Description:

Lean principles focus on increasing efficiency while reducing expenses to deliver the maximum return-on-investment.  Through the introduction of lean, many organizations have enjoyed lower costs, higher profits, superior quality, shorter order-to-delivery time, greater flexibility and improved response to changing client demands by introducing lean principles into their organization.

Benefits:

The ability to quickly respond to market demand and prevent over-capacity within your company requires the adoption of lean principles.  Lean techniques allow you to lower costs, improve efficiency, reduce overhead, and eliminate activities that are not value added.

This course is designed to introduce participants to the fundamentals of lean using a hands-on simulation exercise with multiple runs.  Plant managers, operations managers, business owners, shift supervisors, HR professionals, quality control personnel, engineers and anyone wanting an understanding of the use & application of lean principles will benefit from this program.

Outline:

An introduction to lean

• Evolution of lean
• Types of wastes
• Value stream mapping
• Simulation round ONE

First improvement phase

• Batch size
• 5S system
• Visual controls
• Dept layout
• Cellular flow
• Simulation round TWO

Second improvement phase

• Pull system
• Kanban
• Teamwork
• Quality at the source
• Total productive maintenance
• Simulation round THREE

Management readiness for lean

Review & discuss principles of lean

Description:

Numerous companies are investing in improving their operations by starting with the basic question: what is our operations strategy? Regardless if your company is service or manufacturing, private or public, small or big, etc. it is critical to assess your operations strategy to get good performance and experience growth. Without a proper assessment and reassessment of your operations strategy, a company ends up making random and uncoordinated decisions that may help in the short term, but are detrimental in the medium and long run.

This seminar gives you a quick introduction to three key respectable operations-based strategies that have helped many companies become competitive in the global marketplace. You will be exposed to the theory, how it is applied in service and manufacturing, common tools, and many other useful topics. At the end of each strategy, there will be a discussion and an assessment of how the strategy applies to your company. Every executive, manager, supervisor, and employee can benefit from this seminar.

What is an operations strategy

• Why is it important to have one
• Setting competitive priorities

Three main types of operations strategies

Quality-based strategy

• Is there one definition of quality?
• Quality and profitability
• Quality in service vs. manufacturing
• Dimensions of quality
• Costs of quality
• Brief introduction to Six Sigma
• Common quality tools

Lean-based strategy

• Evolution of lean
• The seven wastes of lean
• Logic of pull vs. push
• Lean in service vs. manufacturing
• Brief introduction to value stream mapping
• Common lean tools
• Related Topics: lean supply chain, Lean Six Sigma

Theory of Constraints-based strategy

• Goldratt’s iconic “The Goal” book
• Watch the movie (based on the book)
• Learn the steps of Theory of Constraints (TOC)
• Find the bottleneck in an operation
• Drum, buffer, rope

Comparison of Six Sigma, Lean, and TOC

Role of metrics in an operations strategy

Numerous companies have proven that improved quality is a significant factor in reducing costs and producing stronger profits. This is even more critical in today’s marketplace with the challenge of controlling quality along a global supply chain. A single quality incident, regardless of its source, can inflict huge financial loss and ruin a company’s reputation.  In this program you will learn the most effective quality tools including flowcharts, Pareto Analysis, and many others. You will apply what you learn by playing the famous “Deming’s Red Bead Experiment.”

This seminar will also give you an introduction to the fundamentals of Six Sigma and its five-step quality improvement cycle – DMAIC, which is a systematic problem-solving approach for improving business processes in both manufacturing and service organizations. Driven by data, it applies proven techniques to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and cut costs. Thousands of companies around the world have discovered the far-reaching benefits of Six Sigma and have posted huge savings after implementing it.