Steinway Managing Times, Q3 2008

Q3.08

MANAGING TIMES S h a r i n g

S o l u t i o n s

f o r

Y o u r

L e a n

J o u r n e y

Steinway & Sons: Applying LeanSigma速 to the Art of Piano-Making

8 Developing and leveraging your human assets

12 Conn-Selmer lean product development

20 Going Offshore?

Look before you leap

PUBLISHER’SNOTE

W

e are living in a new world order— one in which crisis and turmoil are the “new norm.” This new norm includes increasing energy costs; the economic disruptions caused by war; climate changes that cause debilitating droughts as well as floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes; and political discontent that stirs currency fluctuations and disturbs energy supplies. As fuel costs continue to rise, we are going to have to find ways to do business differently. If we want to continue to survive in this kind of turmoil, what must we do?

Following Toyota’s example, we must learn to apply—or reapply—lean principles to those things we can control in our own organizations. The first step is to go back to the basics—revisit and rejuvenate your own lean efforts and look for ways to apply lean principles in the short term to exert control over the variables you can control.

Do you have an enterprise-wide mindset of eliminating waste in every part of your business? The “seven wastes” are still important and should be part of a daily mantra. If weeds have started to grow, they must be removed.

LeanSigma®: Back to the Basics in Times of Turmoil

What about your supply chain? We have for a long time taken an adversarial approach with suppliers. Creating live, synchronous partnerships is critical.

We must learn to get closer to our customers—to uncover unarticulated needs and the compromises they’re making. We need to become “delighters” again and not just supply our customers with “me too” products. Getting close to your customers is essential to rooting out wasteful products, services, and behavior.

Get close to your own people. There’s no better time to let them know you care, and if you do, they will invest in helping you change the controllable elements of your enterprise. Remember LeanSigma means doing more with fewer resources and repositioning people to help leverage the gains made through lean. Make sure you broadcast the game strategy: lean is there to help eliminate waste so that the organization is right in sync with the customer’s actual demands. Then you leverage that to grow and it’s a win–win situation for you, your customers, and your employees.

Energy costs in some plants are even higher than people costs. Conducting energy kaizens will not only help you save money, but it could save the plant and, ultimately, the planet. Consider your transportation costs as well. Lean value chain teaches us to look at total landed costs of products. We have to learn how to make our work local— coupled with the local economy and using local ingredients and local supplies.

The last—and most critical—element is unwavering, focused, and committed leadership. The number one factor in mobilizing a work force to optimize a business in troubled times is passion. Lead by example and focus on a few critical things. Don’t try to change everything today.

This is where a policy deployment process is essential. It gives you the discipline to deselect and focus on only those things that

are going to make a difference now.

Talent multiplication is more important than ever today. You need people who are aligned with your vision, who are not afraid to make a change or take risks, and who are not going to back off at the first sign of resistance.

Several articles in this issue reinforce the value of the lean basics, including the feature on Steinway & Sons (p. 2) and articles on talent multiplication (p. 8), lean product development (p. 12), leader standard work (p. 16), and lean management accounting (p. 17).

Whether you are working on your culture, your finances, or your design procedures, or just attempting to be more environmentally sound, lean is the process that will get you there. If you’re already lean, the tools are there and have been there a long time—it’s just a matter of having the focus and discipline to derive a strategy that supercharges the lean effort as a bulwark against the stormy sea that is new world order.

Anand Sharma, President & CEO TBM Consulting Group, Inc. asharma@tbmcg.com

Q 3. 0 8

MANAGING TIMES A publication of TBM Consulting Group 800.438.5535, www.tbmcg.com Publisher Anand Sharma: a s h a r m a @ t b m c g . c o m Executive Editor William A. Schwartz: bschwartz@tbmcg.com Managing Editor Julie Poudrier: jpoudrier@tbmcg.com Featured Columnists Patrick Behrendt Jean Cunningham Steve Hahn Bill Higgins Steve Kula

Mike Kamphuis Ken Koenemann Gary Rascoe Mike Serena

Contributors Stacy Aponte-Morris Ashwin Badve Shipra Chopra Mike Herr Richard Holland Gary Hoover Donna Hopkins Beth Ann Hunt Philippe Joly

Bob McElroy Don Pedersen Gary Rascoe Angela Scenna Mike Serena Melissa Slater Noel Temple Helen Thompson

Art Direction and Design IONA design www.ionainteractive.com Printing Carter Printing & Graphics, Inc. www.carterprintingnc.com Published quarterly in Durham, NC 4400 Ben Franklin Boulevard Durham, NC 27704 TBM, the TBM logo, and LeanSigma® are registered trademarks of TBM Consulting Group, Inc. If you would like to receive this journal via email, send your vital information including email address to tbm@tbmcg.com On the cover: Being great—even being the best— wasn’t good enough for Henry E. Steinway in the 19th century and it isn’t good enough for the people at Steinway & Sons today. Innovation and an unyielding resistance to the status quo are what have kept Steinway & Sons in the forefront of piano design, and, as always, the Steinway philosophy remains, “We can do better.”

Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that Steinway & Sons would decide to implement LeanSigma® concepts to explore ways to refine manufacturing processes. With its 155-year track record of continuous improvement, Steinway continues looking for ways to create its world-class pianos in a more efficient and productive environment.

LEANCOMMUNITYNEWS

In the spirit of taking its lean transformation to the next level, Reviva has reorganized its sales, marketing, engineering, and product development groups along value streams. Melissa Sawin, formerly the director of continuous improvement is now manager of the newly formed Refrigeration Group. … Tiffany Mullis-Brittain at Vanguard Furniture has also taken on a new position, moving from KPO to Coach/Supervisor in one of the company’s upholstery cells. … Adrien Chabot has been promoted to Plant Manager at Canadian Forest Products’ Clear Lake Division in Prince George, British Columbia. Ross Lennox is the new LeanSigma® Coordinator for Canadian Forest Products’ Clear Lake Division. … Kevin Leiker has been promoted to the position of KPO manager at Graphics Systems in Witchita, KS. Graphics Systems is part of the Identity Group. … Carole Cocatrix, formerly the KPO at Bunge’s Mannheim, Germany, plant, is now production manager there.

Andreas Vogt, formerly maintenance manager at the Mannheim plant, has been promoted to managing director. … In company news, Alexander Weigand, CEO of WIKA, likes to participate in kaizen events for several reasons: first, he enjoys getting away from the routine of office work; second, he is able to learn more about the people and the products at the different WIKA organizations; and third, he wants to impress upon WIKA employees worldwide the benefits and importance of lean manufacturing. WIKA has acquired Process Industries Ltd. in New Zealand. Process Industries Ltd. has been operating in the New Zealand market for more than 20 years and is being managed by WIKA Australia. … Gokaldas Exports, Ltd. in Bangalore, India, a leader in the garment industry with 48 sites, has just begun another Lean Certification class. The fifteen participants represent a wide range of departments and

include plant and production managers, engineers, and warehousing personnel. …

Harsco Track Technologies has begun a LeanSigma® transformation at its West Columbia, SC, site. The plant assembles rail track reconditioning, renewal, tamping, and new track construction equipment. … In TBM news, Mark Kohler has joined the Business Development Team as a global client manager focusing on helping clients with policy deployment and introducing them to the Catalyst Web-based PD Toolset.

Kohler comes to TBM from Snap-On Tools, where he was vice president of operations.

David Pate has also joined the U.S. Business Development team as a global client manager. Pate joined TBM in early 2006 as a member of the process industry team.

Ranjan Vasishtha has joined the TBM India office as a senior management consultant.

While working with Gokaldas in India, Mike Serena, Managing Director of the LeanSigma Institute, has been interviewed by the Times of India, Financial Chronicle, and The Financial Express. In the U.K., Donna Hopkins has joined TBM’s global marketing team as marketing directorEMEA (Europe, Middle East, Asia). Diane Gillatt has joined the U.K. team as office administrator. Helen Thompson, former U.K. office administrator, has moved with her family to Perth, Western Australia.

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CASESTUDY

Steinway & Sons: Applying LeanSigma® to the Art of Piano-Making

By Steve Hahn, TBM Director of U.S. Consulting

Henry E. Steinway founded Steinway & Sons in 1853 with a single ideal: to create the world’s finest pianos. And in less than a decade after Steinway opened his New York City factory, Steinway pianos were the talk of the piano industry and well on their way to dominating the music world.

Then, during the next century and a half, handcrafted Steinway pianos became the benchmark by which all other pianos were measured. For quality. For unsurpassed sound and power. For innovation.

In fact, innovation and an unyielding resistance to the status quo are what have kept Steinway & Sons in the forefront of piano design. While scores of piano makers have ceased production, generations of Steinway descendants, designers, craftspeople, and dreamers have been granted an

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unmatched 115 patents to improve and refine what has come to be known internationally as The Steinway Sound.

But being great—even being the best— wasn’t good enough for Henry E. Steinway in the 19th century and it isn’t good enough for the people at Steinway & Sons today.

Steinway’s elegantly complex instruments are created from 12,000 components—some massive, others delicate—that blend craft and technology into the piano played by 98 percent of all concert pianists performing with major symphony orchestras in the United States.

Yet, as always, the Steinway philosophy remains, “We can do better.”

Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that Steinway & Sons would decide to implement LeanSigma® concepts to explore ways to refine manufacturing processes. With its 155-year track record of continuous improvement, Steinway was looking for ways to create its world-class pianos in a more efficient and productive environment.

Keep in mind, however, that Steinway officials certainly weren’t exploring ways to cut corners on what most music experts consider the world’s finest pianos. But given the company history of innovation, finding better ways of doing things was inbred in the corporate psyche and should be explored.

