Lean Six Sigma Events Guide 2010

For the remainder of 2010, I thought I’d highlight the Lean Six Sigma events upcoming from around the world. If you know of an event taking place that should appear here, let us know in the comments below or feel free to email.

ASQ 19th Annual Service Quality Conference

September 13-14, 2010, Las Vegas, NV

From the conference website:

In today’s competitive marketplace, standing apart from your rivals is more important than ever. Customer service and other quality tools are must-haves. Learn how to use these tools to your advantage and sharpen your organization’s competitive edge.

This exceptional educational opportunity will once again bring you the latest topics in service quality. The two-day conference will provide how-to’s, step-by-step advice, success stories, and implementation guidance on major organizational changes. Participants will learn how to improve customer service, reduce costs, and increase customer loyalty and satisfaction from leaders in the quality industry.

Speakers:

• Joan Brennan, DNP, RN: Joan is the Vice President of Performance Excellence at AtlantiCare, which includes AtlaniCare Regional Medical Center, AtlantiCare Health Services, AtlantiCare Behavioral Health, and the AntlantiCare foundation. She will be speaking on Leadership in Patient Safety and Performance Excellence in Healthcare.
• Michael Pulido: Michael is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Heartland Health. He’ll be speaking about the human dimensions in change initiatives, especially in the context of Healthcare.

Presenters Include:

• Alex Draughton: Customer 1st Campaign – From Ideas to Improved Service
• Lynda Curtin: Strengthen Your Innovation Instinct with Six Thinking Hats
• Liz Keim: Lean Six Sigma – Past, Present, and Future
• Jim Duarte and Sean Dyer: Advanced Analytics for Continuous Improvement
• John Goodman: Creating Remarkable Service at Lower Cost
• Tania Salarvand and Nico Dorka: Innovation Value Proposition to Ensure Competitive Edge
• John Iverson: The Significant Seven – Key Processes Each Service Organization Should Master
• Tim King: QFD for Innovating the Competitive Edge
• James Gordon: Using Analytics to Improve the Customer Experience
• Bernard Nnenji: Six Sigma Comes to Advertising
• Diane Schmalensee: Turn Customers to Advocates
• Judith and Joseph: Establishing Relationships to Provide Quality Service
• Jeanette Rogers: Applying the Taguchi Loss Function to Service Quality

You can learn more and register for this event here.

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Plan-Do-Check-Act: A Scientific Approach to Problem Solving

September 23 – October 21, Thursdays, 7:00 – 8:50 PM, Stanford University

Most people have experienced organizations that can’t effectively deal with gaps between desired and actual performance. These organizations spend money, energy, and countless hours in meetings ” and nothing improves. The problem: poor or inadequate decision-making processes. What’s the solution?

This course introduces the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach to problem solving. It is also known as the Deming Cycle or the A3 approach because it is often done on an A3-sized piece of paper (11″ Ã…~ 17″). Because it is based on the scientific method, it teaches clear thinking and engages team members at all levels. It also increases the likelihood that the proposed countermeasures will be effective, because they’re based on facts and data gathered at the place where the work is performed, from the people who perform it.

Students will explore the requirements of sound A3 thinking and management by following the stages of learning illustrated in the textbook. They will also develop their own abilities to recognize and create effective A3s. Participants will learn how to use the A3 as a management tool and gain experience in the three basic roles of the A3 process (author, responder, and coach). This course is geared to any managers who wish to lead and manage their organization more effectively, and those who wish to improve their critical thinking skills. This includes HR professionals who are looking to improve the behavior, alignment, and performance of the people in their organizations.

Instructor:

• Dan Markovitz, President, TimeBack Management: Dan Markovitz teaches companies how to apply lean manufacturing principles to personal productivity. He is a faculty member at the Lean Enterprise Institute. He received a BA from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Stanford.

