JIT people management in a Chinese chain

Bruce Chen 

PREMIUM SESSION $

How can you apply Just-in-time to people management? Brother and Sister Noodle, a chain of 500+ stores in China, has been using lean to improve the way it leverages its most precious resource – people. By clarifying roles and responsibilities and reorganizing the store teams, providing effective training, improving work schedules, and planning human resources, the company has achieved great results.

Daily Management to Execute the Strategy

José Roberto Ferro, LEAN INSTITUTE BRASIL

PREMIUM SESSION $

Learn to build a management system that shows performance to plan, identifies problems, and escalates issues for rapid resolution.

José will share with attendees a framework for executing the corporate strategy using a Daily Management (DM) process. They will introduce the 3 DM blocks (Commitment, Control Variables and Problem Solving) and the execution process led by leadership. A real example will also be provided: how Daily Management has been transforming people and processes across all 20 business units at SHV Energy Brazil (Supergasbras).

José will also conduct practical exercises with attendees to help them to get started or revamp their Daily Management systems.

Value Stream Design

Oriol Cuatrecasas, President - Instituto Lean Management

PREMIUM SESSION $

Value Stream Mapping is the best tool to see any process in its entirety and across functions, to highlight the activities that contribute to value creation and the obstacles hindering it. Critically, it shows us where waste is occurring and, therefore, where to apply kaizen techniques with maximum effect.

It is a paper-and-pencil (or digital) representation of each process, material movement and information flow (which is what makes it different from a flow chart or a simple layout).

In this Workshop, which has been attended by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, you will learn how to develop and use flow maps to start building a lean process in your organization.

A Deep Dive on Kanban Calculation

Christoph Roser, Professor - Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences

PREMIUM SESSION $

Learn how to calculate the number of kanban to implement a pull system, optimize inventory, and problem solve. 

Building a continuous improvement DNA in healthcare

Angelina Tan & Chew Kwee Tiang 

SIT and National Health Group

In the care of patients, multiple healthcare professionals with different roles are involved. These people work across shifts and are called to administer various combinations of care activities. Often, work is executed across several facilities, through different clinical processes to be individualized for the patients. Healthcare is indeed complex work. In this talk, the Singapore Institute of Technology and Yishun Health will be sharing their strategy to infuse Lean Thinking in the transformation of healthcare within the Yishun Health campus.

Behavioral psychology and lean transformations

Jakub Hutta – Vaillant Group and Lean Institute Slovakia & Czechia 

It is largely effective change management determining the success of a lean transformation, not tools. And yet, most courses on change management out there focus on a traditional understanding of psychology. In this presentation, you will learn how to leverage the newest knowledge on change management psychology from the world's top negotiators and Nobel Prize holders. You will also understand how this will increase your chances of succeeding at the transformation of your company.

Kaizen powering Africa: the case of Ethiopia

Norman Faull and Getahun Tadesse Mekonen 

What can lean do for a whole country? An initiative of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency aims to bring kaizen and continuous improvement to Africa. In this presentation, you will learn about the Ethiopia case. Norman and Getahun will share examples of lean applications at individual Ethiopian companies and outline the different dimensions of the initiative, ranging from training local consultants to advocacy and awareness for nationwide scale-up. They will also discuss the estimated overall monetary value of the project.

Connecting problem solving and business strategy

Paola Patiño – Constructora Bolívar

Correctly defining and classifying problems gets us closer to the right solutions. This construction company in Colombia has re-organized its standards and problem-solving approach around Art Smalley's Four Types of Problems framework. This entailed pursuing a lean-driven cultural transformation and, with it, the creation of a safe space in which people can raise the issues they encounter without fear.

Improving discharge practices in a cardiology ward

Dr Kenneth Chew – National Heart Centre Singapore

To improve the patient experience and find an approach that would complement the ongoing quality initiatives to improve bed situations at the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) cardiology ward, a team of doctors and nurses embarked on a project to improve ward discharge practices. Applying Lean Thinking, the team prioritized discharge work and implemented daily standard work at the ward for doctors and nurses to follow. The improved communication promotes better visibility of care, which translates to better patient flow management.  

