Webinar: How Lean Can Reach Its Potential

1 pm Eastern Time (1st in a series of 3 webinars) 

Presented by:

	Robert W. “Doc” Hall Chairman of the Compression Institute, author of Compression and 37-year veteran of lean. Author of Zero Inventories (1983). Co-founder of both the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and The Compression Institute. Editor of Target, the publication of AME (22 years).
	Monique Dumais Over 25 years experience in quality, technical, manufacturing and engineering in a variety of industries: plastics, aerospace, food, and electronics, and for both military and commercial markets. Monique is now a Lean Sigma Black Belt and a Kaizen Promotion Officer at Simmons Bedding, Inc., Springfield, MA.
	John W. “Jack” Ward Extensive top executive experience with the Melville Corp. and as a turnaround executive for several other companies. Formerly the Executive Director of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Co-founder and Vice President of The Compression Institute.

This first in a series of three webinars will begin by asking Robert W. “Doc” Hall about some basic questions about lean. Doc has 37 years of experience with lean, both in the West and Japan. He is a proponent of lean, but also a critic because its scope has remained limited. Participants are invited to pose one or two questions on each point.

1. How and why did Toyota create TPS in Japan? (Hint: they were not numbers-driven.)

2. What have been the main failings implementing lean in North America?

3. What has characterized the best examples of “excellence” that you have seen? (Hint: They were excellent in more ways than “lean.”)

4. How can lean attain its potential?

Response to the last question opens many more questions from an expanded scope of thinking. What’s a more comprehensive definition of waste? Suppose we expand the definition of quality to be a business model that benefits all stakeholders, not just customers. Should we even question whether our core purpose for operations just enables customers and other stakeholders to create ever more waste? The webinar will introduce two ideas for dealing with such questions:

Compression Thinking: Since the world and all its resources are finite, all organizational decisions should consider the consequences on all affected stakeholders. Pragmatically, how can we learn to live better while using much less?

Vigorous Learning: Making all decisions, large and small, by considering many more factors, much faster. One lone individual can’t master the knowledge necessary to resolve 21^st century problems. How can we learn to project our effects on all process stakeholders as far into the future as possible? What happens if we regard the environment as a stakeholder?

At the end, we will leave you with a “Lean Maturity Matrix” by which you can assess your organization against a categorization of lean excellence.

This webinar is being held through the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME). The fee is $25 for members, and $50 for non-members. To register go to the AME registration page.

Agenda, Starting at 1 pm Eastern Time

Introductions

Mitch and Doc on the four questions

Respond to questions from participants

Jack and Doc on taking lean to the business model level:

           Compression Thinking

           Vigorous Learning Organizations

Self-rating by a Lean Maturity Index

Questions from participants

End