
Agenda Speakers Pre-Summit Workshops Hotel & Logistics Streaming |
Workshops: $450/$800/$1600 USD
$338/$600/$1200 for conference attendees
The summit has reached capacity but Pre-Summit Workshops are still open for registration


Forging ahead on the lean journey
"We are all trying to transform. That's what lean thinking and practice are all about: challenging us to reflect deeply on how we can improve this situation, improve my organization, or improve myself (and of course, all three.) Each of us knows from experience that this work is never easy. Whether you are toiling at the front line, struggling with your mid-level team, or fighting to transform your organization, this is tough work."
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Lean transformations are not easy, the road is long, and unending if done correctly. Keeping your battery charged and your team excited about the changes is not only a difficult job but perhaps one that is forgotten at times.
It is this challenge that LEI's Lean Transformation Summit is built to counteract. Each year we bring outstanding examples of lean in a variety of industries at different points in their lean journeys from manufacturing, to healthcare, to services. They share their successes, their failures, and how lean has made things better.
In addition, we also give the lean community a chance to learn and share through offering compelling Learning Sessions, based upon struggles we see every day. In fact many companies use our annual summit as part of their training regime.
All of the presentations also focus on "What can you do Monday?" The purpose of our summit is to give you the knowledge to take back to your organization and experiment; it's how you can take something you've heard and turn it into something you've learned.
Plenary & Breakout Sessions | Learning Sessions | Networking Opportunities | Fees
Keynote
![]() What's more, she's bringing along Zack Rosenberg of New Orleans' St. Bernard Project. Remember Katrina? Like many lean thinkers, I imagine you have considered how the power of lean - just as it makes things better in day-to-day production work - could help in times of disastrous human need. Zack and St. Bernard Project have been there all along rebuilding the city by building and repairing houses damaged by the storm. And they've been doing it using exemplary lean practice, partnering with Toyota Production System Support Center. What's more, you will have a chance apply the core lean thinking principle of HANDS ON, by actually helping Zack to BUILD A HOUSE, at our first Volunteer Day with Saint Bernard Project. Space is limited, so you'll need to sign up early for that activity. And, if you do, you can take advantage of this year's ultra-lean, ultra-early discount. I look forward to seeing you all there, John John Shook Chairman and CEO Lean Enterprise Institute |
Plenary & Breakout Sessions
Food Bank for New York City with the Saint Bernard Group | ||||
Last year a lean star was born. That star was Margarette Purvis of the Food Bank for New York City. Her presentation about how she and her team learned to embrace kaizen, charged up the crowd and looked at new ways to measure success, most notably, dignity. This year Margarette returns to discuss how much more has changed, and how their partnership with Toyota has taken their capabilities (both of individuals and an organization) even further. |
The Saint Bernard Project, repairs homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, as well as builds new ones for the people of New Orleans. At this special breakout the non-profit organization will share how their partnership with Toyota, has helped with their mission, from organizing and motivating workforces of both employees and volunteers, to finding out which problems to solve first. Their process has been so effective they are now operating in other regions to help with disaster recovery, and they still feel that there's much more improvement to be made. |
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![]() Margarette Purvis |
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![]() Zack Rosenburg |
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Culture change is not easy, in any company, any industry, any size. In this captivating presentation Rich Sheridan, author of Joy, Inc. - How We Built A Workplace People Love, and CEO of Menlo Innovations, will share what a joyful company looks like, feels like, how it is organized. Along the way, you will be confronted by paradoxical approaches of how workplace noise increases productivity, how two people at one computer outperforms hero-based organizations 10-to-1, how rigor and discipline emanate from a shared-belief system, how transparency conquers fear, how all of the disciplines you study including lean, agile, and six sigma when done well are really about building human relationships at the intersections of business and technology, between project management and software development, between development and design and how quality can be a natural result of a team built on trust.
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![]() Richard Sheridan |
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Why would an increasingly successful 130 year old company, with $100 billion in annual sales change? And can it change?