Starting a lean journey from scratch: where to start

Gustavo Gómez - Industrias Ectricol

Setting off on a lean journey can feel overwhelming. Where do we start? How do we do it? In this presentation, you will learn how this Colombian manufacturer of electric panels is deploying its strategy down the business, connecting business challenges with the problems that exist all along the value chain. Gustavo will explain how the organization is addressing all five dimensions of the Lean Transformation Framework to ensure a correct and complete utilization of lean principles and practices.

Combining lean and agile for improved performance

Andrea Gnesotto and Daniele Dalla Vecchia – Pietro Fiorentini

Pietro Fiorentini is an important player in the energy sector and for more than 20 years has applied the kaizen philosophy in all business processes and functions. To move faster and faster in a complex network, it combined Lean with Agile, bringing the Scrum framework both in Product and Process Development and daily improvement teams. In this session, you will learn how Lean and Agile can work together to improve performance.

Advance your transformation: a session for decision-makers

Sergio Caldeirinha & Cevdet Özdogan

For the past few years, the presenters engaged in the experimentations and development of a system to identify the gap between a company’s current and future states. It is called “Lean Maturity Assessments” and assesses governance, leadership & operations in multiple dimensions. Aligning the results with vision and strategy can help leaders prioritize and zoom in on the next gap that needs to be addressed, with the help of the Lean Transformation Framework. There is a lot of confusion around lean assessments and audits out there, and this presentation aims to bring clarity to the subject.

Building a lean culture to create value for customers

Eleana Boada - DSV Transport & Logistics Colombia

By optimizing its administrative and operational process using lean tools and techniques, this transportation company in Colombia is developing a new way of thinking that has customer needs at its core. In this presentation, you will learn how to clearly define value for customers and what it means to truly commit to waste elimination.

Developing leaders and front-line staff

Hein Temmink & John Kramer – Kaiser Permanente Redwood City

KP Redwood City in California has leveraged several lean tools and practices, with the goal of creating a culture of continuous improvement, in which “many people solve many problems”. In this presentation, attendees will hear the story of how the hospital is trying to make this happen. Hein will also share examples of how Value Stream Mapping and Daily Management Systems are being used to transform the culture of the organization.

The Double-Loop PDCA Framework to deploy a Daily Management System

Anton Grutter – Lean Institute Africa

The DL-PDCA framework was developed to provide a simple introduction to the Daily Management System and illustrate how some of the core lean practices fit into it. This session will briefly explain the DL-PDCA framework, and the lessons learned at several sites where it has been introduced. LGN Institutes and their clients will be invited to participate in the development and testing of an online simulation game during which participants can learn how the framework works.

Achieving flow in a bakery with high demand variability

Martin Zahradnik, Rory O’Connor, Anton Grutter 

Espresso Bakery & LIA

Espresso Bakery supplies small restaurants to massive conference centres with fresh baked goods on a lead-time as short as 10 hours. It was founded by an artisanal baker and the next generation in the family have started the transition to flow production. This session will share how their Daily Management System and a supermarket system to supply materials to production works, as well as how the technical and mindset challenges are being addressed by making small (and sometimes big) improvements every day.

Why conversations are so important

Catherine Chabiron – Institut Lean France

Functional organisations, remote work and automation - though necessary - tend to pull us apart and lock us into a world of execution. Conversely, by encouraging and thriving on conversations, lean pushes us to discuss problems and explore opportunities for improvement. Catherine will discuss why lean might just be our only chance to explore, learn, and inject fun into our work. She'll share examples of organizations that are leveraging lean and the power of conversations to fight the complexity of today's world.

