Starting out in a lean greenfield
Overview
A lean greenfield offers the opportunity to design flow, visual management, standard work, leadership routines, and employee involvement into the operation from the beginning. This session could explore how leaders can turn that opportunity into a practical launch plan rather than simply installing lean tools in a new building. Discussion could cover facility layout, early capability building, supplier and material-flow design, startup pressures, and the cultural choices that establish continuous improvement as the normal way of working from day one.
Idea Exchanges are facilitated, open forum sessions where conference participants have a chance to tell their stories. Other than a pre-defined topic, these sessions are unstructured and rely on the facilitator to keep the conversations flowing. Idea Exchanges are a unique opportunity to learn, share and grow.
Thomas Castillo serves as a continuous improvement specialist at NTS (Decatur, AL), reporting to Matt Weiss (NTSHQ). He is a U.S. Army veteran — Captain, Signal Corps — with eight years of service, and earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
Castillo brings 20+ years of leadership in lean transformation, operations and project management, with prior roles at Lam Research, Acuity Brands Lighting, Mueller Company and Sandvine. Trained by Shingijutsu Global Consulting and a repeat presenter at the American Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), he focuses on practical CI that improves safety, quality, delivery and cost.
At NTS, Castillo has introduced and facilitated 5S, Value Stream Mapping, and Kaizen events across heavy/light ay and hardware areas, advanced quality at the source, and supported galvanizing and scheduling process improvements. Beyond NTSAL, he assists Indiana and Utah sites to standardize work, strengthen accountability and accelerate flow.
