Learn from one of the key leaders involved in launching and sustaining Boeing’s lean journey of 10-plus years. Corvi has helped guide Boeing through the cultural and physical transformations involved in such improvements as moving from batch production to the one-piece flow of a moving assembly line for airplanes and in co-locating into a final assembly building most of the people who design, build, and support the 737 airplane.

Learn how compelling “Guiding Principles of Leadership” converge successfully with the Lean Enterprise at this $1 billion diversified manufacturer and service company. The result is an environment that brings out the best in people and a business that sustains significant  long-term growth. The purpose of this merger of lean thinking and leadership is more than creating a nice place to work. Barry-Wehmiller wants to create a growing and sustainable business because it will secure the future for associates, their families, customers, vendors and all stakeholders in the business. Lean principles provide a practical way for it to live the Guiding Principles by continually strengthening the company by inspiring team members throughout the organization to improve the quality of products and services for customers.

When the Federal Reserve entered a period of continually lowering interest rates to keep the economy afloat after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Wells Fargo was flooded with paperwork as real estate transaction volume more than doubled. Existing technology did not scale well and existing processes were stressed to capacity.  Operations responded with new automation, but more importantly, with new, leaner processes for handling paperwork that revolutionized the way transactions were done.  Whether you work in service, manufacturing, military, or healthcare value streams, you’ll want to hear how Wells Fargo’s system, based on the Toyota Production System, leverages lean principles such as standardized work, pull, value-stream mapping, and a rigorous cycle of plan-do-check-act to create an even flow of documents and eliminate large batches. You’ll also learn how Wells Fargo redeployed people to more value-added work and how it is developing standardized work for management and a strategy deployment process.

Lean supply chain concepts meet reality in this dynamic and instructive dialogue between a senior executive and a sensei. Martichenko, who began his lean journey working at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana and has over 15 years of lean supply chain and third-party logistics experience, will describe the “ideal state” of a lean supply stream and a path for implementation. Zeller, who is leading the recreational and utility vehicle maker through a lean transformation, will counter with questions drawn from his real-life experiences of applying lean concepts to an established supply chain.

The A3 Report is much more than an 11x17-inch piece of paper. It represents a template for a conversation about improvement. The session will provide a unique first-hand look into the development of the A3: You’ll hear first an introduction to the A3 as a management learning tool from John Shook. Dr. Jack Billi and Dave Morlock will then present their University of Michigan Health System experience using A3's to foster horizontal and vertical conversations, around critical problems, and plans.

Standard Work for Managers

At the heart of a lean management system is the need for standard work for management.  Leadership cannot seriously ask teams to follow standard work unless they do so first themselves.  Group Health (an integrated healthcare organization that serves more than 550,000 residents in Washington State and Idaho) they are in the early stages of applying the methods and discipline to their management process as they do to their work process.  In this learning session,  Group Health will share their story and describe in detail the process they followed, the challenges facing them and what they hope to do next.  Each participant will leave the session with some practical learnings that can be applied to their own work.

Presented by Lee Fried, Karl Hoover, Joel Suelzle

Creating Lean in Sales and Service

Learn a practical and systematic way to apply lean principles to sales and service that will improve customer satisfaction, staff commitment and productivity, and organizational profitability. The key is not making major investments but rather progressively identifying and eliminating nonvalue-creating activities. You’ll learn a tested step-by-step method that includes: specifying value from the customer’s perspective; identifying value streams and analyzing them based on how well they deliver value to your customers and profitability to your organization; measuring customer fulfillment (right the first time, on time); analyzing demand; identifying the vital few types of work that account for most throughput; creating stability by turning unpredictable work into predictable work; making predictable work flow without delays, errors, rework, or firefighting, and what you must do to sustain this flow.

Presented by David Brunt, LEI Facutly Member and co-author with John Kiff of the just-published Creating Lean Dealers: The Lean route to satisfied customers, productive employees, and profitable retailers.

Bringing Lean to Your Desktop

Break free of information muda!  Through hands-on exercises, instruction, video, and discussion, this unique session will give you methods and insights for identifying and eliminating the root causes of waste from how you work with electronic files and email.  You’ll learn how to gain control of your inbox by applying the “4 Ds” to each email (do it, delegate it, designate time for it, delete it). You’ll understand how to create a more efficient architecture for all electronic files, based on a “responsibility map” of major work responsibilities.  And you’ll also learn how to develop more efficient work habits by grouping similar activities and eliminating “3 myths that create muda” (I’ll get to it later;  I’ll handle the easy stuff first; I’m in the service business, I have to respond immediately).

Presented by Dan Markovitz, LEI Faculty Member

Lean Performance Management

In this interactive session, you will discover and discuss the differences between conventional and lean measures, participate in an exercise to develop lean measures, and bring home new ways to think about your company’s measures. You’ll learn the key success factors in a lean transformation, when metrics should be addressed, what to measure, the principal users of metrics, and 8 performance measures that inhibit improvement. You’ll also cover examples of high-level measures and measures for customer service, marketing, sales, engineering,  information technology, and human resources.

Bring along your top 3 metrics from work to discuss and see how they compare with metrics studied in this session.

Presented by Orest Fiume, LEI Facutly Member

Engineering Jidoka: An Oxymoron?

Ask any engineer or engineering manager to describe the engineering design process and you will most likely hear the word “iteration.”  This exposes a serious shortcoming in the common paradigm in engineering today -- we won’t get things right the first time, and need to plan on reworking our solutions based on analysis or test results.  The concept of “jidoka” flies squarely into the face of this flawed thinking.  Jidoka, one of two pillars of lean manufacturing, (the other is just-in-time production) means error-free production through the automatic prevention, and if we cannot prevent then the automatic detection, of defects.  This session will help you rethink your views of engineering, and embrace the idea that error-free engineering should be your goal.

Presented by returning speaker from the 2007 Summit, Durward Sobek

The Future of Help

As consumers demand more variety and individualization, service business models based simply on enhanced cost efficiency or economies of scale are failing customers, employees, and shareholders because they are designed and operated on the theories of mass production. In this environment, contact or customer centers are viewed as being at the front end of the business transacting the selling process or at the tail end making amends for delivery failures. Discover in this pioneering session, how lean thinking and operating principles when applied to high-volume transactional environments create “sense and respond” service that transforms call centers into management centers. Sense-and-respond puts these centers at the heart of the organization, changing how senior managers relate to service staff, redefining what help means to modern customers, providing deeper insight into customer needs, reducing costs and staff turnover, increasing revenue, highlighting where money is wasted and revenue opportunities are lost, and creating a powerful market differentiator.

Presented by Stephen Parry, LEI Facutly Member and Author of Sense and Respond: The Journey to Customer Purpose