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![]() Jeff Abate |
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The future of Lean is where Lean started, Toyota Join Latondra Newton, Toyota’s North American Chief Social Innovation Officer, for a discussion about how Toyota is leveraging what it does best to give back to society. Learn about how the Toyota Way is helping to improve operations not just on the factory floor but in social innovation. Learn how the Toyota Production System has led the company to truly act upon its core purpose to serve -- not only shareholders and employees --but society as a whole.
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![]() Latondra Newton |
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Learning sessions
Developing Problem Solving CapabilitiesDeveloping people in problem solving must become a big part of your job as a leader. We'll cover these critical coaching and problem-solving skills:
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Facilitation Skills for Leading Successful TeamsHave you ever attended a meeting/work session where little was accomplished, you were frustrated and felt it was a waste of your time? Have you considered the true costs of meetings? Factoring in the time lost in other areas to attend meetings? Are the right people in the meeting? As a leader of continuous improvement, you lead a lot of different teams and you know how important it is to have a defined process for predictable outcomes. Yet despite this belief, we may not effectively manage the team's valuable time in meetings which take up a large part of our workday. Walk out of this workshop with practical tips, checklists and techniques that you can use immediately as a meeting leader, participant or facilitator. Good meeting skills are essential for any collaborative effort and they enable teams to make decisions efficiently and effectively. This learning session will share the core meeting process to follow for running successful meetings that are shorter, more focused and yield desired outcomes.
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The Green Beret Way to Develop Lean Leaders and Build a Legacy of Operational Excellence: The Leadership Secrets of the Elite U.S. Army Special ForcesWhy are NFL teams and Fortune 500 companies studying the selection and training secrets of the famed Green Berets? Because the United States Army Special Forces or "The Green Berets" is the world's most elite and effective team based organization and is synonymous with a Culture of Excellence. "The Green Beret," a symbol of Excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction..." Pres. John F. Kennedy The "Green Beret Way" selection process, training, career-long development path, operating systems, and uncompromising culture of excellence produces leaders capable of winning hearts and minds in the most remote regions of the world. As civilians, Green Beret Leaders are reaching the highest levels of organizational leadership in the private sector and in public service. In order to build your organization's leadership pipeline with highly engaged, globally deployable leaders that will create a legacy of excellence for your company, high potential Lean Leaders require professionally challenging, experiential leadership development methods similar to today's Special Forces leaders.>Retired Special Forces Commander and Director of Training and lean leadership expert Sam MacPherson will take you "Inside the Green Berets" to share how elite Special Operations Units select, train, develop Green Beret Leaders, operate their own Operational Excellence Systems, and Build a Culture that is synonymous with Excellence.
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Lean in Sales & MarketingThe purpose of this learning session is to highlight the business opportunities of applying Lean Thinking in Sales. During this time you will be exposed to the potential implementation of lean in sales by using John Shook's Lean Transformation Model. The use of Lean Thinking in the sales and servicing of vehicles has been gaining momentum over the last few years. We now have examples of dealers in Norway, Brazil, South Africa, Switzerland, the Canary Islands and the U.K. applying Lean Thinking across their businesses drawing upon the research we published in our book "Creating Lean Dealers" in 2007. Whilst these organisations started in the service and repair areas of their businesses each has found that Lean Thinking applies to sales. The use of lean in sales can be implemented beyond the car industry and the insights gained from the work done so far will be shared in this session.
