D. Foley Landscape, Inc. was founded in March of 1987 by Dan Foley while attending Babson College. Dan was simultaneously studying Horticulture and Landscape Design at Massachusetts Bay Community College. In June of 1989, when Dan graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management/Entrepreneurial Studies, our focus was turned on our business full-time.
As with many "start up" organizations, the early years of D. Foley Landscape were based upon working with various types of clients. In 1990, we began to shift our FOCUS to solely the commercial market, allowing us to be better aligned with our vision.
This focus and success led to the exploration of various markets to search for clients that demanded the same performance, delivery, investment value, and results as the commercial market. Today, D. Foley Landscape services four primary markets with a FULL SERVICE approach to those markets:
Commercial
Institutional/Educational via a dedicated division called CampusCare®
Apartments/Homeowner Associations/Condominiums
Sports Turf
Our company is built on a foundation of inspiration generated by working as a team to deliver phenomenal results. We believe that we are in the people and communication business first and the landscape business second. Our goals are to be organized, responsive, proactive, detail oriented and informative.
For over twenty years, D. Foley Landscape, Inc. has been locally and nationally recognized, allowing us to benchmark and share best practices with some of the best companies around North America. Our goal is to universally share and leverage knowledge to continually enhance the value we offer to our clients. We eagerly look forward to the future next twenty years…it is FUN to be part of an inspired team that is continually committed to phenomenal results!
Implementing Lean Management Practices
Those in the corporate and manufacturing world are likely familiar with the concept of Lean Management. This concept was refined and utilized by Toyota and is often referred to the "Toyota Production System." Many organizations within a wide variety of industries have also utilized this concept in an effort to eliminate waste and deliver more value for their customers or end users.
In November of 2006, we began an extensive training program on the concepts of Lean called "The Working Smarter Training Challenge." This program offers resources from many Lean experts across North America and requires our team to invest in learning and applying the concepts. We commit to completing weekly observation exercises and homework in preparation for our training session meetings every Monday afternoon.
We have thoroughly enjoyed over 115 weeks of learning during our first two years of the program and have literally changed the culture at our organization! We have completed over ten, week- long Kaizen Events and have been motivated by many other projects where Lean concepts have been applied and implemented.
We are excited to announce that we recently received a national Pillar Award in recognition of our implementation of Lean Management practices. We were chosen from over 300 companies from North America that are involved in the Working Smarter Training Challenge program. Click play on the video below to watch the video inspired as a result of our Pillar Award achievement.
We have learned a great deal over the first two years of our Lean journey. We also understand that Lean is the continuous journey to perfection and look forward to our third year of significant change in 2009. It is a "journey that never ends" and as Vince Lombardi- the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers- once said:
"Gentleman, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence."
Click play to see the Pillar Award Video of D. Foley
