What does it actually take to run continuous improvement across a fleet of 115,000 rail cars?

James Chapman spent nearly a decade at GATX, one of North America's largest railcar leasing companies, moving from Director of Continuous Improvement all the way to leading all of the company's owned North American operations. His approach was simple in concept and hard in practice: get on the floor, ask questions you don't know the answers to, and build a culture that wants to solve problems rather than explain them away.

In this conversation, Jason Hehman and James get into what daily management actually looks like at scale, the surprising parallels between rail car maintenance and traditional manufacturing, how GATX thought about building custom software versus buying off the shelf, and what happened when the TXI team showed up at one of their maintenance facilities and started asking why.

If you lead operations, manage a distributed team, or are trying to figure out how to move from isolated fixes to a real platform approach, this one will give you something to think about.

Keep this conversation going in person. The MIX community is gathering in Chicago on June 4th for drinks, food, and candid conversation with leaders across transportation, logistics, and industrial.

Reserve your spot at the June MIXer

Resources:

Connect with Jason Hehman on LinkedIn
Connect with James Chapman on LinkedIn
Learn more about the Modern Industrialist Xchange podcast at https://txidigital.com/mix-podcast