Lean Enterprise Institute Adds New Workshop on Creating Continuous Flow as Follow-up to Value Stream Mapping Workshop

    BROOKLINE, Mass., Aug. 20 Manufacturers trying to take the
next step in lean production will get help at a workshop from the Lean
Enterprise Institute (LEI), taught by a coauthor of LEI's new workbook,
Creating Continuous Flow.
    The new Creating Continuous Flow workshop will be held Sept. 6th, at the
Hyatt Regency, St. Louis, Missouri and Oct. 4th at the Marriott Hotel, Sea-Tac
Airport, Seattle, Washington.
    Rick Harris, co-author of the just published Creating Continuous Flow
workbook, will give attendees the tools they need to implement and sustain
continuous flow production, a breakthrough step on the journey to lean
production.  Continuous flow has brought dramatic improvements in
productivity, quality, and lead times to aerospace, automotive, high-tech, and
defense industries, among others.
    Harris learned lean production with Toyota in Japan and at Toyota Motor
Manufacturing, Kentucky, where he was a manager in final vehicle assembly.
    Many plants have tried cellular production by rearranging equipment into
U-shaped cells.  The cells are an improvement but managers often struggle with
maintaining a smooth production flow through the cells.
   This new workshop draws on practical implementation materials developed by
Rick and co-author Mike Rother, such as videos of "before" and "after" cells.
It shows managers "what to do Monday morning" when they return to work.
    LEI will run its popular workshop on Value Stream Mapping (VSM) the day
before Creating Continuous Flow at both hotels.  VSM will run Sept. 5th in St.
Louis and Oct. 3rd in Seattle.  VSM is a critical prerequisite to continuous
flow because it identifies where to create continuous flow.  The workshop,
based on LEI's successful first workbook, Learning to See, thoroughly explains
how to draw current state and future state maps for product families.
    Value stream mapping expert Michele McLaughlin will use a factory example
to show participants how to identify product families, how to map product
family value streams, what makes a value stream lean, and how to develop an
implementation plan to rapidly turn the current state into the future state.

    The Lean Enterprise Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation
founded by Jim Womack in August 1997, to promote a set of ideas commonly known
as lean thinking.
    For more information or to register call (617) 713-2900 or visit
http://www.lean.org and click Events.


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