeptical veterans along on standardization. They close on how operations leaders can translate lean gains into the language boards and PE owners care about.About the GuestJamie Flinchbaugh is the founder of JFlinch, where he works as an advisor, coach, and board member to leaders building organizations that hold up. He started on the plant floor at Chrysler and went through MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing program. He spent 15 years co-founding and building the Lean Learning Center into one of the top lean transformation firms in the country. More recently he served as Corporate Vice President of Qorvo’s Lean Journey.Jamie has worked with more than 300 companies, including Harley-Davidson, Intel, Mars, Amazon, and Whirlpool. He has helped build close to 20 companies as a co-founder, board member, or investor, and he serves on the boards of Robinson Fans, York Container, S&S Cycle, and Orion Fleet Intelligence. He wrote People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem, co-wrote the lean bestseller The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, and hosts the People Solve Problems podcast.Key TakeawaysBig levers are often an act of desperation. Buying a company, replacing the CEO, or launching an AI program can feel like progress. Jamie sees more momentum in breaking a big problem into medium-sized pieces you can confidently move, then working out cause and effect on each one.Structure matters more than systems. Every metric should answer three questions: how are we performing, why are we performing there, and what are we doing about it. When a red metric shows up in a monthly review with the “why” and the countermeasure already attached, leaders can trust the team instead of jumping in from the top.Every injury started as a trip hazard. You can’t predict which small problem will become the big one, so solve them while they’re small. Smaller problems also give your people more repetitions, which builds problem-solving capability faster.Process metrics drive curiosity, output metrics drive accountability. Measuring diet and exercise tells you far more about what to change than waiting to measure heart attacks. The same logic applies on the shop floor.Start AI with a nagging problem. Skip the AI strategy. Pick a messy problem that has sat in the back of your mind, run a small experiment, and learn what the tools can do. Treat it like pruning a growing tree, because nobody knows where the tools will be in 18 months.Know which kind of AI fits the job. Machine code and other work that needs consistency calls for deterministic tools. Generative AI is better suited to finding patterns in handwritten quality reports or normalizing customer specs. Jamie ranks efficiency gains last, behind making the team smarter and doing work you never had time for before.AI always sounds confident. Challenge its output the way you would an intern’s work. And ask whether you would have spent three days helping an employee succeed the way you spent three days on the tool.Growth breaks at the connections. Every person you add creates new handoffs, and every handoff is a chance for delay or error. Activities and flows tend to hold up as a company grows. The connections between people and departments change the most and are the hardest to get right.You already had a standard. A great chef doesn’t measure, and they are still remarkably consistent. Small teams have standards embedded in a few experienced people. Scaling means giving that consistency tools that work across the whole enterprise.Standardize to solve a problem. Ask why this standard, why now, and how far to take it. Standardizing scheduling across three acquired plants matters if they share a supply chain. Standardizing their food service probably doesn’t. Writing a process down is what lets you troubleshoot it when it fails.Know your board before you pitch to it. Some PE firms are full of operators who understand cause and effect, while others are purely financial. Family-owned businesses usually care most about sustaining the company for the next generation. Interest rates are unlikely to return to zero, so operations leaders need to learn capital efficiency, return on assets, and ...
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    50 mins
  • Ops vs. the Model: Turnarounds, Lean Culture, and Automation on a PE Timeline with Otis Spencer Jr.

    Ops vs. the Model: Turnarounds, Lean Culture, and Automation on a PE Timeline with Otis Spencer Jr.
