About
We know change is simple, but not easy.
We exist to make change commonplace.
eta is a Lean process excellence practice founded and operated by Neil Deshpande in Atlanta and Rishi Malhotra in Reno. We were founded in 2016 to do this work the way we had been wanting to do it — by insight rather than by formula, and with the people who do the work, not over them.
How we engage
Implementation. The interest in theory is real — Toyota, Ohno, Deming, the canonical literature — but the work itself is implementation. Operational learning is learned in the doing. An engagement that has not yet produced a re-marked yard, a re-timed cycle, or a re-drawn flow has not yet started.
Efficiency. We engage no more than is necessary. The aim is implementations that are sensibly sized, durable, and delivered on a clock the operation can absorb — often via the five-day Kaizen, sometimes via a department-by-department cadence at one department every six weeks.
Simplicity. The teaching is plain. Flow, pull, takt, standard work, the eight Lean wastes — taught in language an operator can carry onto the floor or into a business process. The metrics used to measure performance are actionable, auditable, and accessible, like the system design itself. The aim is for clients to come to terms with each concept themselves, in their own operation.
The practice
We are brought in by capacity-constrained operators, firms that cannot meet the demand the market has placed on them and do not want to make large capital investments yet. Our clients are typically mid-market manufacturers and services businesses with annual revenue between three million and three billion dollars — whose growth has been bottlenecked not by capital but by the way work flows through the operation.
Lean Strategy Session. Two or three days in a conference room with the executive team and the operations leads. The output is a sequenced punch-list of where the work should start. Best when leadership knows it wants to begin but hasn’t yet picked the first problem.
Lean Kaizen. The five-day intensive. A small cross-functional team takes on a single process, maps the current state, names the pain points, redesigns the flow, pilots the redesign, and wires it in — closing the week with a report-out to leadership and a sixty-day follow-up list. Six to ten participants drawn from the operation.
Fractional Lean Officer. An annual retainer covering up to ten concurrent improvement projects — a portfolio rhythm rather than a project rhythm. For operators ready to commit a year to changing how the work runs but not yet ready to hire a full-time Lean executive. Multi-month department-by-department transformation, at the rhythm of one department every six weeks, runs naturally inside this format.
The two pillars are people and process, in that order. The philosophical core is creativity before capital. We grow capacity without growing capital.
Principals
Neil Deshpande
Atlanta · Practice lead
Neil read mechanical engineering at BIT Mesra and completed graduate work at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University. Fifteen years in automotive — beginning as an NVH engineer at Roush NVH Consulting, working with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler — followed by five years in food and beverage, before founding eta in 2016 to run the work the way he had been wanting to run it. He is also co-founder of Kernel, a hardware company launched via crowd-funding. ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He thinks in systems, and is an engineer who enjoys working with people.
Rishi Malhotra
Reno · Practice lead
Rishi holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance, a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering, and is an ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. More than twenty years of strategic and tactical Lean and Six Sigma work — including a stint at Dell Computers in the years when Dell was a US Lean pioneer. He runs the Six Sigma Lean curriculum at the University of Nevada, Reno. A meaningful share of eta’s clients arrive having first sat in his Green Belt classroom — which is, in a real sense, where many of our engagements actually begin.
How the work proceeds
Most engagements are combinations of Kaizen events and strategy sessions. A Kaizen event starts with a half-day of quick-start teaching in a conference room, followed by mapping the current state and logging pain points against it, then drawing a future state informed by the work prior. A pilot of the future state on the morning of the third day confirms the design; the changes are wired in on the fourth day; a report-out to leadership follows on day five, concluding the bulk of the Kaizen with ten to fifteen follow-up items to wrap up over the next sixty days. The teaching is classical — Toyota and Ohno, the eight wastes, takt, pull, and flow. Participants learn to define problems in the Lean way and to solve them rapidly and as a matter of course.
What we are paid for, ultimately, is durable change. Change that sticks. The change sticks because the people who hold it have built it. That is the same answer to a different question every time, and it is the answer that is hardest to deliver and worth the most when delivered.
Geography and sectors
We work across North America, with engagement teams flying out of Atlanta and Reno. Sector mix is roughly three-fifths business process and two-fifths manufacturing; representative work has included precast concrete, medical devices, semiconductors, batteries and energy storage, beverage, waste management, public-sector services, and field-service operations. The mechanisms that produce durable change tend to travel.