Lean Production Workshops Help Region's Manufacturers

BROOKLINE, Mass., Nov. 17 -- A new workshop on problem solving is among eight being presented Jan. 17, 2006-19 in Austin, TX, by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) as part of regional training for manufacturers.

The other workshops will tackle value-stream mapping, value-stream mapping for business processes, creating production cells for continuous flow, material handling, policy management, how to lead change efforts, and the basics of pull production systems. Workshops run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown.

For complete content descriptions and to register, go to the Training page of the LEI web site at: http://www.lean.org/ or call (617) 713-2900. Space is limited.

Two of the LEI faculty members at Austin will teach workshops based on their workbooks that received 2005 Shingo Prizes. Art Smalley received a Shingo Research Prize for the Creating Level Pull workbook and Rick Harris received a prize for co-authoring Making Materials Flow. They're teaching workshops by the same names. Rick, co-author of the Creating Continuous Flow workbook, will teach a separate workshop based on that book, which received a Shingo Research Prize in 2003.

Lean manufacturing cuts costs and inventories rapidly to free cash and resources, which is critical in a competitive world economy. Lean supports profitable growth by improving productivity and quality, reducing lead times, and freeing resources. For example, it frees office and plant space and increases capacity so companies can add product lines, in-source component production, and increase output of existing products. Companies implementing lean can take advantage of economic growth by increasing sales while controlling costs.

The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit training, publishing, and research center founded by James P. Womack PhD, in August 1997 to give people simple but powerful tools that enable them to apply a set of ideas known as lean production and lean thinking, based initially on the Toyota Production System. For more information visit the LEI News page at http://www.lean.org/WhoWeAre/LEINews.cfm.