Presentation Summary - "Asking The Right Questions: Management’s Key to Lean Transformation"

What if your company could double or triple profits just by asking different questions? What if you discovered a way to engage your entire workforce from engineering to sales to production to accounting to ask these same questions every day, unlocking the creative energy of every single person to improve your company? What if you found a way to align and direct all of that energy in the best possible direction to benefit your customers, your shareholders and your employees?

Today, most companies don’t ask the right questions and do not get these benefits, but the few who do consistently get dramatic results. They have learned and employed an improvement system referred to as “Lean”. These concepts have been employed world-wide with dramatic results in every type of enterprise. They have learned to ask the right questions and to focus their workforces on reducing or eliminating impediments to customer service.

Lean is a not simply a set of tools to be layered onto the existing system, but is a critical strategic shift in management thinking: Asking the right questions.

This presentation establishes the critical linkage between lean philosophy and management practice to successful implementation of lean methods. In Bruce Hamilton’s words, “if you don’t understand Lean’s big picture, then very little else in the lean implementation process will make sense.” This presentation is for experienced lean managers as well as those just getting started. Mr. Hamilton draws upon his years as a manufacturer, consultant and Shingo Prize examiner to articulate the big picture of Lean from a management and supervisory perspective.
 

Biography

Bruce Hamilton is President of the GBMP, a Boston-based non-profit provider of lean technology. Prior to joining GBMP, Mr. Hamilton led efforts at United Electric Controls to revise its manufacturing systems from traditional batch production to one-piece part and information flow. The firm was recognized as a 1990 recipient of the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence. Mr. Hamilton has been featured in the SME video, Mistake-proofing and in AMA’s video Change Management series, Winning Through Change. He is featured in the 2004 video, Toast Kaizen (recipient of 2005 Academic Shingo Prize), used world-wide to introduce the basics of lean manufacturing, as well Moments of Truth, a how-to leadership video targeted to management and supervision.

Bruce is Vice Chair of the Business Board of Examiners for the Shingo Prize and also is on the Shingo Board of Governors. In May, 2000, he was inducted into the prestigious Shingo Prize Academy. As a consultant he has helped some of America’s largest corporations -- as well as some of its smallest -- on the road to world-class practices. In addition to his 18 years in production, Bruce has also held positions in marketing, computer systems, materials management and general management. He brings to his clients a broad-based understanding of manufacturing.