About Us

DJ Duarte’s 34 years as a Global Optimization Expert & Lean Leadership Coach has enabled him to influence the practical application, facilitation and implementation of business processes and systems that delivers real operational cost outcomes. 

His unique ability to develop lean leaders with the right mindsets & behaviors to support the sustainable changes is just one of his great strengths. His vast experience working in a variety of industries from manufacturing (automotive, construction, electronics & medical devices), service (resorts, casinos, telecom & retail stores), healthcare (out-patient care & documentation), aerospace (maintenance & servicing), logistics and back office/shared service environments (call centers, finance, HR, IT, & procurement).  

His expertise spans 7 continents, 40 different cultures, 17 different industries and several leading global consulting firms.  Through a combination of TPS, TPM, TQM and TPD (talent development) principles & practices, DJ enables companies to achieve unimaginable sustainable business results.

Our expansion with collaborations across the globe to include JV Partnerships has now reached more than 30 different organizations.  This ever expanding network of global TPS & Lean knowledge management experts & coaches,  affords us and our clients the unique opportunity to provide global engagements with the best possible support.

Furthermore, along with this growth, we are now best positioned to support both on-site and virtual lean transformation engagements.  Through our platform solutions, we can provide digital solutions for value chain optimization as well as virtual coaching that ensures our heartbeat support strategies while off-site links directly to a “virtual obeya”.   This provides our clients with a unique virtual experience that is both collaborative, innovative and informative ensuring your transformation activities and the decision making process are sustaining and impactful.  

As a solutions providers and leaders of lean principles and practices, Makoto Flow’s network of professionals influence at every opportunity from the C-Suite to the Mid-Level Management leaders and down to the shopfloor with team leads, enabling every aspect of a transformation to full be embedded in the DNA of your business. Our passion and insights are contagious and inspirational as we have a deep sense of humility, integrity of purpose and a calming leadership presence that not only drives changes but creates opportunities for long-term success.

With a thorough understanding and experience of applying lean thinking that generates “break-though” results no matter the industry nor the challenges, engaging our best practices of TPS affords our clients the opportunity to attain remarkable and sustainable business results.

Select Accomplishments:

• “Lean strategy as a competitive advantage” in the telecommunications industry. A cradle to grave concept that utilized the Hoshin Kanri & laser focused improvement initiatives to achieve break-through market penetration. Main enablers were smooth flow of products & services, extra-ordinary customer care and streamlined logistics delivery that made this organization #1 in its market.

• Impactful reductions of operational costs without a reduction in the workforce. A high-level approach to identifying and eliminating “pain points” that ate away at hard earned profits. Done in the off-shore construction industry as a preventive stop & fix initiative, we established strong standards in the way work is done, visualized the value of the process, eliminated all non-essential work to impact key performance metrics resulting in $250K daily operating vessel cost reductions.

• “It’s 80% about people and 20% about the tools” if you are serious about a lean cultural transformation. Changing traditional behaviors from using tools to modeling lean behaviors requires an emotional component that is critical for success. Our model deploys 12 distinct lean leadership behaviors that support the attainment of easier ways of working, higher levels of quality and faster turnaround times.

• Inform, Involve & Inspire for better sustainable results. Within the service industry, in 8 months we deployed a series of “kaizen events” through the development of Optimization facilitators. 16 events later, $40 mil in hard & soft savings, 1.2% EBITDA & 35% higher productivity.