Hearth & Home Technologies

Jeremy McNutt

Lean Transformation Builder

Jeremy McNutt is the Head of IT for Hearth and Home Technologies, which is an $800M per year Operating Company within the HNI Corporation. He has 30 years of experience in Information Technology across consulting, government, retail, and manufacturing. In addition to IT, he is an AI and Lean Business Process Improvement leader and enthusiast.

Outside of work, Jeremy and his wife, Korinne, have two daughters in college and can be found cheering them on at their volleyball and rowing matches. Jeremy enjoys exercising, reading, playing the guitar, and supports the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Timberwolves.

Doing More with Less Starts with Continuous Improvement

A consistent theme I experience myself and hear from my peers is the need to "do more with less" with our teams. This generally means that, as IT leaders, we are expected to produce greater output with the same or fewer resources. IT teams typically spend between 50 percent and 80 percent of their time supporting existing systems and dealing with routine administrative requests. That leaves precious little time to focus on innovative, value-added work that moves the business forward.

Embedding Lean Principles into IT

I am the Head of IT for a mid-sized manufacturing company with approximately 800 million dollars in annual revenue and a strong Lean culture. Lean is a methodology derived from the Toyota Production System that improves productivity and reduces costs by eliminating waste, maximizing customer value and improving quality.

One of the concepts we embrace within Lean is called "MemberImplemented Ideas." A Member-Implemented Idea is a small improvement that is initiated and implemented by an employee at any level of the organization to improve their own work processes.

  Every member of my team has an annual goal to reduce the amount of time spent "keeping the lights on," or KLO, for IT within our organization.  

Every employee on my team has an annual goal to reduce the amount of time spent "keeping the lights on," or KLO, for IT within our organization. We use the actual number of KLO hours reduced in the previous year as the starting point for the following year's goal. Employees analyze their daily activities to identify tasks that can be reduced, reorganized, automated or eliminated while still producing the required outcomes.

Empowering Teams to Create Lasting Impact

My team members have delivered many impactful improvements since this program was introduced. These efforts have resulted in a 15% to 20% annual reduction in the amount of time required for KLO activities. They have improved processes for Sarbanes-Oxley audits, code deployments and systems access provisioning, among many other areas. The program has become deeply embedded in our team culture. Team members frequently mention it during interviews with prospective hires as one of the reasons they value working here. Most importantly, the annual reductions in KLO time have allowed us to create the equivalent of approximately one additional full-time employee dedicated to value-added work that directly supports our business teams.

Creating Capacity for Business Innovation

IT leaders will continue to face pressure to do more with less. Business leaders understand that keeping the lights on requires significant effort, but they also expect IT teams to deliver innovations and continuous improvements that help the business grow.

One way to meet those expectations is by embedding a culture of continuous improvement into the organization and empowering team members to identify and implement improvements in their own work processes. Even small, employee-driven changes can compound over time, creating meaningful capacity for innovation while strengthening both IT performance and business value.