Consequently, Steinway & Sons embarked on its lean journey in March 2004. And while it was uncharted territory for the vaunted piano maker, LeanSigma already had produced noticeable operational improvements at Steinway’s sister company, Conn-Selmer, the nation’s leading manufacturer of orchestral and band instruments.

Companies considering the lean philosophy often explain that because their products or corporate cultures are unique, lean principles would be difficult to implement.

Steinway was no different.

Steinway grand pianos are created from handcrafted components, and each piano takes up to a year to build—as anachronistic in today’s high-tech world as the company’s 440,000-square-foot Civil War-era manufacturing facility in Long Island City. Located minutes from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the Steinway factory is in one of the world’s most expensive business centers, and employs a culturally diverse workforce of about 500 people speaking as many as 35 languages. Moreover, Steinway is the only unionized piano factory in the U.S. “We had all the classic stumbling blocks and then some,” explains Andy Horbachevsky, vice president of manufacturing at Steinway & Sons. “Culture, language, a shrinking industry, a craft environment that emphasized individual contributions, and an oldline union. And yet, we’ve been able to weave lean concepts throughout the organization and be successful with it.”

That success is measured in double-digit improvement in scrap and re-work, a reduction in floor space, increased productivity, “and no one lost their job,” Horbachevsky points out with pride.

Ever mindful that Steinway’s core value is quality, the lean journey also helped identify what Horbachevsky calls “accumulating nickel-and-dime issues,” everything from minor dings on piano cases during shipping to maintenance and factory organization.

“The whole lean journey is extremely humbling,” admits Horbachevsky, who has been the driving force behind Steinway’s Continuous Improvement (CI) Program.

Despite his 20 years of experience at

Steinway, Horbachevsky says each CI event was an eye-opener. “You think you know it all, but it’s not until you get out there on the shop floor that all of a sudden it hits you: ‘Why do we do it this way?’”

People who talk about lean often use the word transformation, but it’s important to note that Steinway had no intention of transforming its manufacturing process, at least not with respect to the “fundamental recipe” for making a Steinway piano a Steinway.

But, after 80 CI events, Horbachevsky says, “We constantly realize unanticipated gains with each event we hold.” Productivity has improved dramatically, as well as cleanliness and organization. “But, the really big thing is culture change.”

Lean concepts taught everyone to examine the entire piano-building process—not just their department or job. Where people and departments used to work in isolation, now there is connectivity and visibility throughout the whole manufacturing process. Where pride of craftsmanship once was reserved for individuals, lean concepts have spread that pride across the entire organization.

Steinway’s employee roster is a microcosm of immigrant waves that have landed on U.S. shores during the past century. “Pick a period in U.S. history and on a rotating basis, whatever wave of immigrants entered the country at that time, that’s who we have working here,” says Mike Anesta, Steinway’s director of personnel.

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CASESTUDY However, even this cultural diversity has not been an obstacle because implementing lean principles doesn’t require a common language or similar job titles. In fact, the very foundation of CI team events is dissimilarity, bringing together people with different backgrounds from various departments and different job titles, and company presidents working side-by-side with craftspeople and billing clerks and janitors and marketing staff.

The primary focus is to break down barriers between departments so that when members of upper management are on a factory tour with guests, they not only know workers’ names, but they know what their jobs entail. It’s an instant morale booster.

At Steinway & Sons, many CI events involved spirited discussion, Horbachevsky admits. “Some people who are the most passionate don’t let language get in the way.

There was vigorous debate; people cared about their point of view.”

At one such meeting, Mike Mohr, director of assembly, coined the slogan "It’s all about the piano,” which has become the battle cry for every decision made on the lean journey.

“Mike’s motto was liberating,” Horbachevsky says. “At the end of the day, every decision was based on the quality of the piano—not the cost or the operator or any other reason.” It also looks good on company T-shirts.

At Steinway & Sons, piano-making is as much about art and craftsmanship as it is about production. As such, employee retention is extremely important and the fact that Steinway boasts scores of craftspeople that have been with the company for 20 years or more is a great source of pride for the company.

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“We respect our workforce,” says Horbachevsky, who adds that Steinway sought and received full cooperation from the factory’s labor union before undertaking the lean journey. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Steinway assured union officials that no jobs would be lost as a result of lean activities. The fact is, Steinway even added positions. A few workers have been reassigned, but neither seniority has been lost nor pay reduced.

Achieving and sustaining the success of Steinway’s lean transformation is the result of management’s flexible implementation of lean concepts. For instance, shortly after launching its CI initiative, Steinway management realized that elements of the lean philosophy could control production abnormalities that directly affect quality.

However, not all lean tenets applied to piano manufacturing.

“The fact that Steinway pianos require a year to complete may seem in conflict with lean concepts,” Horbachevsky points out.

“But we won’t reduce the length of time it takes for wood to cure because it would reduce quality. In the case of piano construction, that is considered value-added time.”

That is not to say, however, that Steinway didn’t want to improve productivity; it simply means that time spent on the art and craft of piano-making was not, in fact, waste.

However, implementing the concept of kitting—pulling together individual parts into a set that is assembled at the same time—was an excellent solution for workflow problems, increasing productivity, lowering inventory, as well as reducing the distance that those parts must travel in the factory.

As the program continues to gain momentum, lean concepts have become daily priorities producing tangible results in all manufacturing and administrative areas, and especially where housekeeping and organization are concerned.

Steinway’s factory tour has been ranked among the nation’s “Best Indoor Sightseeing”

by Reader’s Digest magazine in its annual list of America’s 100 Best people, places, ideas, and programs. “No one is more impressed by the organization and cleanliness than visitors taking factory tours,” Horbachevsky observes. “This shows everyone who comes here that pride and attention to detail are evident in everything we do at Steinway & Sons.”

But more than simply improving the factory’s public image, lean concepts that reduce and reorganize Steinway’s production area into cells has freed up floor space, which, while not a specific goal of any CI event, was the natural consequence of improved process and work flow.

It also represents a significant source of savings. More usable floor space means pianos don’t bump into each other, so there is less re-work. The company also has consolidated the number of floors used, reducing energy costs and overhead.

For employees, greater floor-space efficiency has provided a new cafeteria and a break room with foosball and ping-pong tables, vending and ice cream machines.

Horbachevsky vows the company will be “relentless” in its pursuit of further lean improvements. Thus far, Steinway has completed 80 events—36,000 hours—and projects that sometime next year, it will have completed the 100 week-long events needed to make its first complete pass through the plant. But it won’t end there. Steinway intends to revisit events to make further improvements.

“We’re not just event-driven,” Horbachevsky notes. “Lean has become part of the lexicon of how we do things here, and it’s also how we deal with our vendors and customers.”

Satisfying customers always has been the sole focus of Steinway & Sons, but the lean process has helped Steinway employees expand their definition of customer beyond those who purchase these fabulous instruments. They have learned that their co-workers are internal customers who should be cared for as well.

For instance, as piano components are made, they are shipped elsewhere in the factory. Now everyone asks, “Do these parts meet every need of my internal customers?”

For Steinway, lean is not about cost reduction, unless it reduces the cost of doing business. “Clearly we need to use less power, reduce overhead, and optimize our materials to remain competitive,” says Anesta. “But the one thing we’ll never do is cheapen a piano.”

When it comes to producing quality pianos, cost isn’t a consideration. “If we think something adds value to the piano, we will add cost back in,” Horbachevsky says.

“The overarching goal is to improve our product so if, for example, we must choose between A and B, we will always choose the answer that’s best for the piano.”

Henry E. Steinway had three basic principles for his fledgling piano company that continue to direct every decision of today’s management team: Build to a standard, not a price. Make no compromise in quality.

Strive always to improve the instrument.

It’s interesting how Steinway & Sons always has found a way to dovetail such time-tested philosophies with it current standards of performance. In this case, a hallmark of Steinway’s lean transformation is what is known as standard work, which has Managing Times | Q3.08 www.tbmcg.com/news/newsletter.php

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taken the best practices of each Steinway craftsman and consolidated them into a series of volumes known as “the bible.” In this way, the company has secured the knowledge of its most skilled craftsmen to ensure that consistent high quality is standard on every instrument.

Steinway & Sons has a proud history of continuous improvement, never hesitating to introduce technical innovations or to try different methods for the good of the product. In the past few years, lean has become a force at this venerable company, a logical extension of a company culture that prizes hard work, creativity and change for the better.

“As the head of manufacturing, you think you’ve got it all figured out,” Horbachevsky says. “If your ego prevents you from embracing the lean approach, you will miss a tremendous opportunity. Get past it. Give more power to people on the front line and you’ll make improvements.

You do continuous improvement; you don’t talk about continuous improvement.

“Probably the most valuable tool that the TBM team brought to the table at Steinway was providing us with a fresh set of eyes to identify a problem, and then giving us tools to develop a solution. During the process of implementing lean concepts, the people from TBM act as guides who provide paths to improvement.

“But what has made the journey invaluable here,” he adds, “is that all Steinway e m p l oyees explored the possibilities together, generating a company-wide investment in better processes and systems. That’s an investment any company should be more than happy to make.”

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Vermeer Corporation Wins 2008 Perfect Engine Award

LEANCHAMPIONS

Vermeer Corporation CEO Mary Andringa was presented with the sixth annual Perfect Engine Award at TBM’s annual Executive Exchange Conference in Naples, Florida. The award was in recognition of Vermeer’s commitment to a continuous improvement philosophy and its success as a lean enterprise. Based in Pella, Iowa, Vermeer is a global manufacturing leader in construction and agricultural equipment.

