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Why OpEx, AI, and Digital Transformations Fail in 2025 (with Jess Orr: ex-Toyota, ex-OpEx, ex-VP)

Guest: Jess Orr – ex-Toyota engineer, former corporate OpEx leader and VP of Operations

Summary:
In this episode, Jess and Antonio connect the dots between Operational Excellence and Artificial Intelligence. Jess shares what she learned at Toyota, in a successful divisional OpEx transformation, in a failed enterprise-wide rollout, and later as VP of Operations — and how all of that experience shapes how she thinks about AI today.

The core message:

OpEx and CI professionals are uniquely positioned to lead AI efforts because they already know how to define problems, find constraints, and drive cultural change.
Starting with tools — whether it’s Lean tools or AI tools — almost always fails.

Antonio then introduces the concept of AI Business Audits as a structured way for consultants to partner with clients, identify their real bottlenecks, and use AI for brainstorming, solution design, and ROI modeling, instead of jumping blindly into “doing AI.”

3–5 Key Takeaways:

  1. Toyota vs everyone else:
    Toyota embedded continuous improvement in everyone’s job, while many companies try to bolt on CI through tools without a culture to sustain it.

  2. Tools don’t fix culture.
    Rolling out 5S, DMS, or even AI tools without leadership alignment and clear “why” leads to shallow adoption and failed transformations.

  3. Consultants as capability builders, not crutches.
    External consultants are most valuable when they build internal capability and mentor internal champions — not when they become permanent life support.

  4. OpEx + AI is a natural pairing.
    CI practitioners already know how to map value streams, find constraints, and run structured problem solving. AI simply gives them superpowers if used correctly.

  5. AI Business Audits are the bridge.
    Starting from constraints and problems, then using AI to explore options and quantify ROI, is a far better path than “Let’s try some AI tools and see what happens.”

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