Tyson Heaton

Tyson Heaton’s lean journey kicked off in the gritty world of meatpacking at JBS, where he was a young supervisor learning the ropes from mentors like Paulo Falconi. There, he tackled his first transformation at a Pennsylvania plant, figuring out fast that leadership buy-in is the make-or-break factor. At Schreiber Foods, he ran teams in a high-speed plant, leveraging Six Sigma to sharpen engineering and upgrades. Then at Greencore, he turned around a Utah facility, using value stream mapping to pull suppliers and customers into a win-win game plan that delivered big.  

In 2013, O.C. Tanner’s culture of trust and lean chops pulled him in as Manager of Lean/Continuous Improvement & Training. Rising to Sr. Director of Supply Chain People Development & Operations, Tyson led manufacturing, distribution centers, and supply chain teams, driving steady margin gains and cost cuts by empowering people—not just tweaking processes. He rolled out TWI to frontline leaders, made Toyota Kata a supply chain habit, and teamed up with TSSC to build a showcase site that turned heads nationwide. A book junkie, he’s devoured Kaizen Express and Managing to Learn, riffing on ideas from John Shook, Jeff Liker, and Jim Womack to fuel his experiments. Since 2019, he’s been a Shingo Institute examiner, sizing up lean cultures everywhere, from factories to hospitals.  

Tyson’s thankful for the mentors—Falconi’s TQM grit, Toyota’s genius, Shingo’s wisdom—who’ve shaped him under lean’s big tent. Now at LEI, he’s coaching execs worldwide, growing co-learning partnerships, and swapping transformation tales that stick. He’s got a political science BA from Utah State University (magna cum laude) and a fire for building teams that learn and win. Off the clock, Tyson’s in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and three kids, rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, or pitching in at the family ranch.