“Fix What’s Here”: The Fireside Chat with Dr. James P. Womack

Dr. James P. Womack, author of The Machine That Changed the World, joins Peak Performance CEO Denise Hall for a fireside chat on “Trade, Technology & Talent” during the 11th Annual Peak Performance Symposium.

Trade. Technology. Talent. Those three words framed the morning as our CEO Denise Hall took the stage and glanced toward a packed room—and a blinking microphone. “Technology,” she joked as the audio cracked. The timing was perfect. Moments later, Dr. James P. Womack, author of The Machine That Changed the World, would spend 40 minutes urging leaders to look beyond shiny tools and start with the problem.

“Don’t jump to solutions,” Womack said. “First, grasp the situation. Then define the real problem. Then test countermeasures.”

When the World Went Offshore

Womack rewound to the early 1990s, when U.S. manufacturers, dazzled by lower wages abroad, “punted on first down.” Rather than remove waste at home. Many shipped work overseas and discovered 30-day lead times, quality surprises, and brittle supply chains. His challenge to leaders today: put total cost of ownership on the table—and add one more line to the spreadsheet: “How much waste could we remove, and how much quality could we add, if the work, and the learning, happened here?”

Technology as a Countermeasure, Not a Cure

From MRP to ERP to robots and now AI, Womack has seen each wave promise a revolution. The lean view, he said, is not anti-tech; it’s pro-experiment. “Tell me four ways to countermeasure the problem—and make ‘buy technology’ only one of them. Run an experiment. Measure the result. Then scale what works”, said Womack. Denise connected the dots to Industry 4.0 projects, "start by removing waste so you don’t automate the waste.”

The Talent Conversation Most Companies Dodge

When the talk turned to jobs, Womack was blunt. Some roles are painfully dehumanizing; automation can—and should—relieve that. But eliminating misery isn’t the same as building a high-engagement culture. “If you want people fully engaged, you have to be prepared to defend them,” he said, telling Toyota’s 1950 crisis story: management promised no more cash crunch layoffs, in exchange for a relentless commitment to doing the job right and improving the job every day. The result? A culture of reciprocal obligation and the cash discipline to keep that promise.

Beginner’s Eyes and A3 Thinking

A consultant in the audience asked if the real challenge is psychological. Womack nodded: “All life is psychology.” Respect begins when leaders offer beginner’s eyes—seeing the work as it is, not as slides say it is—and when every level of management owns one essential job: enable good work at the level below. The hard part of A3 problem-solving, he reminded us, is the top-left corner: grasp the situation. Only then can you name the problem, trace root causes, and choose countermeasures worth testing.

A Moment—and a Mandate

As reshoring accelerates and tariffs reorder decisions, Womack sees a second chance. Bring work back the right way, by learning faster than before, or import inflation and frustration. His closing ask felt like a challenge to everyone in the room, “Learn how to grasp the situation. Identify the real problem. Agree on a counter-measuring process everyone believes in. If we do that, we’ll be great.”

If your team is embarking on an Industry 4.0 or reshoring initiative, our Consultants, Instructors and Technology Partners can help you map your journey by identifying waste, framing the problem, and designing that first experiment. Contact us today at info@peakperformanceinc.com