Kay Sever, CMC, CQIA

OptimiZ Consulting, LLC

Management Coach & Consultant, Sustainable Improvement Coach & Consultant, Professional Speaker

“Connecting People to Performance and Profits”, Author of “Building An Opportunity Culture”

BACKGROUND:

Kay Sever is a Management Consultant, Sustainable Improvement Coach and Consultant, Author and Speaker who partners with organizations identify, value and capture lost opportunity and remove the organizational barriers that prevent sustainable improvement. Her focus on lost opportunity is unique and effective because she uses valuation to change mindsets and prioritize resources for problem resolution. Her first book titled "Building An Opportunity Culture" will be out later this year.

Kay graduated from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management and is founder and president of OptimiZ Consulting. She has been helping organizations improve operational, financial and organizational performance for the past 34 years; for the past 12 years, she has shown thousands of managers and employees how to improve processes with a focus on lost opportunity. Kay is certified in quality improvement and is a CMC (Certified Management Consultant). Only 1% of all consultants are awarded this certification, which is earned through client testimonials, ethical practices, and a working knowledge of consulting processes that maximize client value.

Kay is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants, National Speakers Association, American Society for Quality, Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration and the Arts and Business Council of Greater Phoenix. She is a past member of the Arizona Quality Alliance, Institute of Management Accountants and the Gilbert Economic Development Council.

Kay has spoken to thousands of conventions and conference attendees over the past 8 years. Her enlightening and motivational keynotes focus on changing perceptions about opportunity and the barriers that get in the way of improvement. She empowers clients and audiences to step out of their comfort zones and courageously address the problems that “eat their lunch” on a daily basis.

CONSULTING AND COACHING PROVIDED BY OPTIMIZ CONSULTING

GENERAL MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

Sometimes it helps to have a trusted outside party to help you review and discuss operational, financial or organizational problems, possible solutions and execution strategies. Kay has years of hands-on experience working with managers and employees in the following areas:

• FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING - Budgeting and cost control, Capital investment and allocation, Asset productivity and performance improvement, Financial and organizational efficiency
• GENERAL MANAGEMENT - Change management, Participative process and collaboration, Performance management, Profit improvement programs, Strategic planning, Quality
• HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT - Organizational development, Training and development, Culture and change management
• OPERATIONS - Quality improvement programs, Maintenance management, Plant management, Cost reduction, Revenue enhancement, Productivity and process efficiency
• SALES, MARKETING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE - Customer retention and relationship management

SUSTAINABLE IMPROVEMENT COACHING AND CONSULTING

Opportunity is ultimately lost in two places in the improvement process – at the front end where we fail to recognize a opportunity and at the back end where it is forfeited due to poor execution and lack of follow-through. We help our clients 1) expand their definition of opportunity so that the most value-added projects are added to the project report and 2) hone their execution skills to capture and sustain project benefits and culture change. We help you find opportunity in the following 3 areas (see below for more detail on each one):

1. Produce More with the Equipment You Already Have
2. Reduce Costs Using a Surgical Approach
3. Improve Organizational Effectiveness to Remove Improvement Barriers and Sustain Change

It is possible to focus your entire improvement process on lost opportunity. This includes key measures, trend charts, process controls, flowcharts, communications and reports. Linking opportunity learnings to budget and capital approval decision criteria, incentive plans and employee orientation programs removes barriers to improvement and facilitates sustainable change. “Opportunity Boot Camp” TM introduces this methodology, emphasizes the value of what’s being left on the table each day, month and year and provides a vision of how things will be different with an opportunity-based culture.

We work with all departments and organizational levels and will help you:

• Take responsibility for opportunity. Success and sustainability with continuous improvement depends heavily on it.
• Identify and chart key measures and interpret learnings from the trends.
• Set process optimums to identify hidden opportunity and learn to manage towards optimum to maximize value creation within your current infrastructure.
• Develop control and response plans to maximize process control and minimize out-of-control events.
• Connect measures and action plans to daily tasks.
• Identify and remove barriers that prevent people from being honest about problems and working together to solve problems.
• Capture and communicate process knowledge and customer requirements across departments or divisions.
• Create new work processes, including those involving multiple departments.
• Train, coach and facilitate improvement teams on seeing problems as opportunities, analyzing problems and implementing action plans.
• Manage improvement like you manage operational performance.
• Understand more about the drivers of culture and how to prevent the subtle sabotage of improvement initiatives.

Produce More with the Equipment You Already Have

• Availability and utilization ratios hide opportunities to produce more with your existing assets. We show you how to find and capture hidden equipment capacity without postponing planned maintenance activities.
• Every year millions of dollars are spent on expansion capital that was not really needed. We show you how to analyze your entire value stream for excess capacity, avoid setting budget targets that exceed its capacity, and postpone expansion capital until hidden capacity has been tapped.
• Reporting systems reflect data about what happened – product produced, dollars spent, and revenue collected. Lost production is often not measured or focused on because it relates to “what did not happen”. We teach you how to calculate and value lost production and how to communicate losses strategically to increase urgency and change what people fix, measure and talk about. Real and lasting culture change is a deliverable of this improvement approach.

Reduce Costs Using a Surgical Approach

• Managers are constantly challenged to reduce costs. Because excess costs are often buried in total costs, reducing costs without affecting value-added activities can be difficult. We show you how to find the excess costs and surgically remove them by eliminating the problems that are driving them.
• People control excess costs or waste in their personal lives by preventing problems from occurring. We lock the door to prevent a break-in, we change oil to prevent an engine failure, etc. We teach managers and employees the same common-sense approach for the workplace to avoid wasteful spending and raise awareness about the value of prevention.

Improve Organizational Effectiveness to Remove Improvement Barriers and Sustain Change

• Millions of dollars are spent on improvement initiatives each year with disappointing results. We believe the reason for this is rooted in the fact that organizational barriers caused by factors unrelated to process performance will not be removed by tools designed to improve process performance (i.e., traditional improvement tools/methods may not be effective in barrier removal).
• The Organization - Organizational silos, deficient customer/supplier relationships, mixed messages, poor execution of management system processes and disconnects between management systems and improvement initiatives define corporate culture, create barriers to improvement, and require a different approach for modification. Our process for “the people side of improvement” provides a comfort zone to address the issues that may be politically incorrect, sacred cows, only discussed behind closed doors or accepted as part of the process.
• Management Teams - Managers are often relegated to spectator roles in the improvement process. We teach them how to manage improvement like they manage operations, become “players” in improvement and be great improvement leaders.
• Process Improvement Teams – Teams play an important role in defining projects, developing action plans and sustaining improvement. We train teams on the basics of the improvement process and facilitate team meetings so that team members can focus on productive work while they are together.

PROFESSIONAL SPEAKING

Kay speaks often at conferences and conventions about improvement barriers, hidden opportunities for improvement, valuation of opportunities and management’s role in sustaining improvement. Rather than deliver “canned” presentations, she is happy to work with your conference planners to customize the material and deliver a unique topic to the audience. See her website (MiningOpportunity.com) for testimonials.