The “Perfect Engine” refers to the precision interworking of human resources and physical assets to achieve outstanding productivity results that create business agility, growth, and profitability.

This annual award honors a manufacturer that has been successful in implementing LeanSigma® methodologies, the fusion of the two most powerful business systems from Toyota (lean) and GE (Six Sigma), throughout the entire organization, including its value chain.

Approaching the 10th anniversary of its lean journey, Vermeer continues to use the LeanSigma approach to extensively innovate, develop, and launch new products and has leveraged its competitive advantages into

growth in sales and productivity. From 1998 to 2007 the company has executed hundreds of kaizen events worldwide with the following results: • Productivity improved 26 percent • Total inventory decreased 12 percent • Total of potential savings of more than $29.7 million • 70 percent of the total employees have participated on a kaizen team • 98 percent of their corporate management staff has participated on a kaizen team “Vermeer won this year’s Perfect Engine Award because of its proven ability to implement and leverage cutting-edge processes that facilitate continuous innovation and synchronization throughout its value chain,” said Anand Sharma, president and CEO of TBM Consulting Group. “Vermeer has demonstrated significant success gaining market share and building brand loyalty through its LeanSigma transformation and commitment to investing in the workforce.”

Vermeer employs more than 2,100 people in seven production facilities and offices totaling 1.5 million square feet, in addition to the Global Pavilion training center and museum. Founded in 1948, the company is celebrating its 60th anniversary, manufacturing a various lines of industrial and agricultural products under the vision of “Taking Care of Customers Worldwide with Better Solutions.”

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LEADERSHIP&CULTURE

Talent Multiplication: Developing and Leveraging Your Human Assets

By Bill Higgins, President and CEO, CIRCOR International

CIRCOR is a global diversified manu-

Bill Higgins

facturer of valves, regulators, and controls.

Ours is a very distributed model, with a series of business units that I would describe as specialty companies, all collected under the umbrella of one company as a result of 37 acquisitions over a period of time. As a result of the diversity of our acquisitions, we have found it easier to group the companies loosely into four business units. Two of these are industry-specific. One is devoted to the energy industry—upstream and downstream oil and gas production, which requires larger, customized valves. The second business unit serves the aerospace industry, which by its nature creates a great deal of complexity, while also being low volume and heavily regulated. The third group is involved with valves, fittings, and controls for process industries that work with liquids, including liquid regulation in harsh environments.

The fourth group is the thermal fluids

group. Sometimes we refer to it as the steam business because we provide valves and controllers for the high-pressure critical steam loop systems underneath cities like New York, Boston, and Minneapolis. Part of that group also services the U.S. Navy, as well as the British Navy.

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CIRCOR went public in 1999, and I joined the company as vice president of operations and COO at the end of 2004 with the intention of implementing lean, operational improvements, and operational excellence. I became president and CEO in March 2008. When I first joined the company, CIRCOR had no history of LeanSigma®, Six Sigma, or operational excellence. We were a clean slate, so to speak. Because we are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, we have great pressure at the end of every quarter to deliver the numbers, and we have to integrate that with a lean culture.

We needed to build a sustainable foundation upon which we could grow.

As with many other companies that start on a lean transformation, we began working on achieving operational excellence on the shop floor and in the front offices by running kaizen events. Now we’ve looped back to develop our culture and the talent required to run the company in an environment of continuous improvement.

We launched in 2005 and throughout that first year we did a tremendous amount of assessment of what I call “people and process.” We were constantly looking at the people, and leadership in particular: Could they run a lean operation? Could they lead people to the next level? If a particular leader at the vice president or general manager level was not an operations expert, I also asked, “Are they a learning leader? Can they surround themselves with great operating people and learn and improve?”

We understood that kaizen was the organized approach that would engage employees and implement their ideas. What I really like about the kaizen approach is that it includes people and really gives them an opportunity to come to the surface and be part of the change. Some of the people take that opportunity and run with it, which helps you uncover your leadership talent in the organization. The people who can help lead change and are enthusiastic and engaged become evident.

Unfortunately, we really didn’t have lean leadership because people had little or no experience with lean, particularly in middle and upper management. However, we had great engagement with the employees. My role with leadership that first year was to really ferret out who was a “go” and who wasn’t. It wasn’t always obvious.

One important step we took was to decide to get someone to help us with talent.

We hired a corporate vice president of human resources to work on talent acquisition, development, and retention.

Our goal was to fill out the ranks with the people we wanted to lead CIRCOR for the future. We developed what we now call the “A Player” definition. It’s a one-page, very finely detailed description of what an A player is in operational excellence, including personal attributes and behaviors. We used that as a checklist when we interv i ewed people to see if they would fit into the culture we were trying to build and reinforce. We used the definition to help us find people who had changed product lines or changed

plants—primarily at the vice president, general manager, and operations leadership levels. We have since further refined and improved the definition of an A player.

As we recruited some top-notch talent— we had three or four really skilled operational leaders that came out of world-class companies and brought a lot of skills to us—we looked across the landscape of all the business units and saw that we needed some sort of steering committee at the corporate level to prioritize what we were doing. So we developed an Operational Excellence Leadership Team, which includes experts within our businesses who could step back and rethink how we were implementing lean across CIRCOR. Randy Willis, vice president, Continuous Improvement, leads that team.

Our goal was to leverage our lean talent.

We had a group of lean leaders that was mostly new to CIRCOR and we needed a plan to use that leverage to develop people across the company and standardize our approach to doing so. The team developed a charter that takes CIRCOR to the next level of a lean transformation—continuous improvement innovation. The charter includes a series of responsibilities and values, and a lot of it has to do with people. It addresses reinforcing the right behaviors and the metrics we must measure to drive those desired behaviors.

This team is responsible for developing and recruiting talent across the company.

People used to say to me, “We need to get more help to do this.” But we don’t need more people—we just need everyone to be engaged. Sharing best practices across the company is a way to start that. It’s about including people, but with that inclusion comes responsibility and accountability. We now tell people when we hire them that we expect them to be on kaizen teams and be a part of the improvement process.

The longer term goal here is for this development of a lean culture as part of our business system. Our top priorities continue to be around people, the process, stabilizing operations, and extending kaizen from the factory into the front office. We’ve found that employees generally are very enthusiastic, but middle management’s world has been totally turned upside down, and so we need to spend a lot of time developing firstline supervisors, functional leaders, and middle management. Upper management was pretty easy to assess—they were either on

board or not. At the higher levels, we did a lot of recruiting, looking for talent that could lead our organization forward. In many cases, we were trying to fill positions we’d created as we freed up people, space, and resources through kaizen. We created positions in areas like quality and continuous improvement. We now have a Kaizen Promotion Office at every site, with at least one person in each office.

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To help us obtain talent, we brought on a recruiter from Wind River Associates, and included him in our executive meetings to talk about lean and operational excellence.

He helped us create version two of our “A Player” definition. We also brought in an outside expert on talent development. This expert was well-versed in interpersonal skills, team development, and organizational design. Basically we were positioning ourselves to insure that we could get the best talent, but also the best fit for the organization, with people who could work well together as teams to change and maintain the culture.

We brought these experts into the huddle at the executive leadership level to help develop the go-forward plan. Now they’re an extension of us and by combining their expertise with our A player definition we’ve been able to create a “people brand.” This is a brand identity we want to have in the market so we can continue to attract the kind of talent we need going forward.

The change has been tremendous. Every one of our recruits has been passed through a very rigorous filter on operational excellence, continuous improvement, and lean; they were assessed to be sure they had the right behaviors and people skills to go with their lean expertise. That’s now cascaded down through the organization to the next level. If you put a real strong leader in place, that person can attract great people, who begin working the same phenomenon at the next levels. Overall, we recruited around 150 people while at the same time working on developing talent from inside our ranks as well.

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We drive change by making sure that leadership is involved with the lean effort every day. The important thing is that the leadership team is learning.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.” ~Chinese proverb –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Having reviewed our progress over the past several years, one of the basic questions we asked was if we had the know-how and talent in place to take our lean transformation to the next level. We decided our next step was to develop model lines at specific high-performing locations where we also had strong lean talent in place. We will train people and processes around the model lines. It’s where we’ll learn how to develop standard work for everyone, and especially for the managers. The model lines will be places where we can take other people in the business to see how the process works.

So how are we doing? Well it feels like chaos some days. But if you asked our customers that question, many of them would say we’re doing much better than we did before. We’ve made huge strides in the typical measures of lean transformation. Top line growth has been strong. We grew by $70 million last year, all of it organic. Our businesses are performing better. And our stock price has more than doubled since initiating our lean journey.

As we go forward, we’re starting to see one important cultural change, and that’s the development of the next generation of leaders. The people who were our first kaizen promotion officers and continuous improvement leaders are now going to other sites to help out and are mentoring new leaders. Getting to the point where we can develop our own internal talent is an exciting place to be. It’s been a subtle shift from recruiting talent from outside to developing a world-class workforce inside, but it’s in line with our five-to-ten-year goal, which is to move forward by developing talent from within.

One advantage of our early heavy recruiting is that we gained a reputation as a company whose management “gets it” [operational excellence]. And that of course attracts even more talent. Talented people are key for sustaining and building the culture for the long-term approach. There’s a Chinese proverb that states, “If you want one year of prosperity, grow seeds. If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.” Growing people is a huge part of what we’re doing and the means by which we will ensure continued success.

