A key change in management’s emphasis when making the transformation from batch to lean production is the shift from an exclusive focus on results to emphasizing a focus on process. The typical difficulties in sustaining lean implementations traces directly to management practices that remain unchanged from the prior batch mode of operating.

 The standard advice from lean sensei and how-to books offers little guidance in this area, beyond exhorting leaders to “focus on the process!” This leaves operations managers wondering: “What does process focus mean? How do we do it?” This hands-on workshop addresses these questions with a concise, Shingo Prize-winning, behavior-based model with specific steps and tools: a lean management system. The system reflects many companies’ lessons in what it takes to sustain lean transformations. Lean management along with the physical changes of lean implementations leads to a dramatically different culture – a lean culture – and strengthens integration of the “hard” and “soft” sides of lean for sustained success.

Workshop participants, working in teams on value-stream-mapped, detailed scenarios, actually create the tools and elements of the lean management system: leader standard work, visual controls, accountability boards and assignments, and project A3s. The workshop moves briskly between brief presentations alternating with small group, hands-on tasks in which participants create the everyday tools of lean management based the scenarios and value stream maps (which together serve as “gemba” for the purposes of the workshop). Participants choose to work on scenarios either from manufacturing, healthcare, or enterprise business processes. The design accommodates subgroups of participant working on any combination of the scenarios in the same session.

This workshop has proven to move participants from concept to application as they practice creating the tools and routines of lean managing leaders. Participants take away a clear understanding of each element in lean management, how to create the elements tailored to their specific process and improvement issues, how the elements tie together in a closed loop system, and the practices for effectively implementing the system.

The workshop will be held at Dominion Resources' training facility near the Richmond airport. Maximum participants will be 30.