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Lean Six Sigma Executive Champion

As companies strive to become better, and operate faster, Lean Six Sigma makes more sense in helping companies and resources identify costs, waste and inefficiencies. It has become a universal methodology to attack these negative causes in business processes through accurate measurement of errors and point to venues for elimination. Any process, shop floor, back office or corporate leadership can be a target for improvement; the ability to measure errors and remove them is a universal theme. The Center’s Executive Champion Program is where the path begins. This 1-day program focuses on providing executive leadership the full breath of the principles and benefits of Lean Six Sigma and to equip them with the ability to provide leadership, understanding, coaching and support for future short and long-term changes necessary to implement and sustain a quantified Lean/Lean Six Sigma culture.

Lean Equipment Management II: Advanced Reliability Applications

Lean Equipment Management is NOT about improving maintenance, but rather improving equipment — the single largest investment of most manufacturing companies and utilities. Reliable equipment is one of the most fundamental enablers of lean manufacturing in an equipment-intensive business. Reliable equipment reduces work-in-process inventories, reduces processing delays, improves flow, improves quality, eliminates many “waiting” wastes, and reduces operating and maintenance costs. Lean Equipment principles, based on the pillars of TPM, address people, their equipment, and the work processes they use.  Learn how to determine the extent of equipment-related losses: scheduled shut-downs, downtime, inefficiency, quality and yield. Starting points for Lean Equipment Management depends on the “maturity” of your maintenance work. This seminar aims for fast and sustainable results.

Matching Accounting to Your Lean Environment

This seminar is not an academic exercise: it gives you the logic and principles behind a proven lean accounting model that clearly shows the positive results of lean — based on the successful lean accounting transformation performed by the Wiremold Company beginning in 1991.  Wiremold has proven that lean principles affect not just manufacturing operations, but all aspects of a business — sales and marketing, engineering, product development — even accounting. If you’ve been successful using lean principles to move from batch and queue to flow, you’re likely running into trouble with your company’s accounting system.  Traditional management accounting systems involving standard cost, overhead absorption, and variance analysis create significant false-negative reporting distortions that can impede further progress in a lean business. To sustain lean, financial managers must be willing to transform their company’s routine accounting practices to a new system that supports lean practices.

Toyota Culture Series: Developing & Engaging the Associates in Continuous Improvement

Learning and adopting the tools of the Toyota Production System is one of the early steps of deployment of the continuous improvement process. Adopting the tools means developing competent people at all levels and engaging them in the process of identifying and solving problems on a continuous basis. Roles of all members of the organization have to be identified, a standard method of instruction and communication in place, problem identification and problem solving methods in use and documenting and sharing best practices throughout the entire organization. Job rotation for skill development is a key tool in the process of raising performance standards and developing associates. The small, day to day process improvements coming from the associates is the backbone of how the Toyota Production System works. This workshop describes this process.

Toyota Culture Series: Problem Solving Applied On-Site

Toyota has deemed “Problem Solving” as their competitive advantage and improving these skills is a major priority in their organization. Mike Hoseus, co-author of Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way will show how Toyota establishes the culture for problem solving and then review the systematic process used by all levels and all departments within their organization. He will also review the processes Toyota uses not only to sustain this problem solving culture, but also to improve it on a daily basis and how you can do the same.

Toyota Culture Series: A-3 Problem Solving

Problem Solving is the foundation of Lean. The tools of a lean management system are designed to identify problems. Do you have standardization and the expertise at all levels of your organization to solve them? The extent that you train and engage your organization in problem solving will ultimately determine your success in the lean journey.  Mike Hoseus, co-author of Toyota Culture will review how a lean organization establishes their culture for problem solving at all levels. A “hands on” simulation will be used to review an 8 Step systematic process that can be used by all levels and all departments of your organization. He’ll also review the processes a lean organization uses not only to sustain this problem solving culture but also to improve it on a daily basis.The workshop will also discuss in detail the Toyota Recall Crisis. The workshop will use the recall as a “case study” to apply the A- 3 problem solving process. The workshop will break down the major issues of the recall in order to identify root causes and countermeasures. We will also reflect on the crisis to identify lessons learned, not only for Toyota, but also for your organization.

5s: Using Visual Systems To Manage Your Workplace

If you walk through your manufacturing facility and do not immediately “see” the flow of the products, the flow of the operations, the flow of the people, and the flow of the information,your facility is not running properly!  A cluttered, dirty, disorganized workplace is a breeding ground for waste! Unless your work place has the critical information your employees need — in a format that is easily understood and located at the point of use — your plant will suffer from confusion, frustration, and errors as well as rework and downtime.  This seminar goes beyond “cleaning” the workplace. It demonstrates management’s role in creating the standards to support a visual system, a culture for sustaining continuous improvements — and then using them as a foundation for a lean enterprise.

