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How Kaas Tailored Uses A Daily Management System

Strategy comes from the corner office. At Kaas Tailored, strategy is the most important thing when it comes to creating a Daily Management System because it answers the question, “where are we going?” If you don’t know where you’re going, you could be having a lot of meetings about nothing. At Kaas Tailored, it’s my responsibility to not only declare who we want to be when we grow up as a company, but it’s also my job to give some of the key guardrails for decision making.

What is a Daily Management System?

At Kaas Tailored, when we say Daily Management System, we’re talking about the things we do every day, week, month, every quarter, and annually to make sure that we know the truth. The whole goal of this system is to make sure that we are creating value, and that value creation never stops. We call that flow.

What Was the Tool or System That Allowed You to Pivot So Quickly?

It’s our last installment of this short series, Jeff Kaas answers the question, “What was the tool or system that allowed Kaas Tailored to pivot so quickly from making furniture to making PPE?”

How Did Our System Help Kaas Tailored Fulfill the Need for PPE?

There are a couple of things that go into answering this question. The first thing was that because we have been doing tours for so long, the people of Providence knew who we were. They knew if we said we could do something that we believed, that we could do it. Additionally, we always say […]

How Has This Season of Rapid Change and Uncertainty Reinforced Your Values as a Company?

One of the things we try to do at Kaas Tailored is to ask ourselves, “What are the laws of the universe? What is actually true?” Then align our efforts to those things that are true. One of the laws of the universe that we’ve found to be true is that human beings really enjoy creating value, specifically creating value in a community with feedback so they know when they’ve done good and when they need to improve.

How did your team react as they transitioned from making furniture to making PPE?

It has been probably our toughest season, but we’ve experienced the most growth. There’s an idea that you count as joy, trials that you might experience. This is a trial. I know there’s a bunch of shit that’s going down for all of you. I know there’s a bunch of tough stuff coming our way, your way. I also know that in 10 years, those who actually look back on this with a sweet memory, there’ll be something in this time where we gathered together, and we became stronger people.

How Do You Measure Waste as You Pivoted From a Well-built Process to a New Process?

The waste is actually the same. Overproduction, transportation, motion, waiting, processing, inventory, and defects are all the same 7 wastes. Thankfully, those are universal. Our friends who are in healthcare have the same waste. Our friends who do design for Nordstrom have the same waste. The good news is that once you understand that waste is present and is the enemy of value, then wherever you go, you start to see it everywhere.

Why did Kaas Tailored start making PPE?

Every year I do a forecast and try to predict a little bit of the future. My forecast always includes bad things that might happen, and an epidemic or pandemic has been in my forecast for a number of years. A preamble to the story is that it’s important to be aware of the laws of nature and know that human beings occasionally face difficult things, like pandemics. This foresight enabled our team to be thinking about some of our options before we hit crisis mode. This helped us be able to react.

What is Standard Work?

Standard work is the agreed upon way that a task, process, or system should operate.

What is JIT Production?

JIT production is a method of production that relies on pull from our clients, letting demand dictate how much product we create.