Stop Wasting Resources Trying to “Fix” your Workers

Alex Paradies and Kevin McManus will be presenting, “Advance HOP Techniques (HOP 2).

When & Where?

This presentation is scheduled during Best Practice Session 3 at the 2023 Global TapRooT® Summit, Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe – Houston, Texas, April 26 – 28, 2023, (PreSummit Courses, April 24 – 25, 2023).

Session Description

How often do you hear people throw around phrases like “they should have paid more attention” or “they need to be more careful?” Many Human and Organizational Performance “experts” hear those phrases and say, “let me teach you a technique to make people more careful.” However, even after you have employed all the error-reducing tools, the “expert” gave you mistakes continue occurring. Instead of wasting more resources fixing the person, learn to recognize situations where people are being set up to fail. When a task requires 100% mental focus to remain incident free, it must be redesigned because people aren’t superhumans. In this session, we will give you practical techniques to better safeguard and mistake-proof your work. The biggest opportunities for error reduction involve fixing the process, not the person. 

Speaker Bios

Alex Paradies

Alex Paradies helps clients learn how to maximize TapRooT® as an investigative and predictive methodology. As an instructor, he looks forward to “meeting and working with new experts and different industries.” Alex came on board full-time in 2019 but is no stranger to TapRooT®. It’s no coincidence that he shares the last name of the co-developer of TapRooT®, Mark Paradies – he has grown up in the business and is excited about the next generation of TapRooT®. He brings with him over six years of experience at The Timken Company where he skillfully managed over 100 workers in a competitive job shop environment. His background also includes experience as an Industrial Engineering Manager, Sr Lean Engineer, reliability intern at Novelis and undergraduate researcher. He has a B.S. in Material Science & Engineering, as well as a minor in Business Administration from the University of Tennessee. His sights are set “firmly on safety – bringing continuous improvement to manufacturing, logistics, operations, and quality.”

Kevin McManus

As Chief Excellence Officer of Great Systems LLC, Kevin McManus provides virtual coaching and content to help people use proven best practices to enhance and optimize their daily work systems. Over forty years of work experience in roles such as Industrial Engineer, Training Manager, Production Manager, Plant Manager, and Director of Quality give Kevin a ‘real life work’ perspective relative to daily work process optimization, work team engagement and empowerment, and sustainable operational excellence. As a contract trainer for the TapRooT® root cause analysis process, Kevin has taught over 425 courses and further enhanced his ability to help leaders proactively minimize risk, reduce errors, and improve reliability. Kevin holds an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and an MBA. He served as a national Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Award Examiner for twenty years, including a three-year term on the national Judge’s Panel. Kevin has authored the monthly performance improvement column for Industrial and Systems Engineer magazine for over 20 years, is an Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering Fellow and has been a member of IISE for over forty years. His newest book, “Different Company – How the Best Build Great Organizations”, will be published in late 2022.