John Schroyer
At the first ever Green Market Report Michigan Cannabis Business Summit in Detroit on Sept. 6, we recognized some of the stellar industry players with the GMR Michigan Cannabis Awards.
The winner of Best Cultivator was Common Citizen, which runs a 70-acre greenhouse near the town of Marshall.
CEO Michael Elias, who got into the cannabis game in 2016 following a long career in health care, said it was marijuana’s medical potential that first attracted him to the industry.
“The prospect of being part of a movement that could revolutionize health care through the application of cannabis for therapeutic purposes excited me deeply,” he told Green Market Report. “It’s an extension of my life’s work in health care, but in a groundbreaking new context that offers untapped possibilities for patient well-being.”
The speed with which the cannabis trade itself has grown has proven to be one of the more difficult obstacles, Elias said, “which is exhilarating but also fraught with challenges.”
“While scaling the business, it has been incredibly difficult to stabilize our systems and processes, because the pace of growth can outstrip the rate at which operational refinements can be made,” he said.
But that’s exactly where he found his proudest cannabis business moment. He introduced a management program for the Common Citizen greenhouse using “Lean Six Sigma,” which he credits for much of the business’s success. It improved efficiencies throughout the organization and allowed the company to scale up quickly without toppling over.
Elias called it Common Citizen’s “bedrock.”
“Lean manufacturing principles are geared toward speed and innovation, but they also focus on stability and process optimization. In an environment where we have to make rapid, on-the-fly adjustments, lean has provided us with a structured framework to manage these complexities more effectively,” Elias said.
Looking to the future, Elias said he’s quite excited about the potential for federal reform in the near future, including rescheduling, banking access, a boost in cannabis research and development, and how all of that will combine to help the marijuana trade continue growing even more.
2 comments
Lily Lucifer
September 15, 2023 at 5:52 pm
I get that they have the biggest facility but their weed is remediate and is always baked before sent to the customers. They give shit products to the customers. And are the main reason for caregivers getting less plants.
N/A
September 18, 2023 at 5:17 pm
I can’t imagine how the same place that has the most mold I’ve ever seen can be considered best cultivator. Now, I respect the hard work the employees put into their job, but can’t say the same for the higher ups. The fact they credit their success on Lean Manufacturing Practices is despicable. Supervisors scheming for ideas to save the company the most money (like taking away breaks since there’s no laws protecting agricultural workers) so they get bonuses bigger than the hard working employees annual wage is beyond wrong, not to mention literal slave wages for immigrants. They get to crunch some numbers to get the headcount for people to fire, just to find out they let go of 100 too many, but to save on the cost of labor has each person doing the work of 3 without even a pat on the back. Corporate Cannabis at its finest.