Lean systems and financial performance

Arnaldo Camuffo - Bocconi University, Milan

Does lean improve financial performance? By how much? How likely is this to happen? How quickly does it occur? This session addresses these long-standing questions. It quantifies by how much lean firms outperforms their competitors on key financial performance indicators, like return on net invested capital, net financial position to EBITDA ratio and EBITDA margin. Arnaldo will analyze under which conditions different strategies of operational performance improvement are conducive to abnormal profitability and illustrate possible failure modes.

Navigating a turbulent energy market

Huibert-Jan den Hartog – E.ON

With the energy market going through huge disruptive changes, energy companies are facing several strategic challenges. Building on its experience of 15 years applying lean, E.ON – one of Europe's largest energy suppliers, with 75,000 employees and 1,350 businesses under its umbrella - is planning out its transition to cleaner energy and new customer propositions that will enable it to meet ever-changing market needs. In this presentation, Huibert-Jan will discuss the challenges E.ON is facing and how Lean Thinking, in the form of a Business System, is helping them to tackle the current crisis.

The Lean Quiz - Learning is fun!

René Aernoudts – Lean Management Instituut, The Netherlands

Who said that lean is boring? Following last year's success, René is back with his lean quiz to help you learn about Lean Thinking - its tools, principles, history and key characters - in a fun and engaging way.

What would you change if you had your time again?

Alister Lee - Cleanaway

A year ago, former Lean Enterprise Australia coach Alister Lee decided to get back into industry and work on lean from the inside. He's now Head of Operational Excellence at one of Australia's largest waste processing companies. With the organisation at an early stage in its journey, Alister has the great opportunity to start a transformation from zero and go back to basics. He will talk about his experience in this “greenfield” company that aims to become a world leader in sustainability and the circular economy.

Transforming Chinese healthcare: reflections on a 10-year journey

William Luo

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Lean Enterprise China’s Lean Healthcare Program. Over the past decade, the team at LEC has coached 20 hospitals and the lean improvements made by these organizations have benefited an estimated 35 million patients. In this presentation, William will share the three key lessons learned during this ten-year journey of healthcare transformation. 

Adapting and implementing a lean management system across a FMCG chain

Chris Landman, Jason Tilley, Anton Grutter

Unilever Field Services & LIA

Unilever Field Services merchandises FMCG products in about 3,500 stores across South Africa. The deployment of their Lean Management System, known as “iGrow”, started shortly before Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, the destruction of several stores during social unrest, and ongoing national electricity supply disruptions. This is the story of how they kept on sailing through these storms and rapidly changed tack when necessary. The initial success of their model line is today filling their sails for deployment throughout the organisation.

Dealing with fear of change and with intimidation

Sharon Visser

Change brings out a range of emotions in people depending on their personal fears and experiences. Sometimes, these emotions can even lead to intimidating tactics, which - to different extents - exist in all organizations. In this presentation, Sharon will share her experience dealing with such tactics (and with resistance to change in general) at a Toyota Halfway dealership in Botswana and explain why it's important to draw the line early in the lean transformation.

Lean and perseverance

SKC – Miguel Pastor

Thanks to lean, SKC – a company that sells and services vehicles and equipment for a variety of industries – has managed to face a time of great uncertainty. It leveraged the full power of visual management on the shopfloor to reinvent itself and tackle the difficult circumstances in the market. In this “virtual gemba” session, you will learn how a perseverance in pursuing a cultural transformation led to remarkable results in terms of lead-time reduction and waste elimination.

Boosting collaboration in a large hospital

Erasmus Medical Center – Kjeld Aij and Stefan Visser

Two years ago, the largest hospital in the Netherlands began a lean transformation that has already brought many positive results. Over the previous two years, the organization had lost 35% of its nurses as a result of burnout. With the objective of making the work easier for staff, Erasmus MC kickstarted a number of lean projects – including an extremely effective application of TWI in a newly-integrated ward.

