These are the claims lean experts have made for years. They are based on performance differences between the best lean companies and the typical Western companies.  Unfortunately, these improvements have proven difficult to get from the complex set of parameters that make up lean manufacturing.

The Mizzou Engineering is offering an interactive, one-day seminar explaining an intuitive method for quickly accruing these benefits. 

Course: Mizzou Engineering is offering a one-day seminar to introduce simple methods to reduce variation (of all kinds) and use operating at closer to the mean to: enable reduction in product lead time (the time from customer order to customer receipt of product); dramatically shrink inventories; virtually eliminate rework and repair; and improve employee morale.

Lean is a method of management and requires no investment of equipment or computers/software. Areas like health care, engineering design, and a wide variety of service industries, as well as virtually all types of manufacturing currently employ Lean to benefit the bottom-line. Methods taught in this seminar enable participants to return to their work place and implement change beginning the next day. Positive returns begin immediately after some rearrangement of workflow and the introduction of simple management methods.

Near-term bottom-line improvement is achieved from adopting the methods described in the seminar. Martin Laurent personally developed these change approach methods. He learned the principals for this change approach directly from Deming and from his experience working in the joint venture between GM and Toyota. They are patterned after the method Toyota used to change itself. Marty used this change approach to double the productivity (the plant output more than doubled while employment reduced slightly) of a GM plant while simultaneously improving quality (from measuring defects in % to <50 defects per million products produced) and reducing inventory from ~$50,000,000 to ~$12,500,000.

Similar improvements are reproducible in any manufacturing setting. The key is implementing management methods that assure the process is followed. The precise steps are provided in 10 principles for lean transformation. These principles are taught in the 8-hour seminar and also provided in written form for attendees use after the seminar.

Instructor: Leading the seminar is Martin P. Laurent, a Saint Joseph native, Mizzou Engineering Alum, retired GM executive, and all around quality guy. In his 32 years at GM, Martin served on  Isuzu’s Board of Directors, was a plant manager, and led the office responsibility for teaching GM lean manufacturing.