Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 1, 2010 — On one level, the lean management transformation at the FedEx Express Aircraft Maintenance facility at Los Angeles International Airport is about applying lean methods to improve routine maintenance and safety checks as well as major and minor unscheduled aircraft repairs. But on another level, the transformation is about how leaders there are consciously building a foundation for a long-term transformation by teaching people to think differently.
“Everybody should get to be a change agent,” explained Managing Director Phillip Coley.
Coley — and leaders from Lantech, Goodrich, and Grainger — will describe how they are building “lean for the long term” at the annual lean conference, sponsored by the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI).
The unique design of Lean Summits has executives explain the essential business cases behind their lean transformations during plenary sessions, followed by breakout sessions where change agents deliver the how-to details about the methodologies used. Pre-conference workshops run March 1-2.
In the keynote address, Jim Womack, LEI founder and chairman, will bring lean thinking up to date. Womack is coauthor of The Machine That Changed the World, Lean Thinking, Seeing the Whole: mapping the extended value stream, and Lean Solutions.
Complete details and how to register are at:
https://www.lean.org/Events/2010_lean_transformation_summit.cfm
Lean Summit Highlights
– How Goodrich Aerostructures steadily advanced a 1995 lean effort from the shop floor to today’s complete business system.
– How leadership behavior and employee training at FedEx Express turned airplane mechanics and other staff from skeptics into change agents.
– How Lantech, whose rapid and dramatic success was documented in Lean Thinking (1996), implemented a management system that today supports sustainable daily improvements.
– Keynote by Jim Womack, who led the MIT research team that coined the term “lean,” on how to introduce an enduring lean management system.
– Learning sessions and pre-conference workshops on such transformation issues as: behavioral change, standardized work confusion, change agent skills, lean for senior leaders, applying lean thinking to human resources, office and service value streams.
Lean Enterprise Institute
Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., was founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., as a nonprofit research, education, publishing, and conference company with a mission to advance lean thinking around the world. We teach courses, hold management seminars, write and publish books and workbooks, and organize public and private conferences. We use the surplus revenues from these activities to conduct research projects and support other lean initiatives such as the Lean Education Academic Network and the Lean Global Network. Visit LEI at https://www.lean.org for more information.
Media: Chet Marchwinski, cmarchwinski@lean.org, (617) 871-2930