The mandatory first course for every ESI employee — completed at hire, before any trade module. It is how ESI works: Kaizen and lean production applied to every process. See the 8 wastes, run 5S, work to standard, plan and cart the job, keep daily notes in the boatyard app, and use the ** Kaizen marker to turn what you find in the field into how the whole yard works.
Before you start
This is the mandatory first training for every ESI employee — completed at or before hire, ahead of any trade module or field work. ESI Production Tech 1 is the company-wide course in how we work — Kaizen and lean production applied to every ESI process, from the drivetrain bench to the front desk. It teaches you to see waste, organize the work, keep daily notes in the boatyard app, and use the ** Kaizen marker to turn what you find in the field into how the whole yard works. A short check ends each chapter; an in-depth final exam unlocks your certificate.
Lean & Kaizen applied across the whole yard, not one trade.
Daily notes are the habit the whole system rests on.
Two asterisks + tag the manager = a field find becomes a standard.
Chapter 1
Every tech, every day, makes ESI a little better.
Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement — getting a little better, every day, everywhere. It isn't a big once-a-year project; it's a hundred small fixes found by the people doing the work. At ESI, Kaizen is how we run every process — drivetrain, electrical, heaters, the front desk, the yard.
Shave five minutes off a job, find a better tool, stop one wasted trip — on its own it's nothing. Multiply it across every tech, every boat, every day of the year and it's the difference between a yard that's busy and a yard that's profitable and respected. Improvement isn't extra work on top of the job — it is part of the job.
Improvement at ESI doesn't come from a manual written in an office. It comes from you, in the field, noticing what slows you down and what could be done better. Management can't see what you see on the boat. This course gives you the language and the habits to turn what you notice into how the whole company works.
Chapter 2
You can't remove waste you can't see.
Lean production names eight kinds of waste — any effort the customer would never want to pay for. Once you can name them, you start seeing them everywhere. A handy memory is DOWNTIME.
| Waste | In the yard it looks like |
|---|---|
| Defects | Rework, a redo, a callback, a leak you have to fix twice. |
| Overproduction | Doing more than the job needs, prepping parts you won't use. |
| Waiting | Standing around for a part, a lift, a sign-off, another trade. |
| Non-used talent | A skilled tech doing what an apprentice could, ideas never asked for. |
| Transportation | Hauling parts and gear back and forth across the yard. |
| Inventory | Piles of stock or materials sitting, tying up cash and space. |
| Motion | Walking to the shop, searching for a tool, reaching, bending — wasted movement. |
| Extra-processing | Doing more steps than the spec needs; gold-plating. |
These come straight from our own jobs and the ESI course modules. They are only examples — pick any process in the yard and you will find loss in it:
| Job / process | The loss (real) | Waste | ** fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cutless bearing replace | Walked back to the shop twice for the puller and the right tools | Motion | Standard cutless kit on the drivetrain cart: strut-prop puller or blind puller, plus chisel, hammer and pipe wrench |
| Shaft alignment | Skipped the in-water re-check, got a vibration callback, re-aligned afloat | Defect | Make the afloat re-align a hard checklist step (ABYC P-6-2021) |
| Max-Prop pitch | Boat sat on the hard while the front desk confirmed pitch with PYI | Waiting | Capture engine/vessel specs at intake so pitch is confirmed before haul-out |
| Glide shaft seal | We cannot stock every seal size, so the right spare was not on hand | Waiting / Defect | Record the Glide seal size and number on day one, during the 18-point inspection, so the spare is ordered and staged before the work |
| Heater first-light | Re-primed and second-guessed because the controller buttons varied | Waiting | Photograph the exact controller and menu into the job file |
| Alternator | Belt squealed on the sea trial, came back to re-tension and align | Defect | Add laser alignment and a tension check to the standard install |
| Lithium main fuse | Trip to the shop for the right high-AIC Class T fuse | Motion | Keep Class T fuses stocked on the electrical cart |
| Engine-out repower | Bilge not cleaned and coated while open — no second chance once the engine is in | Extra work later | Clean and coat the room engine-out, every time — it is the one shot |
The two that bite a boatyard hardest are Motion and Waiting — walking, searching, and standing by. Every time you feel one, that's a Kaizen waiting to be flagged. You don't have to fix the whole system; you just have to see it and mark it.
Chapter 3
An organized space is a fast, safe space.
