Scott Sedam
EDITOR'S NOTE: As President of TrueNorth Development, an internationally known consulting and training firm focused exclusively on the building industry, Scott Sedam is on a relentless mission to eradicate waste from the building process. He will bring his message on the importance of eliminating waste to the 2014 Oklahoma Building Summit on Sept. 11 at the Reed Center in Midwest City. This will be the first of several Q&As we will present from our conversation with Sedam.
Q: What message are you bringing to Oklahoma with your LEAN Building presentation?
SEDAM: Home building is awash in waste, a documented minimum 20 percent, or a minimum of $50,000 in the average $250,000 house price in the United States. The savings are available to all homebuilders, enabling increased profit to builders, suppliers and trades alike.
Q: Describe the LEAN philosophy.
SEDAM: LEAN is an operating philosophy, a culture, a discipline, a set of tools, all focused upon the relentless pursuit, identification and removal of waste in all forms from product and process. It boils down to builders learning to listen to suppliers and trades at a much deeper level to identify and eliminate waste wherever we find it.
Q: How difficult is it to get buy-in from everyone for the LEAN building process?
SEDAM: The way you get buy-in is you have to have strong relationships with suppliers and trades. They have to trust you that you are doing something that is in everyone's mutual interest. They see that it's going to help them, that it is not just a "builder grab." We're all going to share our knowledge, experience and make process improvements and end-product improvements so we can all get better together. We have a process for doing that.
