February 2015
Luncheon Speakers Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce luncheon meetings are held at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge, 555 Otto St., at noon each Monday, federal holidays excluded. Everyone is welcome!
Feb. 2 - Jim Roberts
Chamber members will hear from Roberts and students on the November 2014 Expedition Club exchange with Ichikawa, Japan and the visit by Japanese students to Port Townsend in March. Sponsor The CoLab
Feb. 9 – Karen Riel and COAST
Community Outreach Association Shelter Team reports on the Jefferson County Winter Shelter, which has been operating in Port Townsend for 10 Seasons with faith based, business and service organizations. Sponsor YMCA
Feb. 16 – No meeting.
It’s Presidents Day. Bake a cherry pie.
Feb. 23 - Kevin Decker
An outreach specialist for Washington Sea Grant explains marine spatial planning, an integrated approach for coordinating decisions between all ocean and coastal users. Sponsor Relay for Life
Supplement to the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.
Lean journey yields big benefits By Earll M. Murman “Lean Thinking” emerged from the Japanese automobile industry as a fundamentally superior work system to “mass production thinking.” Lean Thinking builds on: understanding your customers and what they value; identifying which of your activities deliver customer value and which are waste; and energizing your entire workforce – particularly the front line workers – to pursue continuous improvement of their work processes. Lean applies to every sector: business, government, non-profit, education and healthcare. Jefferson Healthcare led the way for introducing Lean Thinking in our community, branding it as Performance Improvement. Following an exploratory period of several years, in 2006 they made a commitment to enterprise wide implementation – from reducing patient wait times to improving delivery of critical care to streamlining administrative processes. Jefferson Healthcare serves as “Jefferson County’s Toyota” from which our community can learn to improve delivery of its products and services. COLLABORATION Jefferson County is building on the collaborative approach
Port Townsend High School’s first robotics team learned about improving their workflow through a daylong workshop utilizing Lego® airplane manufacturing enterprise simulation. of Lean Thinking to organically grow our community’s Lean knowledge and expertise. In October 2012, the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce, EDC Team Jefferson, Jefferson County Community Foundation, Jefferson Healthcare and the Inn at Port Ludlow sponsored a daylong training session for 30 participants from 10 local organizations. Acceptance was
high and implementation quickly led to results. The collaboration of Team Jefferson, the Chamber and Jefferson Healthcare has led to a six week, two hours per week course introducing basic principles and tools, with emphasis on workplace application through weekly exercises. The next offering of “Improving Enterprise Productivity with Lean Thinking” starts February
19 and is limited to 5 organizations sending cohorts of three individuals. The six week, two hours per week course will continue to be offered two to three times a year. Contact teamjeffersonedc@gmail.com regarding registration. In Washington State government, two major initiatives are under way. The State Auditor’s Continued on Page 2