Endorsements

I would recommend Mike Orzen to anyone who is looking for a facilitator for a Lean Kaizen event. We used Mike to facilitate an EDI Customer On-boarding Kaizen event and he did an outstanding job working with a team of business and I.T. subject matter experts. His knowledge of Lean, his facilitation skills and his people skills were a valuable contribution to the success of the team and the significant outcomes achieved during the Kaizen event.

Keith Burnett
V.P. Administrative Services Con-way Freight

I highly recommend Mike Orzen to help launch a Lean IT improvement initiative. Mike helped WD IT understand Lean IT concepts, how to apply them, and help us assess and identify the areas for improvement. His personable yet direct coaching style worked very well the Lean program team members and his enthusiasm for the benefits of Lean was extremely motivating. The team members reported how much they enjoyed working with Mike and the participants left empowered and “ready to go”. His work with us has already led to significant improvements and the team is eager to do more. I have a great deal of respect for Mike’s expertise and he more than proved his extensive credentials in his work with us.

Ron Davis
Sr. Director, Business Information Systems Western Digital

Mike is one of the sharpest guys I know. He really understands business, processes and most importantly people. He's a hands-on manager/leader that owns his projects and delivers results.

Richard Day
President, PED Manufacturing and ColumbiaSoft Corp.

Mike brings a wonderful blend of energy, experience and knowledge to his work. The team really came together and delivered wonderful results under his guidance as a teacher and coach. I highly recommend him! Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert.

Elizabeth King

Exec Director Org Effectiveness at ESCO Corp.

Mike is a capable and proven transformation agent who partners with his clients to facilitate their Lean transformation. His approach and ability to coach others is top notch, and I have witnessed his ability to foster the creation of a Lean IT environment and culture within a complex organization.

Carl Hoefer
Project Manager - Product Development and Engineer, Nike

Doug Younger Recommendation

Mike assisted me in strategizing my company into the next level of manufacturing and drove me into confident decisions for future growth that changed my life into unbelievable directions Thanks Mike, you are a gem.

Christopher Kellogg

VP National Business Development at Corrosion Companies Inc.

Mike was instrumental in providing our company with a deeper understanding of Shingo Prize criteria during an OPEX workshop. He made the workshop fun and provided lots of great coaching points to help us in our efforts to pursue operational excellence. His top three qualities are: Personable, Expert, and Creative.

Paolo Chiappina

Director of Lean and QMS at Hanesbrands, Inc.

Over the past 18 months I’ve worked with Mike Orzen and Associates on EDI, Web Store, Product Configurator, and ERP projects. I have found the Mike Orzen and Associates consultants to be excellent communicators, experienced facilitators and team leaders, delivering beyond expectations and within budget, and following up to ensure we continue to utilize technology to its full capacity. Their consultants interact well with all levels of the organization, from senior management to IT technician, and their personalities and communication style engage and value all. They have the valuable ability to operate strategically at a fairly high level, as well as tactically down in the details of a specific project.

James P. Fee Jr., Vice President, Portable Monitoring
Welch Allyn Monitoring

Mike Orzen and Associates are the type of people who look out for the well being of their client above all else. I do not consider them just consultants; they are also excellent mentors. I am amazed at their level of understanding of business processes and the people that make them work. I would recommend them to lead, manage, or be team members of any business project or initiative that aims to improve processes and reduce costs.

Travis Pierce, IT Operations Mgr
Warn Industries, Inc.

Mike Orzen and Associates has helped guide the development and implementation of large and complex ERP, EDI, and CRM projects at Veris. As consultants and team members they keep highly diverse teams on schedule, while ensuring thorough discussion, analysis, planning and implementation. I believe the success we have seen with these projects is a direct result of Mike Orzen and Associates ability, expertise,and commitment.

Robert J. Witt, Controller
Veris Industries
(division of Square D Company)

Our involvement with Steady Improvement has been very beneficial. They have a realistic and practical approach that effectively combines the science and discipline of Lean process improvement with the art of actual implementation within an organizational structure. As a non-profit organization, increasing efficiencies and positive outcomes means we can provide better services to our community without increasing our costs. In just a few months, we have already realized dramatic productivity and service level improvements, and we are seeing the skillset of lean process improvement positively impacting our other programs.

John Haines, Executive Director
Mercy Corps Northwest

Mike Orzen and Associates' deep understanding of Lean Enterprise IT systems provided our team clarity in understanding our Lean execution needs. Their quality approach provided excellent state of the art guidance. We continue to look forward to working with them to create the business case vision for lean execution systems.

