Invica Team is about betterment, the betterment for you and for us!
Welcome to our website. I hope you find this to be a good starting place for your research into Invica as a partner for your performance improvement journey, or as an exciting place to expand your career.
Rob Pease - Founder & CEO
Rob has led performance improvement implementation and cultural transformations with clients since 2000, both as an internal or external consultant. As a leader, transformation specialist, coach, and mentor, Rob has been part of revolutionary changes in Agriculture, Food, Furniture, local and state government, and non-profit spaces. He and his family reside in West Michigan, the location of Invica headquarters. Rob co-founded Invica in 2014 and has been the CEO since 2019.
Rob has served as Chairman of the Board for the Michigan Lean Consortium, and a director on other local boards. He holds a MA in Organizational Change Leadership from the University of Western Michigan and BA in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.
Brad Brown - Founder & COO
Dr. Brown started his fire service career in 1996 and currently serves as the the Assistant Fire Chief of Administration for the Grand Rapids, MI fire department. He led his department to ISO Class 1 and Internationally Accredited status, also serving as a peer assessor for the Center for Public Safety Excellence while being awarded the CFAI Ray Picard Award for his continued leadership and contributions to the fire service.
During his doctoral coursework, he was awarded the 2018 Richard A. Freund International Scholarship from the American Society for Quality. Brad served as a voting alternate member on the 2020 edition of NFPA 1710. He has presented numerous times over the past several years for the Michigan Lean Consortium, the American Society for Quality, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, and the Center for Public Safety Excellence.
Brad earned an AAS in Fire Protection Technology from Guilford Technical Community College, and AAS in Fire Prevention and Investigation from Delta College, a Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in Fire Service Management from Northwood University, an MS in Executive Fire Service Leadership from Grand Canyon University, and his Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership and Development from Cornerstone University. He completed the Executive Fire Officer (EFO) program at the National Fire Academy and holds the Chief Fire Officer (CFO) designation from the Center for Public Safety Excellence in addition to a lean champion certification through Grand Rapids Community College.
Mike Wiersma - EVP Networking
Mike is a 16 year continuous improvement, operations management and engineering. He has a passion for teaching, coaching and developing others to become better. Mike specializes in leading cultural transformation across the globe. His passion has always been to put his strategic thinking to work solving difficult people and organizational problems. The largest of organizations have depended on Don for his strategy and insight in problem solving (including the State of Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Comerica Bank) and he has coached many small business owners.
He has a unique talent for solving the most complicated financial and office flow transactions by often working simultaneously to coordinate with vendors, internal staff, and IT developers to lead many successful projects.
Today, he is working as a lean transformation leader at Carrier and is an active board member as vice chair of the Michigan Lean Consortium.
Mike currently resides in Charlotte, NC With his wife, Jessica and their 4 girls.
Rick Fleming - EVP of Capability & Development
Rick uses his 30 years of experience in management roles, operational excellence and the Toyota Kata methodology to help companies create and align leadership systems that support operational and cultural changes needed to support lean thinking, develop accountability and drive a daily continuous improvement philosophy.
Rick is a master kata coach and past instructor of the University of Michigan’s “Toyota Kata” workshop for four years. He collaborates with the Kata community in on-going development of the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata routines & materials and is an acknowledged contributor to the “Toyota Kata Field Guide” by Mike Rother. Rick also presents and facilitates Kata workshops for MLC, MEP, Shingo and other organizations.
Rick is co-author of “Lean Sigma Methods and Tools for Service Organizations” (2012, Business Expert Press), a lead instructor for Grand Rapid Community College’s Lean Champion Program and a Shingo Prize Examiner Alumni. He assisted Shingo award winners Metalworks (2007 Shingo Prize) and Micron Manufacturing (2008 silver medallion Shingo Prize) with their journeys to operational excellence. Rick began his lean journey working with Mike Rother (author of Toyota Kata) and Kiyoshi Suzaki helping companies implement lean production systems through Continuous Improvement User Groups in the Midwest.
Rick has worked with hundreds of companies on Lean enterprise transformation and organizational development around the principles of Operational Excellence. He has worked with a diverse group of clients from small job shops to large organizations that include manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organizations, business services and Lean Government in counties.
Don Watsa - EVP of Client Engagement
LEAN, Continuous Improvement, Performance Excellence, and KATA Coach for Small Business Owners and Their Teams.