BOOKSTOREAD

Making Quality the Key Ingredient in Everything You Do

By Mike Serena, Ed.D., Managing Director, TBM LeanSigma® Institute

Over the past several months, I have had several requests from my clients to recommend a few “quick reads” for general employee lean awareness that highlight not only the importance of fostering quality in the workplace but also establishing everyone’s role in attaining it. Many have read the classic All I Need to Know about Manufacturing I Learned in Joe’s Garage by Schenk and Miller. It is a ground-level discussion of lean principles and concepts told in story format that holds the readers’ attention and provides some excellent examples.

Recently, the same authors have published a sequel to their initial effort, All that Matters about Quality, I Learned in Joe’s Garage. It has received mixed reviews with comments ranging from, “this sequel focuses more on story and not enough on content” to “very informative and easy to read.”

Of course, perceived value is in the eye of the reader and how information is applied; however, I found the book to be as the authors intended, that is, a basic introduction to a topic that allows the reader to first understand the importance of material presented and then how it may be applied at their particular site. I have had several e-mails from folks who have read this book and recommended that I pass it on to all readers of this column.

A significant number of texts discussing the importance of quality and customer service in expediting both lean and cultural transformation are now surfacing. Subir Chowdhury is one author who has established himself as a “leading quality expert” according to the New York Times.

He has written 12 books to date and many will recall him by two of his most successful, The Power of Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma. Do not be misled that Chowdhury is all about sigma in the workplace. He does an excellent job of illustrating not only quality in the workplace but also how it is directly aligned with the application of lean principles and concepts. His latest book, The Ice Cream Maker (Doubleday Business, 2005) is a superb introduction to the importance of establishing quality and customer service in the minds of the workforce as an uncompromising foundation to realizing operational excellence and competitiveness in the global marketplace.

As in the books by Schenk and Miller, Chowdhury tells a delightful story of an ice cream company that is quite innovative, and yet the company is having difficulty competing industrywide in both growth and profitability.

Peter Delvecchio, the Dairy Cream plant manager, is agonizing over why his sales folks are unable to get the local grocery store (Natural Foods) to stock his ice cream and decides to make a visit to better understand the issues. What follows is some very good insight into the need for the “voice of the customer” as well as how the employees of Natural Foods have embraced the importance of customer service and quality in the work they perform every day. The book has many examples as to how the “hearts and minds” of employees must be won over in order to ensure rapid change and “perceived value” for all. The book makes the point about how peer pressure can be a far more effective method for governing desired behavior than trying to manage from the top down.

Readers who are both customer- and service-oriented will benefit from reading this text. Chowdhury states that, “if you sell something, you have customers … and if you have customers, you’re in service.” Of course, it goes without saying that if you plan to stay in business, your most important job should be to “take care” of those customers in ways that will differentiate you from your competitors. There is a great deal of discussion about how organizations must strive to differentiate themselves as well as their products and services. Most specifically, many examples are presented in terms of listening to both internal and external customers, consistently performing to established targets, idea innovation, and exceeding expectations.

The last section of the book discusses how an organization can optimize its efforts in some succinct steps that can be understood by all, no matter what level or job an employee may currently work.

There is much to learn in this easy-to-read short story of a mere 112 pages. Be prepared to make notes, highlight, and “dog ear” more than a few pages, because it will force you to think about how your company and your specific efforts can significantly optimize customer service, quality, and employee satisfaction.

Mike Serena

Note: All books that Mike Serena reviews have been recommended by clients and the readers of Managing Times. Please send your recommendations for review to Mike at mserena@tbmcg.com.

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CASESTUDY

Lean Product Development Helps You Play a Different Tune

By Michael Kamphuis, Director of Marketing, Background Brass, Conn-Selmer, Inc.

My marketing career began back in

Michael Kamphuis

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2001 as a telemarketing manager in the manufacturing side of the band instrument industry. Since that time, I’ve held multiple positions in the area of product management and currently am a director of marketing for Background Brass instruments at ConnSelmer, Inc. Owned by Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc., Conn-Selmer is the nation’s largest domestic manufacturer of brass, woodwind, and percussion musical instruments and is best known for its collection of famous brand-name products that include the finest band instruments in the world. Bach, Selmer, King, Holton, and C. G. Conn instruments, along with their percussion brand Ludwig Drums, have been played by musicians like Ringo Starr, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, BennyGo o d m a n , and Maynard Ferguson.

Conn-Selmer began its journey into LeanSigma® in April of 2003 and has successfully improved its manufacturing process and product development through the use of lean processes. We’ve done more than 100 week-long or point events up to this point. A true telling point of our progress is shown when we give numerous tours in our Elkhart and Eastlake factories.

Guests who toured our facilities before 2003 see a remarkable difference. Comments are

made about the visual benchmarks, the hour-by-hour charts, and the overall organization of the cells and how focused everyone looks.

Although we’ve had success with the initial steps of our lean journey, at some point you realize that there’s more to LeanSigma than just improving processes on the shop floor or in the back offices. In July 2006 I was first exposed to something that was very foreign to me at that time: Design for LeanSigma (DLS). Just the year before I had gone through my first product development cycle as a product manager, and from concept to launch, it took one year without using the DLS model. This was on a new marching tuba. We realized that we needed to be able to get new products to market more quickly and reliably, and with two new projects on the table, decided to seek outside help. Ashwin Badve from TBM came to Conn-Selmer to train our marketing department on the fundamental aspects of DLS and what its capabilities are. The process was then put to use on the Bach 182 trumpet and Bach LT142BO trombone.

After going through the training session and studying the process and how it related to Six Sigma, I immediately recognized that DLS is something that needed to become a p a rt of who I am as a marketing professional.

No doubt all marketing people come to realize at some point during their careers that it’s a major challenge to achieve success in the three fundamental aspects of business: price, quality, and availability.

DLS addresses all three issues by using a lean process to take a concept to market in the shortest time possible, at the expected quality, for the lowest cost, and at the required volume level. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well believe it!

How did this help me? Well, with the phase-gate process that DLS follows, it helped me regiment myself to not jump ahead of where I am at in the process until all aspects have been dialed in. The phases are as follows: Phase 0—Market feasibility/business case Phase 1—Concept feasibility, voice of the customer (VOC) Phase 2—Product design Phase 3—Production preparation Phase 4—Launch Phase 5—Post-launch review

Phase 0—Market Feasibility In this phase, we create a business plan that shows why an idea or concept we have developed should be looked at further. In the business case we show target costs, financials, market trend data, and potential market share to determine the initial return on investment.

Also in this phase, we propose a crossfunctional project team to take the concept to fruition. We include team members from all areas within the company: finance, procurement, manufacturing engineering, sales/customer service, and quality.

Phase 1—Concept Feasibility After a Phase 0 approval, we hold a DLS Kickoff Team Meeting. This meeting is where we pull together the newly formed team and explain the business plan and also begin forming a VOC strategy.

VOC by far is the one piece that I’ve found can truly make or break a project.

The more time spent gathering and understanding VOC, the better. To capture VOC, the team must identify the following: • Who is our target market?

• Where is our opportunity for the most growth?

• Who are the individuals we need to talk to gain the most knowledge?

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CASESTUDY

Once these answers are established, we create a VOC questionnaire consisting of 9–12 questions related to the information that we need to properly design a product.

This is in preparation for interviewing end users. The questions asked are open-ended, and we’ve found that any number greater than 12 questions tends to lead to more than an hour of conversation and is not conducive to good feedback.

The questions tend to revolve around the product. For example, on one project for a professional trombone, some of the questions asked included the following: • What cosmetic characteristics of the instrument are important to you? What changes would you make to the appearance if any?

• What functional characteristics of the instrument are important to you? What changes would you make if any?

After the questionnaire is put together, we create an interview matrix and target 50 people. The interview matrix consists of all the different channels that impact the sale of our products and includes teachers, students, dealers, professional players, and others.

Once the questions are established and the interv i ew matrix is created, the team puts names to the matrix and interviews are assigned to each team member. The interviews are done both in person and over the phone. We try to record every conversation to obtain accuracy that is not possible when information has been filtered through an interviewer.

When we have gathered all the information, we hold a week-long event during which we put the data we’ve gathered into a “House of Quality.” The main tool that the house brought our team is the understanding of what the customer’s needs are and how we accomplish this. One of the key pieces that our market depends on is the sound of our 14

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instruments. The descriptive sound tendencies that came through our interviews helped us determine which direction to go. In this case, the customers described to us that the Bach sound was the most desirable in their minds.

Once all the data has been compiled, we then create a concept and present it to the officers for approval. Also, as in every phase gate, we make sure that the financials match the business plan.

Phase 2 – Product Design At the end of this phase, we’ll have narrowed our design down to a preliminary bill of material, have more solid financial information, and know the scope of the tooling needed for us to be prepared for setting up production. “Requests for Expenditures” will be submitted for approval.

Phase 3 – Production Preparation In this phase, we hold “Design Failure Mode Effects Analysis” (DFMEA) events, and advanced quality planning events to help set up the production cells.

The DFMEA event is a time when we go through the entire process and determine what parts of the manufacturing process are keeping us from an adequate end result. An example of this pertaining to musical instruments would be some of the mechanics of the trumpet. With trumpets for example, the three pistons that are used to play the instrument must have fast action, yet maintain good compression. Based on the VOC, if we do not meet this demand, the customer will

not be satisfied. If our end result during our testing at the event shows great action, but poor compression, we call that out and identify the parts within the piston-fit process that would solve this problem.

Also, at this point, I’ve finalized the marketing strategy and the message that will be used to support this product in the market place. I highly recommend getting this done prior to Phase 4 so that you are well prepared to train your sales force and also allow for lead times on Web, print, trade show planning, and other projects to be completed before launch.

Phase 4 – Launch At launch the production line is set up and we have completed a pre-production run in order to have inventory on the shelf prior to launch.