Rajesh Solanki
Director, Lean Six Sigma
Ingersoll Rand, Security Technologies

Mike Orzen and Associates represents the highest quality of consultants a business can work with to improve business operations as they have an enormous tool box of practical management skills, a strong appetite for positive change, and genuine concern for the clients ability to learn, apply, and use the knowledge they impart.
The Mike Orzen and Associates team was very much the right team at that right time to help a frustrated group of managers find practical and business size correct methods, systems, and simple management tools to establish a frame work for perpetual improvement. They have a rich and practical experience in working with simple to complex business issues and have a superb positive attitude about creating a business culture that strives to improve everyday.

Ajeet Khalsa, Director of Operations
Golden Temple

Mike Orzen & Associates has consistently delivered high quality lean consulting and positive bottom line results over the past two years. His expertise in Lean and Six Sigma applied to non-manufacturing environments enabled us to launch our Lean transformation and realize significant results. Mike’s grasp of applying Lean to IT issues is very rare. We successfully completed numerous improvement Kaizens throughout our IT functional areas with impressive results. His ability to effectively work with people at all levels of the organization made the experience possible. A great coach, teacher, and motivator – I strongly recommend him.

Jackie Barretta
CIO, Con-way

Mike helped us design, plan and implement our Lean Office program for a campus of over 1,000 people in such a way that provided a clean handoff to internal resources. Their understanding of Lean at the tactical level combined with their competence in the boardroom to ensure that our Kaizen activities and measures align with our corporate objectives. Their skills in leadership, facilitation, education, information systems and governance have helped us build a sustainable foundation that will create significant value for our customers and competitive advantage for our enterprise.

Richard Carroll
VP Information Systems
Lean Program Executive Sponsor

Central City Concern is a large and diverse non-profit organization serving the needs of Portland's homeless community. When I came on board as the first central IT director for the organization, Mike Orzen and Associates assessed our information system needs and budget constraints, and helped us create an effective IT development roadmap.

Jamie Meyers, IT Director
Central City Concern

Mike Orzen and Associates skillfully guided this corporation through a process of identifying and implementing software to provide a strategic advantage over our competition. Working with executive leadership they developed a project plan, interviewed various stake-holders, guided decision makers to build consensus, created and implemented an action plan, assessed progress, and brought the project in on time and on budget.

Lee Robinson, CFO
Bonar Plastics

The combined expertise of Mike Orzen and Associates developed from their diverse experience in employee development, manufacturing, project management and software systems has been instrumental in the successful implementation of an ERP system replacing legacy systems that were over 20 years old in a company with over 100 years of conservative culture.

John Gillam, former Director of Operations
Boyd Coffee Company

Mike Orzen and Associates Lean Leadership Program helped us consolidate and coordinate our efforts across our entire US operations. Now our continuous improvement initiatives in sales, engineering, planning, production, finance and administration are all moving towards consistent and measurable goals, and showing significant results.

Scott Koch, CFO
Beall Corporation

Mike met all of the key attributes of a successful workshop and it showed in our workshop survey where participants scored them 93% for overall satisfaction. Beyond professionalism and dedication to creating successful workshops, Mike also demonstrate a great deal of experience in the areas of Lean and also IT. It is very rare to find someone who can speak the 'language of IT'; in detail and yet also speak the 'language of lean'; based on Lean TPS principles. Mike has this ability and I consider him a leader and pioneer of this new and exciting area of lean.

Nathan Holt
Corporate Leader, Enterprise Lean Sigma Transformation
Avery Dennison

When Acumed knew that a search for a new ERP system was imminent, Mike helped us to find a path forward in keeping with our innovative product devlopment culture. We knew the task ahead would be painstaking, so we wanted to be sure to do it in the right way. Steady Improvement assessed our environment and made recommendations which helped us to allocate the necessary cross-functional team resources. Their guidance put us on the right path and allowed us to implement with a speed and capability that is making others who have gone through the same process envious.

Morris Weinstock-Blair, IT Manager
Acumed, LLC

I have worked with Mike Orzen and Associates on numerous projects centered around IT and business process improvement. They have consistently provided high-quality project management skills, experienced insight and a relentless focus on delivering value. I recommend them without reservation.

Robert Witt, Dir MI
Insitu
Division of Boeing, Inc.

Michael’s vast expertise and experience working with groups allowed the team to look at their work, step out of the box and look at new ways of doing the work. He is calm, supportive and can lead a group to a higher place with techniques that do not bring competition or ownership, while allowing the team to  to move to a new level of thinking.

I would recommend Michael as his skilled facilitation allowed us to improve the continuity of care in our program.

Gayle Burrow BSN, MPH, CCHP-RN
Director of Corrections Health Multnomah Health Department