AME Blog

AME Events in February 2007

The following are AME events in February.  To view the entire events listing, click here.

Total Productive Maintenance Kaizen Event (Workshop)
Most people think the only training involved in 5-Day Focused Improvement occurs in a classroom. In fact 80 percent of the 5-Day Focused Improvement training happens on the shop floor, during the “Action Learning” phase of the program.

Date: 01/22/2007
Frisco City, Alabama

Lean Product Design Workshop (Seminar)
Practical Tools to Slash Manufacturing Costs

Date: 02/12/2007
San Antonio, TX

La-Z-Boy Residential Enterprise Value Stream Mapping (Workshop)
Beau Keyte the co-author of “The Complete Lean Enterprise” has agreed to volunteer his time to teach and facilitate this workshop.

Date: 02/14/2007
Monroe, Michigan

Lean Supply Chain Summit (Other)
Building Supply Chain Management Excellence: New Tools, New Plans. Join AME for three days of informative, real-world lean purchasing and supply chain management training.

Date: 02/19/2007
Henderson, NV

The Effective Lean Organization (Seminar)
Unleashing the True Potential Within Your Organization.

Date: 02/27/2007
San Antonio, TX

Next Big Thing

I have been asked "What is the next big thing" many times. Certainly Lean Enterprize is pretty strategic, but is it the nirvana for manufacturing and business excellence?

I believe my specialty, Rapid Knowledge Transfer, is a key to sustaining excellence but I believe it's important to keep your eye on the ball by developing and improving having customer focused processes which include Lean. What do you say?

Beating LCL Countries

Can you successfully compete against low cost labor countries?  The press is full of doom and gloom reports about North American manufacturing fleeing overseas to reduce the cost of labor but they don't talk about all the manufacturers that are staying here and sucessfully competing against companies using low cost labor production.  How do they do it?  Many of them have embarked on a LEAN manufacturing journey to take the costly waste out of their processes to reduce cost, improve quality, increase customer service and on-time delivery.  They do this without adding piles of inventory that eat up cash and become a major problem during the annual physical inventory ritual that many companies still do and is a direct byproduct of offshore manufacturing.  It doesn't matter if your organization is big, little or a niche market player, everyone can participate in improving their business and competing while manufacturing right here at home.  It just takes a committment from the top to adopt local manufacturing as a key element of the business stategy and the understanding that it's a journey, not a destination that will be reached next quarter or next year.

Lean and Six Sigma Failures

Why do so many performance improvement initiatives that have come and gone over the years, fail to produce the results that people expect to see? The usual responses are leadership failed to be involved or some other very high level "motherhood and apple pie" type statement. That is not a "root" cause. If leadership is not involved, "why not?" What are they involved in? Do they have some place more important to spend their time?

Why do gains not get sustained? And why is it so hard to replicate (standardize) improvements made to one part of the business to other parts?

In my mind there are a common set of 'root cause' failures that fit with TQM, lean manufacturing or enterprise, six sigma, supply chain management, outsourcing and a long list of other changes to a business/organization intended to result in significant improvement....but in the end only improving the situation somewhat.

I will share my thoughts.....but first.....what are your thoughts?

Best wishes,
Michael Bremer
Cumberland Group Chicago &
author "Six Sigma Financial Tracking & Reporting"

AME Blog

Link: AME Blog.

AME has an annual conference - one in the US and another in the Canadian region.  I am interested in the views of Conference Attendees - what do you like to see, what are you interested in seeing on a plant tour.  What can we offer to better your experience?

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Is there something beyond Lean?

Many of us have been implementing lean for some years with mixed results - some have done it well, some not so well but we all agree that none of us have it figured out as well as toyota.  Thought for today - if you are not using Lean what are you using for a continuous improvement program?

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