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Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare

October 11 – 12, 2010, Lean Enterprise Institute, Cambridge, MA

From the Events website:

This two-day workshop is designed for individuals and teams that want to gain a better understanding of the components and underlying philosophy of lean, and how the elements and philosophy work together to create a lean healthcare organization. This course is designed specifically for healthcare settings, incorporating examples from many departments and patient pathways.

This course explains how the visible tools and methods of lean are based on a mindset, philosophy, and thought process. Special emphasis is placed on balancing Toyota’s equally-important core principles of continuous improvement and respect for people. Practical steps will be presented for starting with lean immediately upon returning to your healthcare organization, as well as a way of thinking through a longer-term lean strategy for your organization.

Instructor:

• Mark Graban: Mark is a Senior Fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute and author of the Shingo Prize-winning book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction. Previously, Mark worked as a consultant for numerous healthcare organizations across North America and in the United Kingdom. He taught and led teams of hospital personnel across multi-month lean transformation engagements in departments including laboratory, radiology, primary care, and nursing settings. Working with managers and senior leaders, these hospitals developed a track record of sustaining their lean improvements and also instilling a culture of continuous improvement and kaizen. With a background in Industrial Engineering, Mark first learned and practiced lean in various manufacturing industries, learning how lean concepts and management methods could be translated into different settings. Mark has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Leaders for Global Operations Program.

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Kanban for Software Development

• October 12 – 15, 2010, Hamburg, Germany
• October 26, Warsaw, Poland
• October 27, Paris France

From the events website:

What is Kanban?

Kanban is a new lightweight approach to software development that transfers principles from the Lean Production/Toyota-Production-System to the software development. In this context, two rules are defined:

1. Each process takes work from the previous process (pull principle) in order to avoid overloading.
   Work in progress is restricted so that no expensive stocks accumulate.

Advantages of Kanban

Kanban can be introduced with relatively little effort into existing software development environments and also works with a strong division of labor.

Moreover, Kanban delivers an useful perspective to consider the entire value chain beyond the pure software development. For this reason, Kanban is also interesting for companies which are for example already applying scrum successfully for the development.
Agenda

We offer two day kanban trainings with David Anderson.

Each day covers a differnet module, so it´s possible to attend either day one or day two or both days (recommended)

Day 1: Kanban mechanics

• Introduction using “Kanban In Action” cartoon
• Introductory exercise: Demand Analysis
• GetKanban Game
• Value-Network Mapping
• Visualization
• Work Item Types
• Exercise: Map the value network, visualize it, define work item types
• WIP Limits
• Classes of Service
• Service Level Agreements
• Exercise: Determine classes of service, WIP limits, service level agreements, show how these relate to the Demand Analysis from Intro Exercise

Day 2: Why Kanban? & Improvement Opportunities

• Intro: What is Kanban? XP 2010 Key Note Speech “Defining Kanban – the value of creating a Limited WIP Society in your organization”
• Recipe for Success
• XIT Case Study
• Corbis Collaboration Study
• Economic Cost Model for Lean (Waste)
• Bottleneck Management
• Introduction to Understanding Variation

Instructor:

• David J. Anderson: David J. Anderson leads a management consulting firm focused on improving performance of technology companies. He has many years management experience leading teams on agile software development projects. David was a founder of the agile movement through his involvement in the creation of Feature Driven Development. He was also a founder of the APLN, a non-profit dedicated to improving management and leadership in technology companies. Recently David has been focusing his attention on business agility and enterprise scale agile software transitions through a synergy of the CMMI model for organizational maturity with Agile and Lean methods.

