Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Lean Conference Highlights and Take-aways

Well....I attended the AME Lean Conference in Calgary last week. Combined AME/CME conference entitled "Get Back to the Future". June 2011....just in case you are wondering which year I am actually posting in...

I was invited to speak in "Value Stream 1: Lean Beyond Manufacturing". My topic was "Embedding Lean in the Engineering World". About 25 people attended and I think they were intrigued...had about 8-10 people waiting afterwards to talk and ask questions. Go the the website to download my presentation...and lots of others! http://ame.omnibooksonline.com/measure2011/index.html

The conference was excellent with some great take-aways. As I sat in the sun afterward and thought about the conference, and tried to make some notes on the past few days, I decided to categorize my thoughts into two major components. Concepts and Tools.

I personally walked away with some key concepts that I want to think about and develop over the next six months. Here they are:
  1. When trying and launching a new idea - let's get 80% done right and launch the sucker. We'll go back and fine-tune the remaining 20% later...but let's get it out there!
  2. More visual management needed...even in an engineering environment. Let's try to make the non-visual more visual!
  3. How about launching a consortium-run conference! A conference put off by private business for other private businesses. No catches, no conditions.
  4. Think left of the RFP. Sounds like a future blog topic....
  5. Competitive advantage - cost and differentiation. Another future blog topic....
  6. In 90% of Fortune 500 companies, 80% of revenues come from new products developed over the last 4 years.
  7. Moving Beyond Improvement Tools - leader's responsibility!
  8. Read "Escape the Improvement Trap" by Michael Bremer.
  9. Organize my time and daily tasks according to a big picture. Another future blog post....
  10. Leonard needs process charts....
  11. Make the customer #1 reason for everything.
I think I'll save the tools for another easy post next week...

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