Don is a 20 year veteran of small business ownership, HR subject matter expert, and creative strategist. His passion has always been to put his strategic thinking to work solving difficult people and organizational problems. The largest of organizations have depended on Don for his strategy and insight in problem solving (including the State of Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Comerica Bank) and he has coached many small business owners.
He has a unique talent for solving the most complicated financial and office flow transactions by often working simultaneously to coordinate with vendors, internal staff, and IT developers to lead many successful projects.
Don enters his Encore career by adding the structure of LEAN and Six Sigma to his problem-solving skills. The combination of his innovative and creative thought process compliments his deep respect for the ability of individuals and teams to solve their own problems.
Today, he is coaching small business owners and their teams. He participates as a team member of a number of LEAN consulting organizations, including a Forbes Best Management Consulting Firm, recognized for their innovation results.
Don lives in Lake Orion Michigan with his spouse, Linda, who teaches HR at Oakland University. He is a faith filled Catholic who appreciates the true, the good and the beautiful that God gives us.
Brian Block - VP of IT & Design
Dave Kippen - VP of Operations & Supply Chain
Dave has led the implementation of Lean Manufacturing (Performance Excellence, Continuous Improvement) for many companies, both existing programs and ground up implementations. Starting as a practitioner, and having advanced to enterprise level PE Leadership, Dave judges the framework that structures PE as critical, perhaps even more so than the tools. He has facilitated the roll out of Lean framework, start to finish, in a wide array of organizations. Dave has direct, first hand implementation of almost all the Lean methodologies with in-depth experience of Lean Kaizen/Kata/DMAIC improvements, including Cellular Workflows, Standard Work, SMED, Material Flow / Waterspider routes, EPEI, 5S, Poke Yoke, Value Stream Mapping, Workflow Improvement, Plant Layout Redesign, Visual Management, Leaders Standard Work, Hijunka, Mixed Model scheduling, Obeya Creation and 3P.
As an experienced Lean trainer, Lean Champion trainer, and Lean Bronze Certification coach, he has put more than 500 people through related classes, and has coached 65 people through the nationally certified Lean Bronze Certification program offered by the SME, ASQ and the Shingo Organization.
Dave’s ultimate goal is to end workplace suffering and he holds a passion for people who experience mostly misery in their daily job. By engaging and involving people, and by giving them real responsibility in fixing their own problems, he aims to enhance the workplace to make jobs enjoyable!
Dan Vermeesch - VP of Services Delivery
For three decades Dan has held leadership positions in aerospace electronics, commercial electronics and precision machining. In each of those positions, his “Why” has been to help people become who they are meant to be so they can conquer the world in their own unique way. Doing so has led to operational excellence and world class results. As Plant Manager & Lean Champion at Micron Manufacturing Company, Dan led the company through achieving the Shingo Silver Medallion for Operational Excellence. At the time Micron was the smallest family-owned manufacturer on the planet to achieve that level of success.
For two decades Dan was the architect of the operational excellence system at Micron Manufacturing Company. Along the journey, Dan and his team came to the realization that culture could be intentionally nudged, if not molded, and that this culture shift led to excellence. Potentially more fascinating is the discovery that the shifts occurred in 3-year blocks of time. Utilizing that information, Dan led his team to intentionally drive 3-year cultural transformations – 5 times! This study and realization led Dan to develop and document the steps to create an innovative roadmap to success over and again for his organization:
From: What can you do for me? – To: How can I help you succeed?
Dan implemented the Improvement Kata and was the organization-wide master kata coach at Micron. He then took that knowledge and shared it with all interested in our community and beyond as a user group leader and conference speaker. He has given hundreds of speeches, presentations, workshops and tours sharing the transformational joy of learning to competitors, community leaders and industry leaders from across the globe.
Dan grew up on a cash crop farm. Why is this important to include here? First, his journey into visual organization and visual control started with painting his hoe purple when at age 7 (ask me about it sometime). Secondly, cash crops are perishable, requiring an intimate understanding of flow at an early age. Not only did he learn how to manage material, information and cash flow from his parents but it affected the family dinner table everyday where 90+% of all meals served included the fruits of their labor. There is a tremendous difference between knowledge and understanding. When flow impacts the next meal you eat you understand its importance at a very different level. He brings that understanding with him every day to every person that he meets. That understanding was the first step on the path of discovering his “Why”.
Amy Pease - Editor & Chief