Raving Fans

Hey Paul- Wow.

Last night, in one sitting, I watched the entire \"Gemba Live\" feature (http://youtu.be/ZalxmE5Savc) that Ron Pereira did on Fastcap. I was so inspired and excited by it that it took me a long time to calm down enough to fall asleep.

I think more than anything else, it was hearing from your people and seeing the great improvements they\'ve made that really made the videos so powerful. The culture you have built at Fastcap is to your immense credit. Your are one of my heros and definitely a role model, as I dream that one day to build a culture that is even a fraction as strong and positive as the one guys have.

I was so excited that I made a video thanking the whole team at Fastcap:

http://youtu.be/reZXY7utrZM

While watching the videos, there was one issue that came up that I was hoping to ask you, and it regards the mission and/or purpose of Fastcap. Both during the videos and in the past, I\'ve heard you say that the mission, first and foremost, of Fastcap is:
To serve your customers
To grow people
To be a Lean company
To make outstanding products

I was wondering how all of those (and maybe others that I have missed) fit together - is one the most dominant? Or perhaps one is the mission, one is the purpose, and one is something else?

I guess what I am asking is, what is at the core?

Thanks again,
Sam Korb

Paul, just wanted to take a second a let you know what a great job Shelly in customer service did for me. I was in a bind, and needed a custom roll of fast edge. Our distributor didn’t appear to know how to get this done. Shelly agreed to just take care of it for me instead of making me go through the process of educating our dealer. First class, thank you.
Wishing you and your team all the best!
Doug

I just finished reading the last six chapters last night...

The final big take-away I got from the book were your comments about Kaizen events (p. 110) and how they really are an uneven approach to Lean that can be disruptive or even burdensome and thus hard to get buy-in for. I also think they are maybe a bit disempowering because they send the message that change is something we can only do occasionally with big projects, and outside of that it is business as usual. Unfortunately this is how almost all Lean initiatives start, in part I think because it is a model that works well for consultants. But governments and politicians like big projects for other reasons as well.

Contrast that to my 2 second improvement this morning. There was a hole punch that wasted about five minutes of my time yesterday because it seized up on the 24-sheet document I tried to hole-punch yesterday. Today literally 15 seconds with some shredder oil I brought from home fixed that problem for anyone else who uses that hole punch in the coming months, saving probably hours of waste all told. One beauty of this is that I didn\'t need any executive sign-off or stakeholder consultations to do this. While it is small, the return is probably measurable in 1,000s of percents! If you do that every day, with everyone in an organization, how can you not have amazing results?

For myself, it also caused me to realize that hole-punching is overprocessing to begin with, I can just keep a document in a folder and it is actually easier for me to work with that way.

Even better (now that I am actually using my brain on this problem which I would have thought beneath me), I can read and annotate a document electronically and avoid even the step of printing it (Overprocessing), going to the printer (Motion), _Waiting_ for my job to come out, and bringing it back to my desk (Transportation), filing it away (Motion / Inventory), and then, all too often, realizing I actually needed a different report (Defect), or just a few pages of it (Overproduction), and while I am dealing with all that Waste I am being Underutilized by my department and wasting the customer\'s (taxpayer\'s) dollar. There we go, all the 8 wastes just in the act of printing a document!

Thanks Sandi,
I can not wait to try them out!
It must be fun working with Paul. If you ask me, he is the next Billy Mays. I am not even in the woodworking business, yet I feel like I want to buy everything on your site just because of his genuine passion and enthusiasm.
Now that I think of it, one of my clients is a custom cabinet maker in Brooklyn called \"Quality Woodworking\". I\'ll be sure to bring him a catalog.
Regards,
Joe

i would like to thank everyone for helping me find the part i misplaced, no charge for the part or for shipping. absolutely great. no questions asked even shipping to canada. i would not have known where to start looking to purchase one. excellent excellent. i am so happy now i can use my laser again. i would certainly recommend this company to anyone looking to purchase any of your products. i cant thank you enough, bill.