The competitive advantage of lean process creation

Eric Ethington & Matt Zayko

What does it take to properly design a new process while optimizing the value-creating resources? In this presentation, Matt and Eric will introduce their 6CON model, applicable to any industry. The application of the framework can result in 30-50% improvements in safety, first-time quality, customer lead-time, capital efficiency, labor productivity, floorspace, etc, potentially adding up to millions of dollars per year and a 10x payback.

Leveraging “digital lean” to become a leading factory

ZEISS VISION CARE – Golden Fang

The Zeiss Vision Care plant in Guangzhou is  aiming to become the leading factory in the lens manufacturing industry. To achieve that, they are transforming their operation leveraging “Digital Lean” concepts to develop a series of digital tools that are rooted in Lean Thinking. In this presentation, you’ll learn how the plant is navigating the difficulty of balancing between mass and custom-made manufacturing, how they are building lean into their culture and processes, and how digital fits into the picture. 

Lean parenting:  instil lean from childhood to adolescence 

LEAN ACADEMY PORTUGAL - Sergio Caldeirinha

Many lean practitioners choose to use lean in their every-day lives and in their relationships. In this presentation, attendees will learn about an interest application: parenting. Sergio will share his own experience of using lean with his children, sharing useful tips with other parents – from 5S’ing a child’s room to creating a JI sheet on how to brush your teeth or making a weekly plan using Kanban. Through a number of examples, you will learn how to engage your children in lean thinking.

Achieving “fin-tastic” results across the company

BIOMAR – Horacio Gajardo

Faced with rising costs of raw materials and dropping margins, this manufacturer of feed for farmed salmon saw in lean an opportunity. Thanks to it, they achieved significant results in terms of process stabilization, cost reduction and productivity. From there, the implementation grew to other areas. This case will teach attendees how, from a local issue, an organization can expand the scope of its lean initiative to tackle new problems that might arise.

Surviving Covid-related uncertainty thanks to Lean

DECKERS – Sailing Hou

This session will tell the story of how the Deckers (UGG’s parent company) weathered the Covid storm in China. During the pandemic, problems with limited inventory and the uncertainty of lockdowns and continuous changes to the plan loomed, but the Deckers factory was able to survive. It did so thanks to Lean Thinking practices, like quick changeovers, line balancing and the development of a multiskilled workforce. This case study demonstrates that lean gives its best during a crisis.

Aligning around True North

ELECMETAL – Jose Pablo Dominguez

What can the alignment of the whole organization around True North achieve in the midst of raising material costs and logistical problems? Turns out, a lot! In 2021, Elecmetal saw huge gains after reorganizing around PDCA  aligned with hoshin kanri and supported by leadership at the gemba. Learn how lean can be successfully applied in steelworks, and of how learning together with suppliers, customers and operators can lead to great results.

Creating a production system in days during an emergency

GE HEALTHCARE - Angie Norman

During the pandemic, GE Healthcare had to set up and attach accessories to thousands of medical monitors (a final step typically performed at hospitals) in record time. Thanks to lean, the team was able to stand up a production system from scratch, which was operational within 30 days, delivering one vital sign patient monitor every 13 minutes. In her presentation, Angie will explain how this was possible (“trystorming”, Kanban, and standardization were some of the tools and techniques used) and why lean does wonders in a crisis. 

Collaboratively developing a new product

Yu-Hsiu Hung 

This presentation describes how a collaboration between academia and industry on a LPPD project helped with the development of a motorcycle helmet, by applying LPPD principles and practices to key steps. One sales manager (from the company) as well as two graduate students (from the university) participated in the project. The outcomes included: (1) the development of three future chief engineers, (2) 50% reduction of the original product development lead-time, and (3) an innovative helmet with optimized aero-dynamical performance. 

How to do Yokoten effectively

AGROSUPER – Henry Aravena and Mauricio Zuñiga

Agrosuper is the number 1 supplier of food products in Chile. After trying out different improvement approaches, the company decided to apply Lean Thinking in one of its plants. Within six months, the site achieved the best results ever recorded and developed a new mindset. News of the site's internal logistics results spread and  another five plants became interested in also introducing lean. In this session, attendees will learn how to apply yokoten – knowledge sharing – effectively, and what the benefits and difficulties can be expected from it.