Phase 5 – Post-Launch Review Post-launch review is the time to go over lessons learned and to immediately fix any issues that have become apparent with the project. We also review any items that have come up that may also apply to other projects in process in order to avoid the same shortcomings with those projects.

A Different Tune Now, getting back to the first project that I was involved with, the marching tuba—we could have avoided many issues had we used DLS. Although the marching tuba went to market, it was five months later than expected. The reason this occurred was because of “feature creep,” dreaded words that will cause any product manger to

cringe. Although we had identified what the core design needed to be and what the expectations of the customer were, we failed to do DFMEAs and the validation involved up front to determine if some of our ideas were indeed 100 percent valid. So when we were in the prototype phase, certain parts of the design failed and we had to go back and make many alterations before launching the tuba. This also then impacted the manufacturing cost and final result prior to launch.

Luckily, we were able to pull it together and had a successful launch after all; however, the stress, headaches, conflict, and worries throughout the team during that period could largely have been avoided had we completed the proper steps up front.

With the two Bach instruments, we launched on time and at a cost within 5 percent of our goal and delivered successfully to the marketplace. The overall process and feel of designing and launching those two instruments was quite different from that of the marching tuba.

After walking through the DLS process with three projects, I’ve found that DLS has become a part of who I am as a marketing professional. As a department, we have taken a lot of the tools from DLS and used them for business process type kaizen events, and even for creating a sales catalog for accessories based on the VOC.

I’ve had the opportunity to train in DLS people who have joined our company over the past few years and also train those who were not yet versed in the practice. It becomes almost infectious as more people understand the process within our organization.

Over the coming year, I expect to see five new DLS projects on my plate and I’m anxious to get these started. Together, the innovation that comes out of the process and the involvement from the marketplace creates a new feel for our customers about who we are as a company. For companies that want to deliver new products to their respective markets on time, with the right quality level and at the right price, there is no better tool than DLS.

Managing Times | Q3.08 www.tbmcg.com/news/newsletter.php

15

STRATEGICVISIONING

Stop the Yo Yo Diet by Developing a Lean Management System

By Ga ry Rascoe, Senior Management Consultant and Trainer, TBM LeanSigma® Institute

Gary Rascoe

H

ave you ever tried to lose weight?

Probably quite a few of us have taken the weight off only to put it back on before taking it back off again in a cycle of “yo yo” dieting. We generally know what we need to do to sustain a healthy weight, but we often fail to do so.

Similarly, why do some companies get great LeanSigma® results, but then fail to sustain them while others do so with notable success? How to sustain results is one of the most important questions that companies face today. The companies that successfully sustain change have the right formula of leadership, structure, and tools that allow them to create a force for change by developing a “Lean Management System.”

For a successful—and sustained— continuous improvement effort, organizational structure and systems must be consistent

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with lean. Organizations often rely on leader personalities and persistence to drive change when they should concentrate on leader systems or structure that drive behavior.

Structure, including rewards, and culture define how people behave in an organization.

Changing organizational structures to support continuous improvement will provide the leverage for change. The tools are the easy part. The difficult part is building a disciplined management system that defines standard work, rewards correct behavior, audits results, and holds people accountable.

Standard work on the shop floor is essential for sustaining and increasing gains made through kaizen events. Why, then, don’t we create leader standard work?

Leader standard work defines the right behaviors throughout the organization and ensures consistency among leaders. Five key ingredients are required for effective leader standard work: overlap, visual controls, reward systems, audits, and accountability/ discipline. When some of the ingredients are missing, the system starts to break down.

You cannot pick and choose; the synergy comes from combining all of them.

First, all standard work must have overlap from lower management to upper management. If a line leader should be filling out a SQDC board hourly, the supervisor should be monitoring that several times a day, and the plant manager should be checking daily, and each of those requirements should be spelled out in the individual’s standard work.

Second, just like visual controls that we use in 5S, standard work for leaders must also be visual so that we can tell at a glance if it is being performed as designed. If it is not visual, it probably won’t happen.

Creating standard work for leaders prevents backsliding, takes leaders out of f i refighting mode, and provides accountability.

One way to make leader standard work both visible and easily audited is to use “task cards.” One of my colleagues, John Alford, used them at a Ford plant. Each card con-

tains actionable behavior—what the leader should be doing. The cards are held in a rack for easy access and review. Each card has a red dot (to do) on one side and a green dot (completed) on the other. At the beginning of the day, all cards show red dots. During the course of the day, the manager turns the card over to show the green mark as tasks are completed.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“How to sustain results is one of the most important questions companies face today.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A supervisor can see at a glance what percentage of the tasks have been completed at any given time. If one leader routinely completes just 50 percent of the tasks and everyone else completes 80 percent, then that’s a signal that something needs to be addressed. It allows for intervention before problems get out of hand.

To put leader standard work in place, the organization’s systems have to be consistent with standard work. The system needs to reward desired behaviors—root cause analysis and problem prevention vs. fire fighting. Senior management must design the reward systems and culture that will drive desired behaviors. Without it, people will fall back into old habits.

Finally, senior management must also establish the discipline to follow the system.

This means active involvement and willingness to change systems when needed.

Once all of the ingredients are in place, it is much easier to hold people accountable.

If you create the right behaviors by overlapping standard work and visual controls at all levels, supported by a management system that includes rewards, accountability, and discipline you will free your organization from the yo yo pattern to go beyond sustainment and start driving ever more rapid change.

FUTURES

Managing without Standard Cost Accounting

By Jean E. Cunningham, CFO, Stiles Associates

A

ccounting has long been a world unto itself with difficult-to-understand information and a language all its own.

What exactly does revenue mean? What are variances? What is absorption? These all appear on financial statements, but the average business person probably doesn’t really understand them. Lack of a common language in which the financial operations and the rest of operations can communicate has created the accounting function as an isolated silo in many organizations. With lean manufacturing and lean business processes rapidly becoming the world’s standard, traditional financial reporting has become a barrier to a focus on customer demand.

In a lean company, standard cost accounting methods are likely to inadvertently sabotage lean efforts. This happens because generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) require some of an organization’s costs for people, buildings, and other things like excess materials to be treated as assets.

Under GAAP, some of these costs are put on the balance sheet as inventory, and aren’t considered actual costs until that inventory ships. This is a problem for lean companies because one of the first things that happens when going lean is that inventory drops, and as inventory drops, GAAP requires that we add these deferred costs to our income statement, which in turn makes our financial results look bad.

Meanwhile, inventory reduction generates cash, but the benefit of cash generation gets lost. The question companies must ask themselves is how to create clarity in their financial operations.

Implementing lean accounting encompasses two steps. The first involves making the financial statements easy to read and understand and is called “plain English financials.” This makes the statements useful to managers and helps all employees connect their job to the company’s bottom line.

Plain English financials also reorganizes financial metrics to reflect the lean product cycle and reward lean behaviors. The second lean accounting step is to apply the lean

principles of waste elimination and one-piece flow to the financial operations themselves.

What nearly always happens is that companies begin adopting lean in manufacturing or operations first and as they make progress the finance part of the organization is not considered, and, in fact, finance starts getting in the way. The accountants may still be asking about standard cost variances, and yet that’s not at all relevant on the shop floor, where the important factors are performance and meeting increased customer demand with existing resources.

Occasionally we see that the leader of the company recognizes this gap and encourages the finance organization to get engaged and do things like read relevant books or participate in kaizen events, but they often meet some resistance because the finance people don’t understand why it’s important. To make finance a value-add resource, they must learn and apply lean principles to their processes and reports.

A number of resources exist to help finance professionals gain information about lean accounting. The Lean Accounting Summit is an annual event that brings together finance and accounting people from across the United States, as well as internationally, who are interested in learning about lean accounting. Increasingly, we’re seeing people who are also interested in learning what lean accounting is, the changes that need to be made in the finance area, and how to make those changes.

The learning process for conversion to lean accounting consists of three parts. One is learning how to support the change that’s going on in the organization by understanding how the accounting function is affected.

Second is to conve rt the financial information to plain English so that it’s appropriate for lean operations and timely. Third, is waste elimination in accounting processes.

It is hard for a many finance people to imagine life without a standard cost system because that’s what they’ve been taught. But in reality, costing can be made much simpler. As inventory is reduced, much less

Jean Cunningham

information is needed. You don’t have to track transactional data every time you make a product. Lean accounting means creating product-line or value-stream accounting statements that don’t require standard costs.

Statements that do not use standard costs are a deep, fundamental change to the accounting function. Even after learning about lean financial statements, finance people often go back and work on leaning processes without changing their statements.

Later, when they’ve applied lean principles and taken waste out of their processes, they start delving deeper into lean accounting and the statements get adjusted.

Increasingly, people are saying, “I really want a lean program for my finance and accounting organization worldwide. I want to change all of my financial and management accounting reporting for the company.”

That’s where many lean companies are now.

Coaching and information are available, and once an organization has adopted sensible plain language financial statements, it has taken a big necessary step to calling itself a lean enterprise.

Jean Cunningham, founder of Jean Cunningham Consulting, is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the Lean Accounting field. She is the co-author of Real Numbers and Easier, Simpler, Faster; both of which won the Shingo Prize for research. Jean is currently the CFO at Stiles Associates and was previously the CFO at Lantech and Marshfield Door Systems.

Managing Times | Q3.08 www.tbmcg.com/news/newsletter.php

17

TECHTALK

Cultural Transformation: The KPO’s Role as a “Marketer” of Lean Patrick Behrendt, Lean Process Manager, SPUDNIK Equipment Company, LLC

Patrick Behrendt

A

s you’ve learned along your own journey (or perhaps from training opportunities), essential success factors in any lean transformation include clarity of vision and direction, compelling context, communications with conviction, a culture of continuous improvement, and countermeasures discipline.

