Speaker, Actor and Satirizer

HUMOUR! Fittingly LEAN and Outlandishly Fun Program for Workplace Wellness

It’s the end of the conference.  It’s the closing session and it’s the one you can’t miss. Having spent 4-days learning and continuously improving, it’s time for you to proudly steal one last speaker’s ideas and laugh - a lot. In this motivational, funny and high-energy session, Paul Huschilt teaches low-cost and easy-to-use strategies for managing stress and building resilience. You’ll learn how to get the most out of work, have fun pursuing excellence and laugh at just about anything.

Read more

Ray Tanguay, Former head of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC)

Robert B. Magee, Chairman, The Woodbridge Group

Keynote Highlight Video - Robert Magee

Keynote Highlight Video - Ray Tanguay

Keynote Presentation

(1 X 1000) or (1000 X 1) What is the difference?

The story behind the best automotive plant in the world

Ray Tanguay, former head of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) will tell the story behind the best automotive plant in the world. Lean or TPS is not an activity, it is a system with a culture of continuous improvement. To deploy TPS in 51 Toyota sites in 28 countries meant that the culture that supports TPS had to be stronger than its leaders or the culture within the country. In order for TMMC to move forward, it had to go ‘back to basics’. TMMC was determined to be the best by having the best team members in the world. That is how it was selected to be the only plant outside of Japan to produce Lexus, to grow to be the biggest Toyota operation outside Japan and become the most awarded plant in the World! The automotive industry cannot succeed without a strong supply chain, and that is why the Woodbridge Transformation Story is so relevant. Chairman Bob Magee will explain how the Lean system and culture became the new way of doing business at the Woodbridge Group, its challenges and outstanding results.

Read more

CEO and Owner of Lantech.com, LLC, Author of the Work of Management

Keynote Highlight Video

Keynote Presentation

HOW TO BEAT THE “SILENT KILLER” OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

In a candid presentation with practical lessons for every business leader, Lantech CEO Jim Lancaster vividly describes the rise, fall, and rise again of its continuous improvement effort.

Lantech was one of the first companies outside of Toyota and its suppliers to truly embrace the principles of the Toyota Production System.  For years it enjoyed success after success as it converted operations from batch to flow production. It's remarkable results were featured in the Harvard Business Review, best-seller Lean Thinking, and many trade publications. But when the tours left, Lantech CEO Jim Lancaster faced two deepening mysteries; why did continuous improvement efforts deteriorate so quickly and why, if we’re so good at continuous improvement, aren’t profits dramatically better? Join Jim Lancaster, author of the Work of Management, to learn how the Lantech team resolved the mysteries with a new system of “daily management,” based on overlapping daily and weekly cycles of standardized work activities that managers and executives at every level use to resolve frontline operational problems immediately. 

Read more and view video

Bestselling author of Toyota Kata and Learning to See

Keynote Highlight Video

Keynote Presentation

KiC DEMO Presentation

Materials for facilitating Kata in the Classroom (KiC) are available for download here: www.katatogrow.com

Visit the Toyota Kata Website:  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html for more information

TOYOTA KATA - DAILY PRACTICE FOR SCIENTIFIC SKILL, MINDSET, AND CULTURE

In this session, Mike Rother will discuss the research findings behind the books, Toyota Kata, the Toyota Kata Practice Guide, and Toyota Kata Culture. Developing new ways of thinking means practicing targeted behaviors daily. Practicing Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata (IK/CK) is a way of developing scientific skills and mindset, for achieving challenging goals, that gets integrated into the normal daily operation of a team or organization. Kata are structured routines that you practice deliberately, especially at the beginning, so their pattern becomes a habit and leaves you with new skills that you can build on.

Read more and view video

Astronaut, aquanaut, jet pilot, ER doctor, scientist

Pursuing Excellence - Lessons from the Edge

Humans have been living aboard the International Space Station since the turn of the Millennium. The extreme harsh environment of space is intolerant of error, challenging teams to relentlessly focus on working together to achieve excellence in all aspects of day to day activities. The lessons learned for individual and team performance have been very effective in enhancing healthcare safety and quality outcomes and are shared by many high reliability organizations. This presentation will show how we can work together to create a culture where a passion for excellence thrives, creating outcomes that transform people and organizations.

Read more

President of FastCap and author of 2 Second LEAN

Keynote Highlight Video

Keynote Presentation

LEAN is Simple

Paul Akers has taken his manufacturing business from the garage to worldwide distribution in 17 years by pursuing one goal —serve the customer by improving every day; with one ground rule—keep Lean simple.

FastCap, with a product catalog of over 600 woodworking tools, now has 2,400 distributors in 40 countries. Paul credits the astounding business growth to a fun, dynamic culture in which each of the employees puts into practice at least one two-second improvement per day.  He developed the culture by hiring the right people, relentlessly teaching and reinforcing the eight wastes, and empowering people to experiment. His lessons aren’t all orthodox, but he swears by them and so do many other businesses.  Come here Paul speak and learn 2-Second Lean, you will be shocked how simple and fun it really is!

Read more and view video

Director of Commercial & Off Highway Manufacturing, North America The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

Keynote Highlight Video

Keynote Presentation

The People Side of Lean

Companies have used the phrase, "people are our greatest asset," for too long, and it is only partially correct. The truly engaged and talented people are the real asset of your company.  Real change – sustainable change – relies more on your empowered people. Billy Taylor is an evangelist for people inclusion processes in operational excellence. It all comes back to the challenge: Institutionalizing Operational Excellence through everyone in your organization. Successful culture change is driven by diversity and inclusion, “it’s not about the source of the idea, it’s about the quality of the solution”.

Read more and view video