Backlog

Currently our sales reps spend a significant portion of their time each week configuring loads, and many defects happen. We need to create a simple Tetris game that anyone at Lamar Trailers could use to configure a load. They are very many variables to a Load but even if we had something that covered the 20% of configurations that happened 80% at a time. In other words, we won’t be able to prevent any load defects, but we need a simple way so that anyone can configure the load efficiently. Currently there’s so much tribal knowledge used.

What it does: The dashboard lines up nine operating metrics in a grid — three spokes (Culture → Standards & Training → Eliminate Waste) across three cadences (week, month, quarter). Each metric sits on the clock it actually moves at: a weekly pulse to catch problems on the floor, a monthly read once the month has matured, and a quarterly strategic view. Every tile carries a target, a trend, and a plain-language explanation of how it's figured and why it matters — so anyone, not just the person who built it, can read the board. Why it matters: You can't run a flywheel on gut feel. The board is the instrument panel for the operational system behind the BHAG — becoming the "Toyota of the Trailer Industry" — which isn't won on one heroic number but on a system that gets a little better every day. It catches trouble early (a weekly attendance or first-pass-quality slip shows up weeks before it reaches the financials), keeps one honest definition for each metric so the leadership team argues about the problem instead of the math, and makes the whole organization accountable to the same nine numbers. In short: it turns "operational excellence" from a slogan into something you can see move.

What it does: One screen that holds the CFO seat accountable. The hub is ROIC — the return earned on capital entrusted to Lamar — split into its two levers, margin and turns, because every move I make lands in one or the other. Below it, the three questions the seat exists to answer — are we profitable, is the structure sound, can we pay our bills — each read on three clocks: a weekly signal so problems surface early, a monthly core number, a quarterly structural read. A 13-week cash forecast keeps me ahead of cash instead of behind it. A budget panel keeps every department's spend honest against the calendar. Every metric has a target, an owner, a trend, and a plain-language definition — because a number I can't explain simply is a number I don't actually understand. Why it matters: "Doing the CFO job well" is easy to fake with activity and hard to fake against a scoreboard. This screen is the scoreboard: if I'm doing the job, the hub holds or climbs, the leaks shrink, the forecast's low point stays above the floor, and red tiles have countermeasures before anyone asks. It is also how I get better at the job — the weekly column tells me where to look before the monthly numbers tell everyone else, and the definitions force the clarity I expect of myself. Faithful with what's entrusted: measured, weekly.

Currently, they don’t have a good way of knowing which axles to grab from outside to attach to each trailer without climbing off the forklift and reading the fine print off of the ticket. After a thorough job breakdown, we need to build an app that tells the forklift driver and possibly even the stagers exactly which trailer is next and what parts it needs to call out. Ideally, he would have a screen either on the forklift or on the wall showing what the next axle part numbers are.

What it does : Lamar Ask is an internal tool that lets anyone get data from the company data lake just by asking a question in plain English — no SQL, no report request, no waiting. You type something like "top five dealers by sales this year" or "open A/R past 60 days," and it returns the answer as a table you can copy or export to Excel. Every answer shows the query it ran and a plain-English explanation, so the numbers can be trusted, not just taken. It reads only — it can never change data — and sensitive information stays restricted to the right people. Why it matters: Right now, getting a straight answer out of our systems takes a detour: ask IT or finance, wait for a report, or know how to write a query yourself. That bottleneck slows decisions and turns skilled people into part-time report-runners. Lamar Ask removes the middleman. It puts current, accurate data directly in the hands of the people who need it, in seconds — so a manager checks a number themselves instead of emailing for it, and our analysts spend their time on analysis, not on pulling reports. It's self-service answers, with the guardrails built in: read-only, sourced, and access-controlled. In short, it turns "who can get me this number?" into "let me just ask."