However, there is another aspect that is sometimes forgotten—the consistent marketing of lean at all levels in the organization.

Equally critical is that employees at all levels speak a consistent message when moving along the lean path. The Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO) has a direct responsibility to develop a comprehensive message that will enable management throughout the organization to speak consistently and clearly on everything from a common lean vernacular to the goals and objectives of the organization. Many companies

have tried lean—and failed—at various times throughout their history, and we were one of them.

SPUDNIK made its first attempt at a lean transformation roughly a decade ago. At the time, says Andrew Blight, sales support, the company recognized the advantages it could gain from having lean-trained people, but then a market decline caused management to “get cold feet” regarding the money being spent, and the nascent lean effort died. Both Blight and manufacturing director Duane Day were with the company at that time, and they both lay blame for the failure on lack of management support.

“This time around,”says Blight, “[we know that] the more people who understand what’s going on, the more they will feel a part of the process.” And of course that’s how you gain buy-in.

Another common problem encountered by companies starting on a lean journey is that they hire the knowledge they need— dedicated employees who have come from other companies that have their “own way” of doing lean. This “individual approach” can be a source of confusion for others in the organization, especially if they’ve already received some training that is inconsistent with the new way of doing things. A company needs to create a common message that can be understood by everyone in the organization in order to foster teamwork, engagement, and sustained success.

Developing a marketing plan to help communicate and sustain this common message is essential to any KPO. Successful companies follow these basic rules: • Create a clear message • Standardize and reinforce the message • Repeat it often • Use the message consistently at all levels Create a Clear Message Most companies do this by communicating the compelling reasons the company is e m b a rking on a lean journey, coupled with the strategic vision and direction the company must follow. In SPUDNIK’s case, then-CEO Rolf Geier attended a Quest for the Perfect

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Engine seminar in Salt Lake City, Utah. His attendance at that class sent a clear signal to the entire organization that management supported the lean transformation. Says Geier, “It was clear to me that if I didn’t lead by example, it wouldn’t be a success.” Geier’s support was critical, but the management team—the lean steering committee—was responsible for supporting the initiative and starting it forw a rd. Having the management team on board allows for consistent communication and alignment of the strategic vision with the process of lean transformation.

But, noted Day, “While management has to support lean, it can’t do it. Employees must be engaged and involved. They are as important as management in keeping the process moving forward.”

Actually disseminating the message throughout the organization is typically addressed at company meetings, via an “all-hands” email, or even with a lean kickoff celebration. The PowerPoint presentations used for training and in kaizen events can also be helpful for getting the message out.

Standardize and Reinforce the Message Some of us have paid the copyright fees to utilize the TBM slides; and where I work is no different. Such slides already present a standardized message that has proven effective over time. However, we ultimately used these as a starting point and have begun to modify the slides to use references, images, and examples that are specific to our previous kaizen successes. It’s easier for members of an organization to relate to examples that are relevant to their day-to-day jobs, so by using “in-house” examples in presentations we maintain the standard message but also personalize it.

We then took this one step further.

Inspired by a brochure that was provided to TBM Senior Management Consultant Ashwin Badve by the Engenio Storage Group (LSI Corp.) with permission to share with other KPOs, we have created our own brochures. We have covered such topics as LeanSigma®; waste elimination; progressive 5S; and safety, quality, delivery, and cost

(SQDC) boards and performance measurements in our new “Lean Library” guides.

These guides can be used during kaizen events, new employee training, lean training, benchmarking trips, and other lean practices. They are brief, well-organized, and most importantly, they tie directly to information found in the slide presentations and other training materials—a standardized message. Standardization facilitates the ability of companies to reinforce the message repeatedly.

Repeat It Often With the first-line supervisors trained in “Managing for Daily Improvement” (MDI), they too can provide the standardized message via the brochures, slides, and verbal communications with their employees. This repetition up and down the management chain helps reinforce the lean message and management’s commitment to the process.

Use SQDC boards, management walk-throughs, and communication boards to showcase the important topics, recent successes, performance measures, and other critical communications. We get the line e m p l oyees involved during the walk-throughs and use the opportunity to repeat our critical initiatives. We have created our “Red Wall” (red because it’s SPUDNIK’s corporate color), which highlights the performance measures deemed critical to the success of our company, and where we also highlight important safety information, human resources announcements, and our “Lean Library.” The Red Wall is a one-stop source of important information for everyone in the company. Locating the wall prominently means that the important

information we wish to communicate is always available and easy to find.

We have also standardized an all-hands meeting at least every two months to repeat the lean message, our progress, and our common goals and objectives. We also use this opportunity to showcase model areas or successful kaizen teams, a means of celebrating successes that reinforces eve ryone’s engagement and commitment to the process.

Says Day, “Through communication people who normally don’t take ownership can see what’s happening and this encourages them to become involved. Once they become involved, then they take ownership.

So communication of successes helps the culture to grow.”

Use the Message Consistently at All Levels One means of regular communication is to send out mailings in employee paychecks of progress updates, successful kaizen teams, the “Lean Library” brochures, and so on.

Use the brochures, training slides, and other materials from Day One training to create a “Lean Overview Session” for initial training of new employees.

To help generate enthusiasm and spark creativity, sponsor a company-wide naming contest for your “brand” of lean. If you are going to preach unused creativity as one of the eight major wastes, this activity will show employees you’re serious about needing their engagement.

Once your logo has been identified, use it on company shirts, hats, and pins that can be provided at the end of kaizen events.

Sometimes, you can obtain volunteers for kaizens just because they want the new shirt or hat. This is cost-effective advertising for

lean and can be very effective. It makes people feel they are part of a team. It also shows fellow employees that their friends and co-workers have taken part in a kaizen and can foster a healthy dialog among them.

Marketing Lean Starting and sustaining a lean transformation in an organization is not a “build it and they will come” process. It requires active marketing on a regular basis. And while management and others may take on some of the marketing role, it is truly one of the essential duties of the KPO. There’s a reason that “promotion” is part of the office name—without promotion, the culture change that is so essential to a successful lean journey is not likely to take place.

Regular communication is one of the best means of empowering people. Simply giving them the tools isn’t enough. They must understand the reasons and the vision and have the freedom to move forward.

At SPUDNIK, which is headquartered in Blackfoot, Idaho, with its parent company headquartered in Germany, communication has had another benefit. “Ownership has seen what we can do,” says Geier. “We are now an example of what can be done.”

“Our successes have had a good influence on the entire company,” adds Blight. And that’s the true power of a successful lean marketing campaign.

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THINKSYNC

Going Offshore? Look before You Leap Ken Koenemann, Practice Leader, TBM Lean Value Chain Practice

All over the world, heading offshore to outsource production has become so commonplace that it is now accepted as the norm. Offshoring does indeed make sense for many companies, especially those that want to establish a global footprint. Too many, however, outsource production for the wrong reasons. Focused on the allure of cheaper labor, they are blind to the tactical costs of manufacturing overseas. They may save money on unskilled labor and by achieving economies of scale, but they will pay more in longer lead times, increased inventories, more management resources needed for planning and logistics, and constraints on their ability to respond quickly to changing demand.

Despite these and other hidden costs, offshore manufacturing has become a fact of life, and now the challenge for many companies is to effectively manage the resulting global supply chain. Effective management of offshore manufacturing generally involves conducting thorough research, developing a logical strategy, and looking ahead for—and managing proactively to prevent—potential problems. It also requires establishing open communication with suppliers about expectations, especially when all requirements are contractual.

If you are considering offshoring some or all of your manufacturing, the following will provide a basic guide to the potential problems, business considerations, and success strategies associated with this increasingly common practice.

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Know the Pain Points No matter what business you’re in, you will find that offshoring brings many pain points to the fore. When outsourcing some or all of your operations, you will have to deal with longer lead times, the extent of which will be determined by the complexity, variation, and shipping times for the parts or products involved. Longer lead times will also require you to more accurately forecast inventory needs.

In addition, you’ll confront cultural and time zone differences that can make communication difficult and can engender misunderstandings. You’ll need to address issues of product integrity, quality, and variation. Sometimes you may encounter impractical shipping options. And you may have limited or no visibility into the overseas operation, making it difficult to identify a problem before it’s too late to fix it.

The most pressing of these problems are lead times and quality issues. There’s no getting around the fact that transit times, not to mention often-forgotten factors like holidays, vacations, and the like in the manufacturing country, will greatly increase a product’s lead time. Because every company wants to have products on hand when its customers want them, you will likely have to stockpile inventory, incurring enormous costs in capital and warehousing.

Accurate, effective forecasting will help, but even the best forecasts won’t remain accurate when they must be firmed up two to six months in advance of production.

Additional pressure to stockpile inventory can result when sourcing a single item from an overseas manufacturer that insists on filling an ocean container with that item.

This forces you to buy more of a product than is needed at a particular time, which adds inventory, transportation, and storage

costs. Moreover, many Asian manufacturers require cash up front for their services. All of these factors can force your company to make larger capital investments than intended.

Another critical issue facing offshore manufacturers is maintaining product quality and integrity. A number of incidents involving manufacturers in Asia that produced substandard or unsafe products have made the news recently. Involvement in such a scandal can cost you—not only in lost profits but also in brand loyalty. It’s hard to gain back trust once it’s been lost. Quality issues often are closely tied to a lack of visibility into offshore manufacturing operations. If you choose to manufacture overseas, you must be willing and able to closely oversee those operations (or hire someone trustworthy to do so) to ensure that quality standards are being met.