    Sep 30 2026
    Episode SummaryWhat happens to a portfolio company when the operating partner's voice carries less weight than the investment thesis? Otis Spencer Jr. has seen that question from both sides of the table, first as an operating partner at GenNx360 Capital Partners and then as the CEO of a PE-backed industrial business. Justin and Otis dig into how unrealistic diligence assumptions end up on the operations team's desk, why the ops and investment sides of a firm need to speak with one voice, and what it takes to build a lean culture on a three-to-five-year hold.Otis also walks through a turnaround he calls "a dog fight," where the company came out of a restructuring with a clean balance sheet but couldn't get the credit it needed to stock long-lead parts and shorten delivery times. He explains how he worked through lenders and critical suppliers to get the business moving again. The conversation closes with his case for automation as a quality and safety tool, and the lessons from 13 years as an Army logistics officer that he kept and the ones he had to unlearn.About the GuestOtis Spencer Jr. is a turnaround CEO, operating partner, and industrial executive with more than 30 years of experience leading PE-backed transformations and complex global operations. Most recently he served as President and CEO of Schramm Inc., where he navigated severe liquidity and supply chain crises, grew revenue from $29 million to $54 million, and guided the business to a successful sale. He quadrupled EBITDA for an aviation MRO platform from $16 million to $60 million, and at TAMKO Building Products he doubled division EBITDA to $80 million while growing revenue to $250 million.Otis spent 13 years as a US Army logistics officer and earned a Bronze Star for commanding a 1,500-person task force during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he stood up the first wartime containerized fuel pipeline and terminal distribution system in Iraq and Kuwait. He holds a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Alabama and an MBA from Saint Martin's University.Key TakeawaysPut operations in the diligence room. When ops isn't part of valuation and diligence, the model fills up with assumptions like a new plant reaching peak output in year one or heavy price increases every year. The firm overpays, and the operating team inherits targets it was never going to hit.Operations estimates run optimistic. Teams routinely underestimate project effort by about half, which is why experienced operators need to pressure-test the plan before it becomes the thesis.The firm needs to speak with one voice. If management can go around the operating partner to the deal lead whenever they dislike an answer, the credibility of the CEO and ops team erodes fast. Lockstep alignment between the ops and investment sides keeps that from happening.Lean culture starts with CEO buy-in. On a short hold, buying a new machine is always the more exciting story. Lean takes hold when the CEO treats it as a way of life, and an early Kaizen win builds the confidence to keep going.You can't improve what you haven't measured. Many mid-market plants track little beyond revenue, cost, and on-time delivery. Bringing in help up front to install a few critical KPIs, and sharing what they uncover without playing gotcha, turns early embarrassment into engagement.A clean balance sheet doesn't guarantee working capital. After a restructuring, lenders may not line up and the fund may be low on dry powder. Otis worked the firm's lender relationships, then specialty lenders, and finally key suppliers like Caterpillar, who helped with terms in exchange for future volume.Automation is a quality and safety play. Reducing process variation means less material, less downtime, and less startup scrap, and it keeps hands away from lines running 700 feet per minute. Framing it that way, and sharing the gains with the operators who remain, earns the buy-in a headcount story never will.Keep the military training and let go of the rank. Formal training in planning, decision-making, and staying calm under pressure has paid off at every stop. What Otis had to unlearn was the expectation that people act because you're the boss. In industry, results come from knowing people individually, and sometimes from making the hard call to get the right people on the bus.Quotable Moments"All those returns that you finger painted into the model, you probably won't reach." (Otis)"You want to have solidarity from the firm." (Otis)"It's a way of life. It's not just a project." (Otis)"You can't make an improvement without having baseline data." (Otis)"Lean manufacturing is a religion. You gotta believe in it first, and then you gotta try your best to practice it for a long time before you really start seeing the results." (Justin)"Us manufacturing guys were kind of the first AI folks." (Otis)"Everybody hits the door with their own set of problems." (Otis)"We can all talk theory till we're blue in the face, but the ...
