When the Great Recession hit in 2008, Grand Rapids, MI, like many cities, struggled to maintain services amid plunging tax revenues, increasing layoffs, and deepening budget cuts. When local business leaders suggested city officials apply lean management to maintain services, the fire department became an early adopter.

Join Brad Brown to learn how lean principles are applied in a nontraditional environment to eliminate waste, increase service levels, improve finances, and transform how a key government agency operates. He’ll cover:

• How resistance to change was overcome in the tradition-bound fire service
• How the A3 problem-solving process was used to address systemic department issues.
• The roles played by the Michigan Lean Consortium and Grand Rapids Community College.
• How the department’s continuous improvement efforts evolved from a focus on tools like standard work, 5S, rapid improvement events, and visual management, to a daily lean management system.
• How activities like Monday morning improvement walks, personal kanban boards, and huddles make the daily system work.
• How the department is using hoshin kanri for strategic planning.
• How lean methodology bridged the gulf between management and operations personnel by shifting from an approach of doing lean TO people to doing lean FOR people.

Ben Hartman grew up on a 500-acre corn and soybean farm where success meant getting bigger every year – buy a bigger tractor, rent more land, build another grain bin. He started his own farm with the same get-bigger mentality until one day he got a wake-up “thud.” In a wind storm, his new greenhouse, built in a rush to expand, went airborne and crash landed on the barn roof.

Today, Ben, author of The Lean Farm, and his wife, Rachel, own and operate Clay Bottom Farm, which is less than one acre but more productive and profitable than their old five-acre spread. They rely on lean principles rather than computerized tractors, genetically modified crops, or GPS-guided herbicide sprayers that are the mainstays of U.S. farms.

Join Ben for the fascinating and inspiring story of why farming just may be the next industry ripe for disruption. You’ll learn why lean management principles:

• Upend the mass production farming model of endlessly pushing corn, soybeans, and a few other products with almost no regard for what customers actually want.
• Make small-scale farming practical and profitable for young people and agro-entrepreneurs wanting to farm.
• Require half the tools and far less work to be more and more profitable.
• Let Clay Bottom move from the country to inside city limits, within a mile of the consumers and restaurants they serve.
• Give Clay Bottom the flexibility to change what it grows every few months to produce the crops customer want -- in the amounts they want to buy them.

Is your company or department struggling to engage employees? Then learn from LifeWay Christian Resources, which moved away from a top-down, tool-oriented approach to continuous improvement training to a focus on engaging and developing people with thematic events and instruction.

After previous attempts at lean transformations failed, this supplier of Christian support materials matched training in lean management tools and principles to its Bible-based culture and language. The result was training that engaged and resonated with people for a sustained improvement effort. In this session you’ll learn how its sprawling Lebanon, TN, distribution center did it, and you can adapt the lessons to your unique culture, including:

• How Lifeway came together to decide on its principles and values.
• How it built its “House of Lean” from foundation to roof.
• How it successfully created effective training for employees at every level by matching lean principles and tools to its mission and vision.
• How it used competitions to get employees involved with 5S and standardized work.
• What themes and events it used to engage employees to be problem solvers.
• What’s next in its continuing transformation.

If you are a lean coach (or any other type of coach) or aspire to become one, there is a skill which can significantly boost your effectiveness to support another person’s personal development. This skill can be learned with practice and is accessible to everyone who is willing to apply themselves.

The session will employ hands-on interactive exercises and breakouts to position you to become a more effective problem solver, leader and coach others to develop problem-solving capabilities in others.

Mindfulness is the ability to focus one’s awareness on the present moment. It is about being fully present and grasping the impact of your thoughts, words, actions, and awareness right now, in this moment. Conscious application of these practices directly impacts one’s ability to connect with people on an authentic level and co-create mutual respect and trust.

All activities benefit from heightened levels of awareness, focus and concentration, and lean thinking is no exception. Mindfulness impacts coaching skills and capability more effectively than any other tool or technique. This is especially true for structured problem solving and deep reflection – two essential elements of lean. Learn how to apply mindfulness techniques to strengthen your coaching skills in:

• Listening
• Questioning
• Supporting
• Developing
• Reflecting

Come to this session and learn by experiencing mindfulness practices and leave with a new understanding of the role of mindful awareness in lean thinking and coaching.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn and apply the tools of mindfulness to become a better practioner and coach of lean problem solving
• Understand how to assess and adjust your practice routine to avoid stagnation of the people you coach
• Explore the power of reflection practices to reach new levels of personal and professional excellence
• Develop a habit of consistent practice to experience personal continuous improvement
• Apply these practices in your personal life for better health, relationships, and quality of life!