Episode 84 is audio from Video Podcast #10 (available on YouTube). This is a conversation with Karl Wadensten, President of VIBCO, a manufacturer in Wyoming, R.I. and host of the now-retired radio program The Lean Nation.
Karl shares the remarkable Lean transformation at VIBCO's Rhode Island factory, where employee-driven improvements reduced inventory by more than 50%, freed up over 10,000 square feet of space, and cut lead times from 4-6 weeks down to “same day, next day” for more than 1,300 products. Karl describes how Lean replaced a culture of blame and frustration with one of empowerment, customer focus, and pride in daily problem solving.
The conversation also explores The Lean Nation, a daily talk show that brought Lean ideas, improvement stories, and real-world examples to thousands of listeners via AM radio and online streaming. Karl explains how he pitched the show using an A3 proposal, why he felt a responsibility to spread Lean thinking beyond his own company, and how the program blended positivity, solutions, and fun to make improvement ideas accessible to a wider audience. From unique guests like Paul Akers to factory-floor listeners tuning in together, Karl highlights how Lean principles can inspire innovation, connection, and better business results.
I've been able to travel from Boston to VIBCO twice now, and I've been impressed with what I've seen during my gemba walks each time. I'll blog about this in more detail in the future, but it's great seeing the pride on their employees' faces when they describe and show you the improvements they've made on the shopfloor. I've seen this firsthand:
Under Karl's leadership, VIBCO is now a high performing business culture where lead times for over 1,300 SKUs have dropped from 4-6 weeks to “same day, next day”, inventory has been reduced by more than 50%, over 10,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing floor space is now freed up to accept future growth, and sales are well above industry trends. These impressive improvements are the result of a workforce that is empowered to improve every day and understands the power of Lean Thinking.
Here are links for more about their “True North” and Lean journey.
This is also available as Video Podcast #10.
For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Mark Graban: Well, our guest today is Karl Wadensten, the president of VIBCO and host of the Lean Nation radio show. Thanks for being here today.
Karl Wadensten: Thanks for having me, Mark.
Mark Graban: Now, before we talk about the show, can you give a quick introduction to yourself and your company for us?
Karl Wadensten: Yeah, I'm president of VIBCO Vibrators, and we call ourselves the Vibration Nation here because we actually make industrial vibrators for construction and industrial applications. We make over 1300 different products. We service about 160,000 customers globally. We've been around since 1962, and it wasn't until about five or six years ago that we started down a Lean path. And I can't tell you how many people we were like, we threw away money at customers because we couldn't deliver.
Karl Wadensten: We had the wrong pieces, wrong timing, and there was a lot of blame, a lot of shame, and all kinds of things going on. And Lean in today's economy has really pushed us forward to service our customers on time. Our true north is same day, next day, 1300 products from raw castings, motors–same day, next day. So, you know, Lean has taken us into the future.
Mark Graban: And you're coming to us live from your office, and I hear a little bit of the noise. I mean, you're right there near the Gemba, right?
Karl Wadensten: Yeah, my office. If anybody's ever come down or sees what we have, my office is all glass walls around me. And you probably see one behind me here and to the left. And I look out at the factory floor. My desk sits looking at the factory floor all day long.
Karl Wadensten: So people in the factory have access to me. They can see what I'm doing all day as well. And then to my immediate left here, I have all the CSRs and tech people and I have a glass wall there, and I have a window I can open and listen to the pace, the pulse of what's going on. And then to my right-hand side here, I have production staff and engineering on that side. And then I have a pass-through in my office.
Karl Wadensten: So all day long I get a sense of what's going on. And you can keep those verbal cues and just get a real sense of what's going on. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Mark Graban: Now tell us about The Lean Nation. I mean, when I heard that you were starting this late last year, I was blown away that you were on the radio talking about Lean. You're on the Internet, streaming to people all around the world. Tell us about the show, what the origins were, and how you got started.
Karl Wadensten: Well, you know, we had a local radio station, and you know, radio and media just in itself is trying to figure out how to get audiences, gain and retain audiences, and have meaningful content. You know, talk shows are great, but talk shows generally have, you know, a stir-the-pot mentality and they're not solutions-based. So our local radio station, 790 AM, was reformatting their whole station and sports, too, is dying with all the things on mobile devices and the Internet. And they were reformatting and they had come down to see our Lean tour, our President's Lean tour that we've done here. And they knew that Lean and just business positivity–the whole show is about positivity, about solutions, about bringing real live people from factory floors, from offices, people like yourself, from Lean experts, and having a blend of an interactive show that's an hour long, five days a week.
Karl Wadensten: And we talk about solutions, we talk about real-life Gemba, we talk about whatever it is that defining moments in people's lives where they finally got the Lean bug. And we actually approached this radio show. We had a whole bunch of people that supported our Lean efforts and we felt an obligation to get the word out. We had an opportunity. We did an A3 document.