Gi ven all the potential problems associated with offshore manufacturing, you might wonder why anyone would want to do it.

The reason is that, at least for some, the benefits outweigh the pitfalls. To make sure that is indeed the case—in other words, that it is not just a matter of perception and that the benefits actually do outweigh the negatives—you’ll need to do extensive, thorough, and accurate research before going ahead.

Research First It goes without saying that nobody should jump right into something as complex and fraught with pitfalls as offshore manufacturing without first doing extensive, careful research.

One mistake companies often make is focusing on the lowest purchase price per item instead of considering the total landed cost of sourcing from offshore suppliers.

Total landed cost includes such cost factors as transportation, port charges, duties and taxes, insurance, and material. It also includes internal, “soft” costs, such as those for capital tied up in excess inventory and for storing more inventory than needed, and for often-overlooked considerations like the cost of handling inefficiently loaded containers.

Not all products are suited to offshoring.

Most suitable may be those that have long lifecycles, are simple and cheap, do not undergo frequent design changes, will be sold or used in the region where they are produced, and/or require significant manual labor content.

There are several reasons why these types of products make good candidates for offshore manufacturing. For one thing, when products have longer lifecycles, there is less risk associated with carrying enough inventory to compensate for long lead times.

Also suitable are items that are cheap enough that quality isn’t a concern (that is, it’s less costly to scrap bad parts than it would be to re q u i re the kind of quality standards required at home to avoid scrapping bad parts).

Other strong candidates are parts or products that are sold near the site of manufacture or that will be shipped to another offshore location for assembly. Localizing production of products that will be sold in the region where they are manufactured results in shorter lead times, lower inventories, improved customer service, and higher profits. Moreover, buying a component offshore for use in an assembly that is produced in the same region improves lead times and flexibility while reducing working capital requirements.

Finally, when it comes to labor, the valueadded content can be as important as the cost of wages and benefits. When a product with low value-added content is manufactured in a process that eliminates waste, it may actually be cheaper to produce it locally rather than offshore.

After determining which products are suitable for outsourcing, it’s time to consider where to produce them. Not all offshore locations are created equal, and as we’ve noted, cheap labor shouldn’t be the only deciding factor. While investigating various locales, consider not only labor costs but also managerial costs (which may not be as inexpensive as you might assume), intellectual property protections, availability of utilities and other infrastructure, associated trade-offs (for example, good roads versus poor roads), and local culture—especially as it pertains to business and legal practices.

All of these considerations will come into play in another important step: creating a “value chain map” that captures all of the costs and operational data (such as cycle times, inventory, and so forth) associated with your product’s journey from the offshore facility to its final destination.

Visualizing each point in the value stream, from order to delivery, makes it possible to predict where problems might occur—and to take steps to prevent them from happening.

Prevent Problems Once you’ve completed that “homework” and (with the aid of a value chain map) have developed plans to address every identifiable contingency, you can take steps to help e n s u re the success of your offshoring venture.

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THINKSYNC (continued) Perhaps the best advice is to do everything possible to avoid problems in the first place! And that’s essentially what the following suggestions are all about. They may seem quite basic, but these preventive measures are often overlooked when companies focus simply on cheap labor.

• Use key metrics and a scorecard system to understand if product is flowing as planned. Setting up a system for tracking and measuring performance— much like those you use on the homebased manufacturing floor—will allow you to assess offshore performance at a glance and will provide early warning when product flow is getting off-track.

• Communicate regularly and clearly with offshore suppliers. Don’t assume that an offshore manufacturer understands what you require. Put expectations in clear, unambiguous writing, especially with respect to quality, and be prepared to follow up.

• Visit offshore manufacturing sites regularly to find and solve problems before they become big enough to affect

your company’s ability to profitably meet its customers’ requirements.

• Lay out terms for agreements and partnerships in contractual form. Specify exactly what you need with respect to quality, cost, delivery, and service.

• Perform comprehensive assessments of offshore suppliers to ensure that they a re capable of meeting your expectations.

Look at areas such as manufacturing capabilities (productivity, quality, etc.) and capacities, quality systems, technical expertise, ability to comply with specifications, and financial stability.

Weigh the Facts Offshoring can be a logical and costeffective way to improve your company’s worldwide competitiveness, but as we’ve seen, there’s a lot more to it than simply choosing a manufacturing site or finding a contract manufacturer overseas.

Ensuring success requires learning and weighing all of the facts before contracting with an offshore supplier. Map the pipeline, understand your total landed costs, visit the

potential supplier, and thoroughly assess its capabilities (including technology, engineering skills, cost structures, and so forth) to be certain that the right partner has been selected. Once you’ve chosen that partner, document all of your requirements regarding order volumes, product specifications, and operational details in the contract. And finally, monitor offshore suppliers no differently than you would your own manufacturing operations.

Going offshore can improve your competitiveness and open up new markets; just remember to make that decision based on facts that take all costs into account. And once you’ve decided to manufacture overseas, stay vigilant and continue to carefully monitor and manage your supplier.

-----------------------------------------------------Reprinted with permission from CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 1/2008. ©2008 Supply Chain Media. All rights reserved. Visit their website at www.SupplyChainQuarterly.com.

FosteReprints: 866-879-9144, www.reprintmarketing.com.

LeanSigma® for the Extended Enterprise: Leveraging a Lean Value Chain for Significant Competitive Advantage October 28–29, 2008 • Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center • Nashville, TN For more information, contact Michael Zsitnyar at mzsitnyar@tbmcg.com or call 1.800.438.5535, ext. 823.

Are you at the stage on your lean journey where you’re ready to extend lean beyond your own four walls? Do you want to take your lean transformation to the next level to gain even greater competitive advantage? If so, consider a great new opportunity to learn how to do just that with LeanSigma® for the Extended Enterprise (LSEE).

LSEE is a two-day workshop for senior-level managers (chief operating officers, senior vice presidents, and vice presidents and directors responsible for operations, supply chain, purchasing, logistics, distribution, warehousing, planning and scheduling) looking to extend lean into the value chain and extended enterprise. You will learn how to leverage a lean value chain to create game-changing competitive advantage and how to provide superior value to your customers, build strategic supplier relationships, understand customer requirements, and better meet customer demand.

Key Learning • How and where to apply lean value chain techniques to maximize improvements in creating customer value and optimizing the performance of your supply chain.

• Benchmark your company’s performance versus a lean value chain.

• How to get closer to your customer and synchronize all aspects of the value chain to meet the requirements.

• How to implement the four critical links of a lean value chain: demand management, order fulfillment, business planning and scheduling, and supply management.

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FIELDNOTE

Appleton Papers: Taking Waste Out of the Annual Budgeting Process St e ve Kula, Executive Director, Finance, Strategy, and Planning, Appleton Ideas

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ppleton Papers Inc., in Appleton, WI, is a fairly typical manufacturing company when it comes to financial reporting and its budgeting process. But since applying LeanSigma® to its manufacturing operations with excellent results, the company decided that it was time to implement lean in its financial processes as well, and a good place to start was with the company’s Annual Operating Plan (AOP).

To facilitate this process, the company conducted a business process kaizen event for the AOP. Traditionally, each division would prepare an AOP presentation for CEO Council review. Once council review was complete, the divisional AOP presentations, along with a total company consolidated AOP presentation would be sent to the board of directors for their review and final approval at a late year-end board meeting.

The typical AOP process was lengthy, requiring a start date in August in order to have all reviews and approvals (both internal and at the board level) completed by the end of the fiscal year. This meant that the divisions were using just seven months of current-year data and forecasting the last five months of the year in order to prepare budget projections for the following year.

Once the process started, changes and adjustments inevitably were required as time passed during the review process and new information became available.

The objectives of the AOP BPK event were as follows: • Determine content requirements for CEO Council and Board presentations • Determine timeframe requirements between the CEO Council presentation and Board presentation • Determine corporate finance requirements • Establish a consistent and standard process for all divisions One of the first things the event team did was to determine who the customers of the AOP process were. Customers included the board of directors, divisional presidents/ general managers and their direct reports, the CEO Council, the corporate finance

function, and the executive administrative staff. The needs of each of these customers would be taken into consideration when standardizing the presentation format.

Historically, the lead time from the first CEO Council presentation to presentation to the board was six weeks. The number of loopbacks was estimated at 78, due to nonstandard content and formats among the divisions, which added significant time to the process.

To reduce these two major causes of waste, the team proposed eliminating the “d ry ru n” of the divisional AOP presentations to CEO Council presentation, which would allow a later start date and save management team time. A later start date also meant that the divisions could take advantage of using nine months of actual financial data, needing to forecast just the last three months (9 + 3 versus the old 7 + 5). A shorter forecast timeframe, coupled with a longer data acquisition timeframe, would allow for more accurate budget projections while also eliminating changes that were being made to the presentations as additional actual monthly data became available during the review period.

To eliminate loopbacks, the team decided to standardize the report format and process for all divisions, which would make for easier board review and reduce the risk of errors. The team established a shared computer network structure on a central d r i ve for direct input of data by each division.

These simple changes allowed the company to trim the reporting process by two full weeks, a 33 percent improvement over the previous year. Preparation time in staff hours dropped from 832 to 240, a reduction of 71 percent. Loopbacks dropped from 78 to 18, for a savings of 77 percent. The total monetary savings, in staff time and paper reduction, was $44,000.

The end result was that everyone was much happier with the 2008 AOP process.

The standardized process and formats allowed the 2008 budget to be finalized in a single iteration, which was a huge timesaver for everyone involved. (Continued on next page)

Steve Kula

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FIELDNOTE (continued) • Additional support resources need to be readily available The AOP BPK team proved that it is possible to implement lean concepts for the financial reporting and budgeting processes in an organization, to the benefit of all.

