A Career Exposes Lean's Pioneer Roots

Few careers track the rise of Lean techniques and strategies as closely as that of Mark DeLuzio, who nearly 20 years ago implemented one of the first Lean accounting processes in the United States. A vice president and corporate officer of Danaher Corporation (NYSE: DHR), DeLuzio led the corporate-wide implementation of Lean and designed what is known today as the Danaher Business System (DBS). Our seasoned interviewer, Steve Player, recently caught up with the Lean pioneer and asked him to retrace the milestones of his career along Lean's trajectory. For his part, DeLuzio is today founder and CEO of Lean Horizons Consulting, a Lean consulting and advisory firm based in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Steve Player: When did you begin with Danaher Corporation?

Mark DeLuzio: In 1988, I was hired at Jake Brake, a division of the Danaher Corporation, as a cost systems manager. While working for the CFO, my sole role was to change the accounting system from the traditional cost system to something that would complement the point-of-production system philosophies that we were just embarking upon. I was hired because I was a Certified Management Accountant and had had some exposure to Just-in-Time techniques (we didn't call it Lean back then).

As a result of that work, I later was promoted to CFO of Jake Brake. From there I moved into an operations role, and then to general manager of the Asian business team. This was nice because I had Asian customers, Toyota. I learned from them as well. I was one of the guys at Jake Brake who got tapped on the shoulder to go to Japan on the initial study missions to learn the Jikoda (a Lean term meaning "automation with a human touch," focused on detecting abnormalities, stopping production, correcting the immediate condition, and investigating the root causes and installing countermeasures) techniques and concepts.

SP: And when did your role become enterprise-wide?

MD: In 1993, the CEO of Danaher Corporation asked me to come to work for him as a corporate officer and vice president. The role was to take the Toyota production system concepts we had at Jake Brake across the entire company globally. At the time, we called this process the Danaher Production System. After I got on board, I changed it to what we now call the Danaher Business System, because it wasn't just about production, it was about the entire Lean organization, enterprise-wide.