Lean Manager Certification Program

Week 3 Curriculum

During the intervening weeks, the participants will have gained some "real-time" improvement experience in their environment-the environment where their entire plan will be implemented. As was done at the start of week 2, participants will present the outcome of what was learned from the previous week's homework session. The ease or difficulty of implementation during the pilot phase will make clear to the participant the adjustments needed. (Some of this "learning" will be used to adjust the plan as to the duration of each step/phase, sequence of learning, project area selection, and/or costs involved.)

Implementation plan details come into play in this week. Tools, methods, and techniques learned here are the "mid-game" events in the implementation plan; they will need to be taught to large segments of the population at the same time because of their broad-reaching effects and implications. These will require fundamental changes in most of the systems and practices. This is the time for systemwide transformation.

Participants are now returned to their specific project area with the intent of rolling out the plan to more and more of the operation.

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Homework Reports

For weeks 2, 3, and 4, each training week will begin with a report-out session. Each participant will be required to prepare and make a brief presentation explaining the learning and discoveries made by completing each homework assignment. The focus on the report out is solely on sharing learning, not presentation skills. These report-out sessions offer great opportunities to address real world lean implementation issues, so questions and "yea buts" are strongly encouraged.

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Kanban and Pull Production

This module offers a deep dive into Kanban and flow production. Understand the methodology of Kanban and how it can stabilize production operations. Explore the ways Kanban can prevent expensive product shortages; how and where it fits in a lean value stream; and how it interrelates and integrates with other lean tools such as pull systems, supermarkets, cells, and lean scheduling concepts. Further, you'll gain an understanding of what changes in human behavior are needed, the data collection process, the design and functionality of a Kanban board and card system and the Kanban equation - the formula necessary to determine the number of Kanban needed to establish your lean inventory level.

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Continuous Flow

Continuous flow is an operational strategy pointed-to achieving the shortest possible lead time(s) by eliminating waste and increasing the value-added work. Doing so across the enterprise will decrease the time it takes to get new products to market, the time between customer order, shipment, and cash collection. This module will demonstrate how to create flow by exploring the use of Heijunka [level sequential flow], Takt Time [the pace of the production system, cellular manufacturing, and pull production scheduling techniques such as Kanban.

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Plant Application

There are two production facility visits planned for Wednesday afternoon of Week Three as well as Week Four. While at these facilities, participants will be assigned to specific project areas where they will work as a team to draw a value stream map, gather baseline data, analyze the data, generate recommendations for improvement and report on their findings. Team reports will be delivered during the evening dinner function. Transportation will be provided to the attendees to the facility and back.

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3P (Pre-Production Planning)

Many of the techniques, methods, and concepts learned to this point have been based on waste elimination in pre-existing process and product designs. In the 3P module, we will look at how to conceptualize, develop, validate and deploy radical or revolutionary improvement in product and process design by adhering to a disciplined 3P methodology. The 3P methodology accomplishes this by 1) eliminating the waste at the product design stage, and 2) creating a truly lean production process for manufacture of the product. The 3P module is simulation based.

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Green in the Workplace

What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint? The good news is that many of the Lean initiatives already underway in your facility are having a positive impact on the environment by reducing wasted materials, energy, water, etc. However, since these benefits are by-products of your process improvement initiative, chances are you are leaving many environmental improvements “on the table”. In this module we will explore ways to better incorporate environmental issues into your Lean initiatives and review standard ‘environmental’ metrics that can be added your key performance indicators.

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Lean Measurables Review

We'll revisit the measurements introduced in week 1 including Dock to Dock, First Time Through, On-Time-Delivery, Overall Equipment Effectiveness, and Build to Schedule. In this interactive module we'll link lean metrics to participant projects insuring a process that allows measurement and monitoring of improvement initiatives to be certain they are on time and on target.

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Homework

At the conclusion of each weeks training session, several homework assignments will be made. These assignments are structured to further reinforce the learning that takes place in the classroom sessions.

Homework assignments will include items such as gathering and analyzing information to facilitate planning for your transformation process, selecting an initial application (pilot) area, completing your current state value stream map, designing manufacturing cells, and implementing Kanban pull systems. At the time homework assignments are made, detailed requirement information will be communicated to each participant.

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Lean Manager Certification Program Curriculum

Week 1: Plan Week 2: Pilot Week 3: Deploy Week 4: Integrate