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AME International Lean Conference

November 15 – 19, 2010, Baltimore, Maryland (American Manufacturing Association)

This looks to be a really great conference this year with some amazing Keynote Speakers including:

• Malcolm Gladwell: Malcolm Gladwell has an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences and making them understandable, practical and valuable. In 2005, Time magazine named Malcolm one of its “100 Most Influential People”. His book, Outliers: The Story of Success, is having an even greater impact than his first two. In Outliers, Malcolm suggests an exciting new approach to helping people succeed by using the factors that really foster success. It debuted as a #1 bestseller for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, Barnes & Noble, and Publisher’s Weekly. He is the author of two other New York Times #1 bestsellers, The Tipping Point and Blink. With his first book, Malcolm embedded the concept of The Tipping Point in our everyday vocabulary and gave organizations new tools for understanding how trends work. In Blink, he analyzed first impressions-the snap judgements that we all make unconsciously and instinctively-and explores how we can master this important aspect of successful decision-making. Malcolm is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His editor describes his work as a new genre of story, an idea-driven narrative focused on the everyday and combines research with material that’s more personal, social and historical. He now has another bestseller, What the Dog Saw, a compilation of essays from his writings in The New Yorker magazine. He was previously a reporter for the Washington Post.



• Dr. John Toussaint: Dr. John Toussaint is Chief Executive Officer of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value and former CEO of ThedaCare, Inc. During his tenure as president and CEO of ThedaCare, he introduced the ThedaCare Improvement System (TIS), which is derived from the Toyota Production system. This model of continuous improvement helped save millions of dollars in healthcare costs by reducing patient errors, improving outcomes and delivering better quality care at a higher value. ThedaCare and Dr. Toussaint’s work have been featured in Health Affairs, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Modern Health Care and Health Management Technology. He is asked to speak all over the world on LEAN and the topics of quality and efficiency in healthcare.



• George Koenigsaecker: George Koenigsaecker is a principal investor in several Lean enterprises. He is a Board Member of the Shingo Prize, The Association of Manufacturing Excellence, The Thedacare Center for Healthcare Value, Ariens Outdoor Power Equipment, Baird Capital Partners, Simpler Consulting and Watlow Electric Corporation. From 1992-1999, he led the Lean conversion of the HON Company, a $1.5 billion office furniture manufacturer, his efforts led a tripling of volume and culminated in HON Industries being named by Industry Week magazine as one of the “World’s Best Managed Companies”. Prior to this, George was with the Danaher Corporation, where he was President of the Jacob’s Vehicle Equipment Company (whose Lean conversion is featured in the book Lean Thinking by Jim Womack and Dan Jones) and Group President of the Tool Group, then the largest business unit of Danaher. He also developed and implemented the “Danaher Business System”, a comprehensive Lean enterprise model. He has held senior management positions in Finance, Marketing and Operations with Rockwell International and Deere & Company. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.
• Colleen Abdoulah: Colleen Abdoulah, the only female CEO to lead a Top 20 cable company, is widely respected for her passionate focus on customer experience and company culture. Colleen has guided WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone through seven years of industry leading financial success and earned an unprecedented ten J.D. Power & Associates awards for customer satisfaction. She has been the Keynote Speaker at a variety of management conferences and business forums, where she has shared her views on the strategic importance of customer experience and company culture; development of gender-balanced management and leadership; and cultivation of authentic leadership among other topics. Prior to joining WOW!, Colleen spent much of her career at Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) where she served in a number of positions, including Assistant to the COO and Executive Vice President of Cable Operations. She architected the business strategy and deployment of TCI’s digital cable service after serving as General Manager of Netlink, where she oversaw operations of TCI’s national satellite division.
• Dr. John Izzo: Author of the Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, and named by Leadership Excellence Magazine as one of North America ‘s Top 100 Thought Leaders, Dr. John Izzo sees and feels the goodness many of us aspire to. As an author, community leader and inspiring speaker, he has worked hard to talk about the essential elements of Leadership and the new frontier of that ever changing role. His interests are Development as it pertains to the individual, as well at the company, Corporate Culture and the pursuit of creating places that support the individual and the corporate vision, and Personal Well-being in the fight to balance work and life. He works with leaders to create corporations and organizations where values and purpose are the foundations for success. Establishing these foundations helps leaders and organizations reach sustainable success through the integration of purposeful leadership and business practices.
• Howard Putnam: Author of The Winds of Turbulence on leadership and ethics and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Howard Putnam inspires audiences to a greater vision and new insights. Southwest Airlines changed the way the game is played in the airline industry, creating a new model that focused on low costs, low fares and great customer service. The goal was to expand the size of the pie (market). They hired “attitudes” and developed skill sets. Tradition doesn’t always work in any industry. Sometimes you have to flip your model upside down for a fresh look. You have to have a clear and concise vision if you want your organization to survive and thrive through turbulence. A clear understanding of what business or businesses you are really in is critical. Cultures can then be developed to support the vision and business. Bottom line improvement comes through your people. Howard will share with you how successful organizations get through the maze.