Good morning Paul. As a woman I have very small hands and finding a pair of gloves that actually fit is almost impossible, but of course there's Fast Cap to the rescue. Not only do these wonderful gloves fit, but I can feel what I am doing. Having my fingertips go all the way into the glove gives me a better feel for what I am doing without an inch of extra glove hanging out over the tips of my fingers. I feel secure when using my large power tools, i.e. my table saw, knowing I am not going to get the tips of my glove caught in the blade and end up chewing my hand off. I have not finished my shop yet so it was VERY cold out there this past winter which makes for your hands not being able to do simple tasks like starting a screw, but my new Skins HD Gloves help take care of that problem also. Once again Paul I can thank Fast Cap for another product that goes over the top in not only helping woodworkers , and others, complete projects with more confidence, but at a much higher safety level than any others I have found. I continue to be very satisfied with the quality every Fast Cap product I have purchased, but also the fact the you folks have kept our pockets in mind with your great low prices. You know the old saying, "You get what you pay for" well it's not true in the case of Fast Cap because you get more than you pay for when you buy from Fast Cap. O.K. I have rambled on once again and I am sorry for that, but I have so many wonderful things to say about this GREAT COMPANY. Thank you for listening to an old lady and a new woodworker who is a VERY happy camper. All my very best to all the Fast Cap Staff. Keep up the GREAT work. Pamela Newell

i wish all business would treat there customers the way you have treated me , i cant thank you enough for the great service. Bill Clark

Hi Paul,

Your YouTube videos are fantastic. I caught the lean bug about 18 months ago and have been trying to spread it at work, a government department with around 4,000 staff.

I'm also trying to apply it at home, where my wife is starting to see the value in it and our kitchen and household are really starting to show some results from a "5S drive" we started last week. At first she was resistant, but then she started warming up to it. We actually found your site because my wife was looking for "lean kitchen" for some ideas, and we found the video where you show off the Lean kitchen at FastCap. You have some really great stuff and your passion is infectious, so we watched a few together. It was great to see some live demonstrations of fun, non-judgmental, real-time kaizen, that communicates way more than just telling someone about new management ideas I read in a book about Toyota.

I knew something had shifted when I got home the other day and she asked me to put away a knife, so I opened the knife drawer and was gobsmacked to see that she had 5Sed our knife collection and created a shadow board for all of the remaining knives. It’s not perfect, the knives can slide around, but that just gives us another improvement to work on! I’m thinking about Kaizen foam, or maybe something involving plywood, a drill and some toothpicks.

... I’m also an amateur woodworker, and getting a little worried about the amounts of time and money I could sink into FastCap products and all your videos. I’m also on a course development committee for Lean in Government, and some of your videos will be perfect for that.

So I just thought I'd drop you a line to tell you that you're my newest Lean hero and to say thanks for everything! I hope in 10 years people will be coming to my department for lessons in how to apply Lean in government. Your videos might contribute to that! I’ll have to check out your book too, if it’s as accessible as the rest of your materials it could be very valuable for us. I’ve read 10+ books on Lean but so far none of them are ones that would be easy to sell to someone completely new to Lean.

-- Daniel

Dear Paul,
Wow! I can see why your company has grown so much so quickly!

Thank you for putting in the time and effort to speak to our club. It\'s hard to believe this was your first time with this presentation. I could tell that everyone really enjoyed what you had to say. Although there were no questions, I think they were completely intrigued.

There was a large amount of information packed into an enthusiastic and concise presentation that I found very inspiring. It was also very generous of you to donate your books. I hope those who took them will also follow through to read the material, and I\'m sure Bellingham will be better off for it.

I want to thank you also for the iPole Mini -- I\'ve been playing with it since I left the meeting. It\'s awesome! But of course, I will have to buy one for my son and daughter. They will both be stoked!

Thanks again for your great presentation.

Sincerely,
Brad Burdick
Executive Director

To anyone discovering Paul Akers and FastCap videos for the first time, I have been implementing this methodology (would you call it that paul?) over the past 6 months into my company in the UK with PHENOMINAL results!
My employees have never been as engaged in their work as they are today and every day it just gets better. Their personal development has been staggering and I have a better company for it.
Do not be put off by the simplicity of fixing what bugs you, it works!
Thank you Paul!