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    44 mins
  • Butt Ugly by Friday: How the Kaizen Ninja Makes Improvements Stick with Adam Lawrence

    Butt Ugly by Friday: How the Kaizen Ninja Makes Improvements Stick with Adam Lawrence
    Sep 16 2026
    Episode SummaryMost improvement projects die quietly after the consultant leaves. Adam Lawrence built a framework to stop that from happening.Known across the manufacturing world as the Kaizen Ninja, Adam has facilitated more than 400 Kaizen events, driving over half a billion dollars in business impact. His events average roughly $1.2 million in annual savings apiece, and he runs them in a week or less.In this conversation, Adam walks Justin through how he actually runs a Kaizen week: two hours of level setting, then straight to the Gemba with the people doing the work as his guides. Post-its and Sharpies instead of technical jargon. Rapid experiments instead of perfect plans. He calls the standard "butt ugly by Friday," and the point is speed of learning, not polish.The heart of the episode is sustainability. Adam breaks down the nine elements of his Wheel of Sustainability, the framework behind his book, and then explains why he recently blew up his own assessment and rebuilt it around five observable leadership behaviors instead. His marketing team told him the wheel was too hard to see in the field. He agreed.The two also dig into safety as a lean principle, not a compliance program. Adam shares how Armstrong World Industries drove its global OSHA recordable rate from 4.5 to 0.28, and why he now requires every team member in a Kaizen event to make two personal safety improvements before Friday.If you have ever watched a good improvement quietly disappear six months later, this one is for you.About the GuestAdam Lawrence is the founder of Process Improvement Partners and the author of The Wheel of Sustainability. An industrial engineer by training, he spent nearly 30 years at Armstrong World Industries, starting on the floor at Thomasville Furniture and working across multiple continents to become Global Lean Champion for the Building Products Technology Group.He struck out on his own in 2018 and has since facilitated more than 400 Kaizen events worldwide. His work has been featured in Industry Week, Aerospace America, and Artisan Spirit. He operates out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.His core belief is simple. The real solutions to business problems do not come from conference rooms. They come from the people doing the work.Key TakeawaysGo see, do not debate. Adam describes a plant manager and his team arguing over the location of a post on an AutoCAD drawing. Five minutes at the Gemba answered it, and revealed the post would have blocked their entire concept. Going to see cuts the time by a factor of ten and shows your people you take them seriously.Butt ugly by Friday beats perfect by never. The goal of a Kaizen week is many rapid learning cycles, not one polished solution. Teams try, fail, learn, and try again. By Friday they have something safer and easier that they own, even if it is not pretty.The team is the people doing the work. Adam uses only two Japanese terms all week, Kaizen and Gemba. Everything else stays plain. Post-its and Sharpies mean anyone can contribute without feeling unqualified.Sustainability is a system, not a follow-up meeting. The Wheel of Sustainability has nine elements: leadership commitment, notification, training and review, visible evidence, all tools available, clear benefits, daily layered audits, accountability, and recognition. All nine get applied to the change during the week itself.Notification is about why, not what. Anyone can see a workstation looks different. What matters is whether the operator can tell you why it changed and what it does for them.Build visible evidence you can read from 30 feet. Outlines, labels, Andon lights, flags. If you cannot tell from a distance whether someone is working to standard, you cannot coach them back to it.Audit with people, not at them. A good layered audit takes three to five minutes, checks three things together, and often surfaces the next improvement. Accountability runs both directions. Coach people back to standard, and thank the people already there.Charter means blanket approval, not marching orders. Leaders define the problem and why solving it matters. They do not hand the team a solution. That distinction is what makes ownership possible.Adam replaced his own framework with observable behaviors. After his marketing team told him the wheel was too abstract, he rebuilt his assessment around five things you can go watch: people become part of the change, leadership at the Gemba, owning the change, earning trust, and growing the improvement culture. Fifteen questions, and each score comes with something you can act on without calling him.Earning trust means nothing waits. Adam needed a label printer mid-event. The maintenance manager dropped what he was doing, found one in another building, and carried it over himself. That is what leadership having your back looks like in practice.Safety is the inarguable principle. Every Kaizen event includes a personal objective: two safety improvements per team member, ...
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    46 mins
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