James Wright Email & Phone Number

Scottsdale, Az

After graduating from college in 1981, I took a job with DTC as a temporary job.Funny thing happened. Even though the work was extremely hard, there was something special about the people that worked at my 1st store, AZP-11, 72 Ave and Indian School Road. In 1986 I was promoted to a store manager and worked in about 5 different stores on the west side of phoenix.In the mid-1990’s I took over as manager at AZP-24, on the east side of Phoenix. This store is where I learned to teach and implement Lean concepts in order to deliver a better experience for my employees and customers. In the 1st 6 months, we were able to reduce our wait times from 2 ½ hours to less than 45 minutes, reduced excess schedule hours by 6,000 and increase our monthly units to almost 8,000.After about a year and a half I transferred to Metro center and then AZP-36, in Surprise. At this time, Mike Kmeztz was heading up a project to use Lean 6 Sigma to improve the efficiency in our store and I was invited to DTC’s first Kaizen event at AZP – 28. The results turned out so fantastic, I was promoted into the corporate office to help improve our companies’ efficiencies.At this point I realized I need a formal education in Lean 6 Sigma, so for the next 4 years I achieved an Advanced Master Black Belt degree through Villanova University. Over the next 5 to 8 years I realized that only about 10% of Lean is visible and 90% lies under the surface. This lead me to explore human behavior and human interactions with processes and machines which lead me to the Toyota Management System, Toyota KATA, Training Within Industry and Aubry Daniels – Safe by Accident training, to name a few. I was able to achieve 40 Hour teaching certificates and used those learning to help shape the way we approach Continuous Improvements in the stores.The Coaching Cycle and Improvement Cycle are the direct result of combining all of the above with our DTC culture in order to create an environment of fun and continuous learning.

10 Hour Coaching Cert., Training Within Industry

Advanced Lssmbb, Lean Six Sigma, Organizational Leadership

ASQ, LEI

Kata 10 Hour Ik/Ck, Continuous Improvement