Karl Wadensten: Can you imagine this? We did an A3 document to go and do a proposal to Citadel, which is part of ABC. They were blown away. They'd never seen a show being pitched in such a simple one-piece, 11×17, one piece of what it was all about. Usually, it's these thick documents and people writing about, you know, yada, yada.
Karl Wadensten: And all this marketing, spinning. An A3 is real poignant of what's going to happen, what the benchmarks are, who's going on. It was awesome.
Mark Graban: Are you getting feedback from people? Is the show exposing these ideas of Lean and process improvement, business improvement, employee engagement, exposing these ideas to a whole new audience, do you think?
Karl Wadensten: Yeah, you know, because we have not only do we have Internet listeners, we have people in cars because we're in a local market. So, you know, the Internet listeners, we're up to about 20,000, 22,000. We're growing at an astronomical rate for three months into a show and 5, 6, 7,000 in cars for AM radio. Remember, it's AM radio. But the Internet piece is huge.
Karl Wsten: We're exposing so many new people to this because, you know, somebody gets the bug, they listen to their favorite person. Like when you were on, Mark Graban, you have your bunch of people that you can tweet out to, that you can e-blast to, that follow you on Facebook. And, you know, we've gotten that viral piece of this. So you call out to your people, and then we've had Gwendolyn Galsworth, great, great lady, West Coast calls in. So now she has a group of people and we're starting to see whole factories listen in to this while they're working.
Karl Wadensten: Because we pump it live into our factory every day. Our employees of the Vibration Nation get a one-hour tutorial on Lean and we get callers, we get emails. So I think it's an appropriate time. We have government officials, you know, listening in–states and local governments. I had the guy from, and I hate to say it, guys from Minnesota there.
Karl Wadensten: Lean czar, continuous improvement guy. The name escapes me now, but I mean, he's really running up, you know, trying to get this word out. So the more people that can speak about Lean, have fun with it. The radio show is about having fun too, because if we just sit and lecture, you know, we're just having a lot of fun. It's a cross between Mad Money, Jim Cramer, Howard Stern, and a little of Opie and Anthony, you know, if you listen to them in the morning.
Karl Wadensten: But we're giving solutions.
Mark Graban: Well, it's great to hear and it's great to see how the show is taking off. Tell us about maybe one kind of unique guest that you had on the show that stands out to you, the type of, type of guest that you've had. Maybe that people have been exposed to, one reason why they should listen to Lean Nation.
Karl Wadensten: Oh man. I'm going to tell you about this guy, Paul Akers out in Bellevue, Washington. Paul Akers, this guy is so far out of the box on just customer focus, on company people in his company, on that drive that Paul is doing. A company called FastCap, fastcap.com, and he does little handy tools for the woodworking industry, gardening industry, and things. And he started on an idea. He was a cabinet maker originally and he had holes in cabinets that you had to plug these holes.
Karl Wadensten: And he figured this little sticker that stuck on permanently. Hence the name FastCap. So he started this company around this and he started an innovation company where he listened to other people's ideas. And most people have great ideas for little doodads and tools to make life easier, but they don't have the wherewithal to know how to put them into production. So Paul gets emails from people all over the globe about their ideas.
Karl Wadensten: And right off the top, he gives you 5%. There's no smoke and mirrors. He says, you know what, if it comes to the finish line, we're going to give you 5%. Simple, simple stuff, brings it to the finish line. Developed this company.
Karl Wadensten: He's actually started a radio show on Saturday mornings on 790 AM in Bellevue, just launched, called the American Innovator. Talks about Lean. His company is very Lean. He's going to come out here and he's actually running for US Senate. This guy's running for US Senate.
Karl Wadensten: And his whole platform for US Senate is to bring Lean and expose LEI, expose VIBCOs, expose all these stars all over the United States to get the Lean bug and know that we can do more with less. He believes in America. He believes in innovation. This guy is unbelievable. So he's just a super fun guest.
Karl Wadensten: And then another great guest was Dr. Dean Schroeder. Ideas Are Free. And he's at Valparaiso, top professor at Valparaiso talking about ideas and how to engage people and how to get this all going and cultural pieces. What a fun, engaging guy. And he's teaching his students how to think Lean.
Mark Graban: Great stuff. So I'll post links on the video and on the blog. But what's the website for the radio show where people can listen in?
Karl Wadensten: The radio show is 790business.com and look for The Lean Nation.
Mark Graban: Hope people will look for that and take a listen to the show. And thanks for joining us to talk about it today, Karl.
Karl Wadensten: Mark, you guys at LEI are great supporters. We want you back on the show because you know this show will get the word out to a lot of people in the viral piece. You know, instead of listening to a lecture, they can listen to it on their own time, via podcast.
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[…] everyday weekday at 4 PM eastern – http://www.790business.com. This is the same discussion as the audio LeanBlog Podcast episode #84. For more info about Karl and VIBCO, visit that […]
[…] friend of mine and of this blog – Karl Wadensten, the President of VIBCO. You can watch or listen to a podcast I did with Karl a few years back or listen to a public radio story about […]
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