The benefits realized from the AOP process were also implemented for the company’s quarterly business review process. If you haven’t considered applying LeanSigma to your financial operations, now is the time to do so.

In sharing their lessons learned from this process, the event team noted the following positive aspects were critical to the success of the kaizen: • Diversity and expertise of team members • Open and honest participation • Appropriately defined scope • Sub-teams—useful for dividing and conquering the kaizen workload • Day-1 training—essential for team building and alignment • Effective facilitation

The team also noted that the process could have worked even better if the following items had been considered and addressed in advance: • Accessibility of stakeholders during the kaizen week • Ensuring kaizen team members realize that this is a full week commitment • Team members need to be allowed to participate without interruptions • Kaizen support must be communicated throughout the organization

NEWSNOTE

TBM Partners with Catalyst Business Systems

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s part of our ongoing strategic commitment to improve our consulting services, TBM continually seeks new ways to help guide our clients through the evolving challenges of a m o re demanding business landscape. To that end, we are pleased to announce our partnership with Catalyst Business Systems—a lean consulting firm also based in No rth Carolina. Catalyst is perhaps best known for its technology solutions for lean transformations, bringing significant savings in cost and effort to organizations embarking on, or fully vested in, the lean journey.

These solutions simplify and reduce the administrative pain associated with the execution of strategy initiatives and enterprise metric tracking within any organization, while at the same time driving greater levels of accountability and transparency throughout an organization.

We are pleased to offer the following modules to our current and future clients: 1. Strategic Initiatives—Following the roots of the Hoshin Kanri process, this application includes the integrated components of the x-matrix, metric tracking, action plans, and countermeasures. Additional features such as daily management dash boarding, date-change reporting, resource loading ,and roll up/down reporting drives the organization to address strategic initiatives as a daily management activity rather than a monthly or yearly event.

2. Stand-alone enterprise metric tracking—Every organization needs to keep tabs on critical metrics. The metric enterprise tracking module allows for daily, weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly reporting of metrics with integrated action plan and countermeasure functionality. Pe rformance dashboards, resource allocation reports, and task management features provide real tools for daily management of these critical metrics.

3. Fully configurable share database—Get the value you deserve from the best practices, ideas, and knowledge within your organization. Our fully configurable database solution provides a simple input process combined with a robust, industry-proven search capability that goes well beyond the limited capabilities of share drives and corporate intranets.

These web-based solutions are designed and tested by those who live the processes every day, combining the discipline of the theory with the reality of implementation. By using the most up-to-date development technology we can offer easy-to-implement solutions that require little to no IT support.

We are pleased to be at the forefront of value-added technology solutions and welcome the founders of Catalyst, Mike Heath and Sheri Nemeth, as managing directors into the TBM family. Heath and Nemeth are lean industry veterans who created Catalyst after many years at Danaher.

We believe this partnership creates a dynamic opportunity to improve client results by integrating Catalyst’s unique technology into our current consulting practices.

—Anand Sharma

TBM LeanSigma® Vision Tour: Tour Four World-Class Lean Businesses in Four Days October 28–31, 2008 • Greensboro, NC–Atlanta, GA

CONSIDERTHIS!

The LeanSigma® Vision Tour provides an opportunity to explore some of the best examples of lean manufacturing in America. The host companies on this tour have been engaged in a lean journey for four or more years. Each leverages lean to generate dramatic operational results that drive profitable growth while remaining focused on the highest levels of customer responsiveness. Most impressive, every one has an unwavering commitment from senior management to ensure a successful lean transformation. See for yourself how each company has proceeded on its lean journey. Tour their facilities and participate in open discussions on ideas and issues of interest to you.

The tour will visit the following four companies over four days: Hayward Pool Products is a privately held manufacturer of swimming pool equipment such as pumps, filters, heaters, cleaners, lights and various molded white goods used in plumbing for both above - g round and in-ground pools. Hayward’s Clemmons, NC, plant, a 300,000-s q u a re-foot manufacturing facility, houses 41 injection molding machines, three blow-molding machines, and 20 assembly cells. This site also contains the 300,000 square foot East Coast Distribution Center for Hayward products. In July of 1999 the Clemmons facility began its lean journey and has since conducted more than 400 kaizen events and liberated more than 64,000 square feet of floor space, with approximately 65 percent of its employees participating in kaizen activities.

Hubbell Power Systems, Inc. (HPS) is one of four strategic platforms of Hubbell Incorporated. HPS is comprised of several well known brand names, all of which are industry leaders: Ohio Brass, A.B. Chance, Fargo, and Anderson. Today the Aiken, SC, facility produces three major product lines: insulators, arresters, and underground cable accessories. In November 2001 the Aiken facility began its lean journey and since then has held 187 kaizen events, with 88 percent of its salaried employees and 57 percent of its hourly employees having participated in kaizen activities. They have liberated more than 75,000 square feet of floor space and reduced inventory by 34 percent.

Visit www.tbmcg.com/lsvt for more inform a t i o n or contact contact Beth Ann Hunt at bhunt@tbmcg.com or Michael Zsitnyar at mzsitnyar@tbmcg.com, or call 800-438-5535.

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Early Bird Discount 20% Off For Reservations Received Prior to September 15, 2008

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Sealy Corporation is the largest bedding manufacturer in North America, producing a diversified line of mattress and foundation products for every segment of the market. Sealy manufactures to order and introduced lean in October 2003 to more efficiently serve dealer and customer needs. To that end, most bedding orders are scheduled, produced, and shipped to retail warehouses within 48 to 72 hours of receipt. This rapid delive ry capability allows Sealy to better satisfy customer demand.

WIKA Instrument Corporation, located just outside Atlanta, GA, is the world’s leading manufacturer of pressure and temperature instrumentation. With more than 650 employees at their 210,000 square foot Lawrenceville facility, this company uses the latest technology as it strives every day for better quality and flexibility. In five years, WIKA has improved productivity by 20-40 percent, reduced lead time from five weeks to five days, and at the same time has found floor-space savings equaling nearly 12,500 square feet while adding six new production lines.

All of these efforts combine to give their customers the best experience possible through short lead times and on-time delivery.

Managing Times | Q3.08 www.tbmcg.com/news/newsletter.php

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Q3.08

MANAGING TIMES TBM LeanSigma® Institute 2008 Event and Workshop Schedule Corporate Headquarters 4400 Ben Franklin Boulevard Durham, North Carolina 27704 USA 1.800.438.5535 Australia 403A 86 Bay Street Port Melbourne, Victoria 3207 Australia 03.9681.7385 Brazil Avenida Moema 170, cj 45 Sao Paulo -- SP Brasil 04077-020 55.11.5051.7490

LeanSigma for the Extended Enterprise (LSEE) Oct 28-29 Nashville, TN LeanSigma For Process Industries (LSPI) Sept 17-18 Gurgaon, India Lean Management Accounting (LMA) Sept 9-10 Durham, NC Oct 21-22 Monterrey, Mexico Dec 2-3

Durham, NC

Quest For The Perfect Engine®(QPE) Sept 3-4

Nov 5-6

New Delhi, India

Sept 30 –Oct 1 Paris, France

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Nov 10-11

Beijing, China

Oct 30-31 Frankfurt, Germany

Nov 11-12

Monterrey, Mexico

Quest for the Perfect Engine ®–Garment Industry (GQPE)

China Room 3, 3/F, POS PLAZA 1600 Century Avenue Pudong Shanghai, 200122 P.R. China 86.21.6888.6671 India “Technopolis” Sector-54 DLF Golf Course Road Gurgaon, India 122 002 91.124.437.5995

Oct 21-22 Shanghai, China Design For LeanSigma (DLS) Dec 8-12

Kaizen Breakthrough Experience (KBE) Sept 8-12 Gai-Tronics Limited —Staffordshire, UK Nov 3-7

Switzerland 29, route de Pré-Bois 1215 Geneva 15 Switzerland 41.22.710.77.70

ConMed –Utica, NY

Nov 24-28 WIKA –Klingenberg, Germany Kaizen Promotion Office Workshop (KPOW) Aug 25-29 Gurgaon, India

Oct 13-17

Durham, NC

Oct 13-17 Monterrey, Mexico

Nov 17-21

Shanghai, China

Oct13-17

Mexico Calzada San Pedro #250 Nte. Edificio HQ Col. Miravalle CP 64660 Monterrey, NL 52.81.50.00.91.36

Durham, NC

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Business Process Kaizen Instructor Training (BPKIT) Aug 26-29 Durham, NC

Sept 23-26

Shenzhen, China

Managing For Daily Improvement (MDI) Sept 15-19 ConMed –Utica, NY Shop Floor Kaizen Breakthrough Instructor Training (SKBIT) Sept 9-12 Monterrey, Mexico

Oct 27-31

Gurgaon, India

Oct 7-10

Nov 11-14

Durham, NC

Derby, UK

Oct 14-17 Shenzhen, China Lean Excellence Conference (LEC)

United Kingdom 3 Gleneagles House Vernon Gate DERBY DE1 1UP United Kingdom 44.1332.367378

Sept 22–24 McCain –Whittlesey, United Kingdom Sept 23–25 Vermeer Corporation –Des Moines, IA LeanSigma Vision Tour (LSVT) Oct 28-31 Hayward, Hubbell, Sealy & WIKA –NC, SC & GA TBM Lean Certification Track 5

Week 1: Sept 9-12

Durham, NC

Week 2: Oct 6-10

Durham, NC

Week 3: Nov 4-7

Durham, NC

Week 4: Dec 1-5

Ceco Door, Milan, TN