Managing variation in demand

Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Agency - Stijn Burgers and Saskia Klein

The IND is the Dutch governmental organization that helps refugees navigate the process of immigration and naturalization. Due to the current geopolitical situation, with conflict and poverty ravaging several countries, The Netherlands is seeing a significant increase in the number of refugees.  The IND has, therefore, embarked on a lean journey with an internal team and begun to improve processes. In this interactive session, the presenters will share the story of IND, but also ask for your help in finding the best way to deal with huge variation in demand.

How to multi-skill your workforce

ACME Asia - Ken Liu

ACME Asia has been on a successful lean turnaround since 2016, something it was able to sustain during the Covid-19 crisis. One of the key pillars of their transformation is people development, in particular their efforts to multi-skill the workforce. In this session, the ACME team will share stories on how they turned a HR manager into a quality engineer, a die-casting operator into a field engineer, or a van driver into a supplier quality engineer.

How to set up a lean dojo

LEAN ACADEMY PORTUGAL - Sergio Caldeirinha

There is more to a dojo than training for operators. At Toyota, a dojo is a place for peer collaboration, where sensei share experience and learn from one another to further develop their skills. There is more: at Toyota, dojos are commonly used in non-manufacturing environments, like sales and marketing. In this presentation, attendees will learn how set up a lean dojo and leverage it to the fullest. Sergio will share practical examples from Lean Academy Portugal’s own dojo. 

How cultural change can fuel a transformation

INTER-METAL S.C. - Eryk Fedyniak

In this interesting case study, Eryk will share the journey of Inter-Metal, a Polish organization that transformed itself from a garage company to a professional outsourcing partner for industry. He will explain how this was possible by changing the culture of this multinational environment and thanks to employee engagement through problem solving at all levels of the firm, the use of TWI, and other powerful lean tools (like Hoshin Kanri and Operational Control Meetings).

How lean is helping Ukrainian companies cope with the war

LEAN INSTITUTE UKRAINE - Serhii Komberianov

Extreme situations – like war – lead us to forget about the non-essential and truly focus on what’s necessary to survive. For Ukrainian businesses, this means coming face to face with problems that were never encountered before. Day after day, Ukrainian companies are learning how to prepare themselves and their people for such difficult situations - including logistical challenges, the need to relocate quickly or having to develop capabilities overnight - and how to stay afloat.

How to effectively transfer skills in your organization

LEAN INSTITUTE POLAND - Malgorzata Jakubik

In this presentation, which will share lessons from several Polish cases from many industries, attendees will learn what it takes to build a learning organization and effectively transfer skills through a train-the-trainer process and the development of an internal Subject Matt Expert network. If you wonder what it practically means to create a learning organization, this session is for you.

How we built a lean foundry from scratch

CRANFIELD FOUNDRY - Dariusz Dziuba

What are the challenges of creating a lean greenfield? Dariusz will share the experience of building a greenfield foundry in Macedonia with a commitment to making it a lean enterprise. In particular, he will explain how an employee idea system was used as a vehicle for introducing lean concepts and tools right from the start. 

A Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive

 Prof. Christoph Roser

Don't miss this quantitative and qualitative comparison of the main players in Japanese automotive. Over the years, Christoph visited plants of Japan's seven major carmakers: Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and Subaru. In this presentation, he will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each. He will also talk about Japanese working culture and their quest for perfection.

Process-driven continuous improvement

 REALMET MMC - Veselin Davidkov

This Bulgarian manufacturer of Roll On/Off containers and skip containers started its lean transformation from scratch, without metrics or a clear understanding of their processes. In this presentation, Veselin will detail the steps the company took to build a well-working, process driven continuous improvement organization.