Lean Visual Equipment: Creating the Lean Machine

“Lean Machines” require less of everything to operate and maintain when compared to traditional machines — less time, less effort, less money, and fewer skilled experts. Lean Machines operate more efficiently, more effectively, with highest levels of reliability than traditional machines.  Operability and maintainability improvement is part art and part science designed to make machines and equipment easier to operate, maintain and inspect. This is possible in part by using some easy techniques known as “visual systems” that communicate specific information quickly at or near the equipment. Improved accesses to critical parts or information through “minor modifications” contribute the rest of the formula for successful Lean Machines. Putting the critical information ON the equipment where it is needed can truly make work easier and more accurate — relying less on memory or trial-and-error methods — and improving equipment performance and reliability. Visual systems for improving equipment effectiveness are an extension of the “visual factory” or the “visual workplace” driven down to specific details ON the equipment.  “Lean machines summarizes my 15-year quest for ‘world-class simplicity’ of manufacturing and utility equipment and machinery. These easy-to-learn and easy-to-apply principles can truly lead to work simplification and error proofing in every type of operation.” 

Managing Spare Parts: Effective Asset Management

Managing maintenance materials proactively is key to supporting your reliability program. Providing the right materials in the proper quantities — at the right time and at the lowest practical cost — is the goal. This seminar teaches best practices for managing critical spare parts, regular parts and equipment that get impressive results — such as stockouts reduced to less than 2 percent and inventory reduced by one-half.

Condition Monitoring I: Applied Vibration Analysis and Balancing

Machine breakdowns — which can be annoying, financially catastrophic, and even dangerous — can be avoided. Condition-based maintenance is the key.  You’ll learn first-hand — using equipment in the classroom — how to detect, diagnose and correct machinery problems.  You’ll gain expertise in vibration analyses, single- and two plane balancing techniques, laser shaft alignment, and more. After the seminar, you’ll have the confidence and expertise to resolve those machinery problems that you used to consider major headaches.

Condition Monitoring II: Infrared Thermography, Oil Analysis, Motor Condition Assessment, and Ultrasonic Nose Inspection

This seminar lets you examine four industry-proven condition monitoring technologies and determine how they fit into your industrial-maintenance program. You’ll learn the use, capabilities and limitations of each technology or monitoring approach. You’ll see demonstrations of sample technologies and study options, tradeoffs, and expected costs.  You’ll leave the seminar with the expertise to select the right technology for the job, and you’ll be able to make informed decisions about the condition-monitoring approach that will benefit you most in your quest for improved reliability.

Value Stream Mapping

Mapping the value stream is essential to discovering the priority wastes in the total value-chain work flow — from suppliers to customers. Value stream mapping identifies where to start for the high-impact results and payback on the journey to lean. Discover how value stream mapping sets the strategy for your lean implementation by identifying high-waste operations and work-flow and information constraints in your facility.  Learn the technique and the quickest way to apply the tool.

The Kaizen Process: Maximizing Production Flow

Tackle a real project — inside your plant — with teams focusing on a production area and analyzing the flow of work. Your ultimate goal by week’s end: to balance a production line to the customer's needs using the concept of cell design and take time. Guided by experienced coaches, you establish a rhythm to the production flow, establish one-piece flow and abandon the work in process that may have been hiding production-system problems. Discover in hours — not weeks — how to implement improvements.

Proactive Project Management in a Lean Environment

Organizations that practice reactive project management soon discover that most projects are late, over budget, or fail to meet the customer’s technical and business objectives.  This seminar teaches proactive project management techniques and a proven process that will help you manage projects successfully — on time, on budget and to the customer’s satisfaction. You’ll learn how to establish requirements, develop a strategy, create a project charter, define scope, establish time and cost baselines, manage risk, establish and manage stakeholder expectations, handle communication, deal with change, measure and track performance, and collect final project data. See how quality, effective teams and clearly defined metrics contribute significantly to project success and customer satisfaction.

The Fundamentals of Purchasing

This seminar is a comprehensive presentation on the basics of purchasing. Without a firm grasp of purchasing basics, you could give away leverage you shouldn't  — or worse — jeopardize your company’s relationships with suppliers.  The similar reveals how to maximize your value and leverage and reviews the legal and ethical issues involved in purchasing. You’ll practice negotiation principles, identify what to include in total cost and learn a scheme for calculating it.

Lean Purchasing: New Rules, New Tools

Greatly improve your company’s cash flow! Traditional purchasing and supply chain practices are neither appropriate for these times nor do they support lean manufacturing. The new and proven approaches revealed in this session can improve on-time deliveries by 80%, reduce inventory investment by as much as 90% and greatly improve supplier quality, all without an increase in cost.Real examples include how a mid-sized company reduced supplier lead times by 70% in 60 days, new purchasing/supplier measures that improve performance of both, how standard costing inhibits purchasing performance and how to improve on-time deliveries without expediting while reducing inventories.

Work Methods for Supervisors — Improving Prior Improvements (IPI)

Do you have all the benefits you were promised from your continuous improvement efforts? Lean systems are in jeopardy if supervisors are on the fringe or feel disengaged or imposed upon by continuous improvement programs.  Supervisors need practical training in work methods and measurement so they can quickly scan an operation to determine which tools and techniques must be used to maintain momentum in lean.  Supervisors must also have the ability to direct employees in applying these tools and techniques to attain higher output levels.  Without going into technician-level detail, this workshop teaches supervisors how to assess work routines; use benchmarks to judge employee work patterns and discover what might be restricting daily output; analyze the workday to isolate areas causing productivity delays; correct employee-related or operationally-induced production problems; apply techniques that spark new enthusiasm among employees; and train and sell these improvements to everyone at the plant.