Monday, July 23, 2007

Fluent Consortium Meeting Last Week

Last week Genoa hosted the Fluent Consortium meeting to share our experience and gain valuable feedback from members on our lean journey. The consortium meets reqularly and consists of a number of companies that pursue lean as a means to improve and offer customer value. The meeting was well attended and consisted of information on Genoa, our lean strategy, a shop tour, and lots of feedback.

Hats off to our Project Managers, Chad, Dean, and Kyran for speaking to Genoas background, processes, and view of lean. A very good job.

Leonard and Darren presented the five year plan and how we are pursuing takt time at Genoa. We alowed a lot of time for feedback and got great advice from all participants. We are already including that advice in the plan. Thanks to the consortium members for their input.

My contribution was minimal besides set up and the odd comment during discussion. To me, this is an great indicator of our progress to date. I'm hired help; employees and guests need to hear about lean from the people who have a long-term stake in the company, the senior management and project managers. The people who have a stake in the company need to be current and able to talk about the lean direction and the lean methods used to achieve the goal. If the hired help does the communication then there is no need for the leaders to learn, remain current, and progress along the change curve. This approach is essential to success.

On another topic, we met with Dave Haire of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) to discuss Lean Certification for key stakeholders at Genoa. We are trying to determine what the CME has to offer and whether it meets Genoas needs. We have a very good idea of what we require based on the 5 year plan. We have some specific unique needs because of our type of work and we have to ensure that the training addresses those. We have a framework for a cirriculum from CME and are awaiting details on each module so we can see if it's what we'll need.

Ken Hogan
Lean Guy at Genoa

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