Dave Francis

About Dave Francis

Dave Francis attended Michigan Technological University for engineering and received his Bachelor degree from Walsh College. Dave is a certified Six Sigma blackbelt and formally trained on negotiations (Karrass) and leadership (Dale Carnegie).Dave began his career in manufacturing management in 1995, later joining Ford Motor Company’s original supplier to consolidate operations across multiple factories. Formally trained on Lean, Dave worked with the Ford Lean Resource Center, later joining the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC). He has received extensive “sensei” coaching from Dr. Jeffrey Liker (author of numerous Shingo prize-winning publications such as “The Toyota Way”) and from other top Lean thinkers. For over 25 years, Dave led companies to adopt Lean thinking and transformed people and processes. He has been in lead roles implementing strategy, Lean, and management systems with large organizations such as Hertz, Amcor, Johnson Controls, Freudenberg-NOK, DMC, Norgren Automotive, Art Van Furniture, and Nebraska Furniture Mart, to name a few. He facilitated hundreds of major Kaizen events that dramatically improved safety, quality, customer satisfaction, performance, teamwork, and developed people to reduce waste and achieve breakthrough performance. As a result, millions of dollars in tangible savings and created capacity were achieved.Dave first joined City Furniture in 2007 as their Lean Consultant, both architecting and implementing their Lean journey and building out the structure to support. He led hundreds of large-scale Kaizen events in almost all departments, transformed all core operations processes, removed waste in sales, and transformed City Furniture\'s Kevin Charles factory to be a Lean “model line” from which other furniture manufacturers can “go and see.” Working alongside Andrew Koenig, he co-architected the City Furniture Operating System (CFOS) which is credited with providing the foundation needed for growth. Since 2011, Dave also architected and facilitates the company’s annual strategic planning processes along with deployment of the plan throughout the organization (Hoshin Kanri).

Experience

1. Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)

   City Home

   Jan 2020 — Present · Tamarac, FL, US

Education

• Michigan Technological University

  Mechanical Engineering

• Walsh College

  Bachelor's degree, Business and Finance

• Six Sigma World

  Six Sigma Black Belt