5S is how lean makes a workspace efficient and keeps it that way. It's the backbone of the cart, the bench, the truck and the boat.
| S | What you do |
|---|---|
| Sort | Remove what you don't need from the work area. If it's not used, it's in the way. |
| Set in order | A home for every tool, the most-used closest to hand. A glance tells you what's missing. |
| Shine | Clean as you go; a clean space shows problems (a leak, a lost part) instantly. |
| Standardize | The same layout every cart, every truck — so anyone can work from anyone's kit. |
| Sustain | Reset it at the end of every job. Order that isn't maintained is gone in a week. |
Chapter 4
Improvement needs a baseline to improve from.
Standard work is the current best-known way to do a task, written down so everyone does it the same way. Our ESI courses, SOPs and checklists are standard work — the heater install sequence, the shaft alignment procedure, the front-desk SOP.
Two reasons. First, consistency: the job comes out the same, to spec, whoever does it. Second — and this is the Kaizen part — you can't improve what isn't stable. If everyone does a task differently, you can't tell whether a new idea is actually better. The standard is the baseline you measure improvement against.
Standard work is not a cage. You follow the current standard and you look for the better way. When you find one and we prove it out, the standard changes and everyone gets the upgrade. That's the loop: standard → improvement → new standard.
Chapter 5
The daily habits that remove the most waste.
The biggest daily wins come from three habits that attack Motion and Waiting head-on.
Before you walk to the boat, think the job through end to end and gather the tools, parts and equipment you'll need. A planned job is a fast job; a forgotten tool is a trip you didn't have to make.
Use a cart for each job, 5S'd, so everything travels with you and stays in one place — not scattered, not back in the shop.
Every trip back to the shop is unbillable time the job eats. Walking costs money. Keep tools organized and near, and count the extra trips you make to the shop and log the number in the boatyard app. Trips-per-job, tracked over time, is one of the cleanest measures of how well we plan.
Chapter 6
If it isn't written down, it never happened.
The boatyard app is where the crew already log their jobs. Kaizen lives or dies on whether those notes actually get written — daily, while it's fresh.
At the end of each job or day, update your notes in the boatyard app. Memory fades by the next morning; the detail you don't capture today is gone. Daily notes are the habit the whole system rests on.
Chapter 7
Two asterisks turn a frustration into an upgrade.
This is the one habit that makes the whole course real. Inside your boatyard-app note, ** (two asterisks) is the ESI Kaizen marker. Drop it on anything that could be done better, and tag the manager so it gets seen.
Flag it with ** whenever a job could be improved by:
Keep it short and specific, in the note, with the marker and the manager tagged:
A ** with no tag can sit unseen. Tagging the manager routes it to the person who can test it, buy the tool, or change the standard. The marker plus the tag is the signal that turns your note into action.
Chapter 8
Closing the loop so good ideas actually stick.
A ** flag isn't the end — it's the start of a loop called PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act. It's how an idea is tested and, if it works, made permanent.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Plan | The flagged idea is reviewed — what would we change, and what do we expect to gain? |
| Do | Try it small — one cart, one job, one boat. |
| Check | Did it actually help? Compare against the old way (trips saved, time, quality). |
| Act | If it worked, make it the standard — update the kit, the SOP, the course — and train everyone. If not, learn and move on. |
Your half is the ** flag and the notes behind it. The manager's half is running PDCA on it. Both halves are needed: ideas with no testing stay opinions; testing with no field ideas has nothing to improve.
Chapter 9
Speed is worthless if the work has to come back.
Lean is fast and right — the two go together, because the most expensive waste is a defect that comes back. ESI builds quality in at every step instead of hoping to catch it at the end.
Don't pass a defect downstream. If a step isn't right, stop and fix it now — a bad joint, a wrong measurement, a missed torque costs minutes now and a callback later. Catching it at your station is cheap; catching it at the customer's dock is not.
Chapter 10
Kaizen only works where people feel safe to speak up.
Lean has two pillars: continuous improvement and respect for people. They're inseparable — you only get a flood of good ** flags in a yard where it's safe to point out problems without blame.
Flags are about processes, not people. We attack the problem, not the person who raised it. A tech who surfaces a defect or a clunky step is doing exactly what we want — that's how the yard gets better. Blame kills the flow of ideas; respect keeps it open.
Efficiency never comes at the cost of safety. A faster way that's less safe is not an improvement — it's the opposite. If a “better method” adds risk, it fails Kaizen. Safe and efficient, or it doesn't ship.
The best decisions are made where the work happens — on the boat, at the bench — not from a desk. That's gemba: go and see. It's why your field notes and flags carry so much weight: you're standing where the truth is.
Final certification
A short check ran at the end of each chapter. Pass this final at 80% to unlock your certificate.