There will also be several Factory or Site Tours and Presentations, such as:

• Lion Brothers
• Corradetti Glass Blowing Studio
• Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology
• New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation
• Eaton Corporation
• Harley Davidson Factory Tour
• GM Power Train Factory Tour

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Value Stream Mapping for Healthcare

October 14, Lean Enterprise Institute, Cambridge, MA

From the website:

This interactive workshop demonstrates how to apply lean principles and value-stream mapping, a fundamental and critical tool, to accomplish what many healthcare organizations find difficult to do: make fundamental improvements in their clinical/administrative processes. You will see how the key elements of lean thinking and value-stream mapping apply to the primary and secondary processes of healthcare organizations, such as emergency medical care, pharmacy, diagnostic procedures (lab and radiology), sterile processing, case management and patient registration, discharge, records and billing. By learning to identify key processes to tackle, draw an accurate current-state map of each process, apply lean principles to envision a leaner future-state for each process, and implement the future-state in a way that can be sustained, you will develop a methodology that leads to improved outcomes and true continuous improvement.

Instructors:

• Tom Shuker: Tom is a 30-year veteran in various manufacturing environments within General Motors Corporation. Tom has also spent two-years at New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), the GM-Toyota joint venture, working within the Toyota Manufacturing System and performing lean assessments of Toyota facilities in Kentucky and Japan. Tom has co-authored two books on Lean, Value Stream Management and Value Stream Management for the Lean Office, both published through Productivity Press, Inc. Tom is also a co-author of Mapping to See A Value-Stream Improvement Kit for Office and Service, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Michigan State University, and an MBA from Western Michigan University. He currently aids companies implementing lean through an investment group that purchases small manufacturing firms and helps turn them around and as a member of the consulting group Lean Transformations Group.
• James (Beau) Keyte: Beau began his lean career in the mid-80’s on the shop floor at the Ford Motor Company. He then pioneered the use of lean concepts in office, service, and healthcare settings, beginning in 1993. Since then, he has applied lean throughout enterprises and supply chains and assisted companies in defining and realizing financial- and market-related successes. He is the co-author with Drew Locher of The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value-stream mapping for administrative and office processes, a recipient of the Shingo Research Prize. Beau currently aids companies implementing lean through Lean Transformations Group.
• Judy Worth: Judy Worth got her first introduction to lean from one of her business partners, who left their company in Lexington, KY, to work at the start up of Toyota’s first North American plant in Georgetown, KY. She got additional exposure to the value-stream mapping tool when she served as instructional designer for LEI’s Mapping to See Kit for lean in office and services. For the past four years, Judy’s focus has been on implementing lean in healthcare. She has extensive experience facilitating value-stream mapping workshops in healthcare organizations, including hospitals and primary care, and has also provided training and coaching services for healthcare in-house lean facilitators. Judy is the co-author of a white paper on lean competencies, Building Capability for Success with Lean: The Critical Competencies. She currently aids companies implementing lean through Verble, Worth, and Verble, and the Lean Transformations Group.

If I’ve missed any Lean Six Sigma events for the remainder of 2010, please make a note of it in the comment section below.