Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing Operations

Customized Training, Education and Practical Workshops

Many courses teach advanced Lean concepts but leave students without necessary skills for aligning Lean activities with strategic objectives, solving real process problems and continuously improving operations. This course moves beyond knowledge into the realm of application—teaching you advanced techniques and preparing you to participate in your own workplace Lean events. The course has a major focus on value stream assessment skills—how to identify and remove waste in a process, and how to ensure that waste doesn't creep back into the process after it's been improved. The course content is designed to move quickly beyond the theory of Lean so you can start solving problems in any industry. The "Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing Operations" Training Workshop is heavily customized to suite the specific needs of your organization. The advanced modules use real customer data and situations during the hands on exercises. There is also some homework activity required between modules.

Module 1 - Voice of the Customer Basic Training Workshop

The Voice of the Customer training course is designed for Senior Executives, engineers, product managers, product marketers, and market researchers working in the field of product and process development. It teaches “best practices” in gathering the Voice of the Customer for Product and Process feature development. It is delivered in 3 separate training events.

Module 1a - In Module 1a you will learn how to develop mission/vision and positioning statements that drive the development of your goals and objectives. You will begin to develop your own list of Customer Value Drivers during the workshop exercises.

Module 1b - The objectives of session 1b of the VOC module teaches you how to develop goals and objects, Brainstorm action items and prioritize to achieve your goals and Objectives.

Module 1c - The course objectives of session c of the VOC module teaches you how to use the Quality Function Deployment (QFD)tools to develop a strategy matrix for ongoing product and process improvement.

Module 2 - Process Mapping Basics Training Workshop

The stream of activity within an organization that creates customer value is called the value stream. Value Stream Mapping is the tool used to understand, analyze and improve a value stream. In this module you will learn the basic skills required to develop your own value streams.

Module x - Process Mapping Advanced Training Workshop

In this module we learn how to apply the skills from the Process Mapping Basics Workshop to specific customer situations. In this module we focus on Business Processes such as Order Entry, Quoting, Product Engineering. Homework is assign to uncover storm clouds and other areas of improvement opportunities. This module can be run as many times as there are business units within your organization. The training workshop will be customized to your specific needs.

Module y - VSM Advanced Training Workshop

In this Module we will learn how to apply advanced Value Stream Mapping techniques to specific customer situations in the manufacturing production environment. Participants are encouraged to bring real examples of orders, processes and issues to the workshop for the group exercises. This module can be run as many times as there are production lines within your organization. The training workshop will be customized to your specific needs.

Module z - Storm Cloud Analysis Advanced Training

In the final Module in the training course you will learn how evaluate the storm clouds and align them with the priorities set in the VOC Module. You will learn how to create continuous improvement work teams, how to establish a Continuous Improvement Culture and how to develop a sustainable Continuous Improvement plan.