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Designing Experiments Using Lean UXThe challenge for any lean company is creating products customers actually want, reducing cost, and eliminating waste in the process. The lean thinker does this in part through experimentation. LeanUX has developed a set of principles and methods for experimentation based on collaboration, customer research, problem space exploration, set-based design of solution hypotheses, and tight feedback loops. These approaches increasing the optionality in the product development pipeline while mitigating risk. As these principles and methods in experimental design don't come naturally, they are very useful and valuable. While PDCA, A3, and LAMDA have been used rigorously within operations and manufacturing, the LeanUX learning loop of Think > Make > Check > Learn applies many of these principles to designing new solutions in the context of knowledge work like software design in startups and enterprises. This learning session will briefly explain the foundations and context of lean product and process development and LeanUX; the basics of inductive, deductive, abductive logic, as well as hypothesis formulation and testing across multiple, concurrent designed solutions. We'll also introduce a couple of simple methods for team-based, collaborative experiment design. Finally, we'll draw connections between LeanUX methods and traditional lean learning loops including ideas from LPPD set-based concurrent engineering. Participants will leave with light-weight techniques they can use to run design experiments with their team the very next week. Learning Outcomes:
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Making the Invisible VisibleThe waste in the processes of knowledge workers often goes unnoticed for the simple reason it is incredibly difficult to see. Nowhere is this truer than in software development, where the work of frontline associates and management is often hidden and inaccessible to outsiders. In this interactive session Tom Paider explores with participants how Nationwide, one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the United States, has solved this problem by creating a lean IT framework built on a culture of trust and transparency. In this session participants will:
Join with other participants to hear why companies far and wide have made gemba trips to observe Nationwide's success
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Lean for Knowledge Work Using Personal Kanban: A 90 Minute SeminarWhether we're in business, government, or health care, we tend to seek to optimize our processes, but no team can be optimized while the individual team members remain in a state of chaos. Unclear direction, overwork, lack of collaboration, and process fatigue can weigh down individuals and teams, causing sluggish performance, increased defects, and low morale. This 90 minute class will introduce Lean principles and tools to better manage personal and project work to circumvent chaos, communication breakdowns, and low morale. Creator of Personal Kanban Jim Benson author for of the Shingo Award-winning book Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life, will introduce this Lean tool to understand, plan, and act on the options available to us, our teams, and our organizations. The course will discuss:
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Technology as a Catalyst for Lean InnovationHow many products or services can you name in which Information and Communication Technology (ICT) does not add significant value in the conception, design, production, delivery, servicing, or ongoing customer experience and engagement? Now think about your own enterprise -- are you maximizing value from your technology investment and capabilities to engage and learn with your customers? To enhance creativity and collaboration? To improve speed to market? To defend your market share from startups? The effective use of technology can be a key differentiator. In this learning session we'll explore how to better utilize existing ICT and make informed ICT investment decisions to optimize value for your customers and the enterprise. Learning objectives:
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Why Delivering Products Customers Actually Want Requires Great Process CreationLean Product and Process Development (LPPD) is about creating profitable value streams. This includes designing all of the steps required to deliver your product or service to your customer with maximum value and minimum waste. Upon launch of a new product when Operations builds its first part, nearly 80% of the cost--and hence waste--has already been locked-in by the product and process designs. Unfortunately, many leaders choose to focus the majority of their improvement efforts post-launch. This breakout explores how to focus lean process design energy within the development system. The session is targeted at individuals who are involved in the design or operation of new products/processes and services. You’ll learn:
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Networking Opportunities
The summit is designed to be the best networking venue in the Lean Community by providing formal and informal ways for you to connect with counterparts facing the same challenges as you:
- March 3rd - Welcome Happy Hour (get to know fellow attendees prior to the start of the Summit)
- March 4th - Networking Reception (continue conversations and compare notes after the first day)
- Networking Breaks (30 minutes to allow time for a phone call, cup of coffee, and conversation)
- Lunch Roundtables (attendee-led discussions on topics you've told us are important to you)
FEES
$2,500 USD
The registration fee includes participation in the Summit, participant materials, and food for both days. If you need to be invoiced please call 617.871.2900.
Pre-Summit Workshops are available to Summit attendees on March 2nd and 3rd for an additional fee. Breakfast and lunch are included.
DISCOUNTS*
*Discounts cannot be combined with any other offers.
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CONFIRMATION, CANCELLATIONS, AND SUBSTITUTIONS
Once registered for the Summit or for Pre-Summit Workshops, you will receive a confirmation email. To receive a full refund, notice of cancellation must be received by February 4, 2014. After this date, cancellations will be subject to a non-refundable $350 cancellation fee. Substitutions may be made at any time before March 5, 2014.
If you have any further questions please contact the Lean Enterprise Institute at 617-871-2900 or summits@lean.org.