DailyKaizen

This last week I had the opportunity to attend the LEI conference in Atlanta Georgia.  Over the next couple of days I will share with you some of my key takeaways from this event.  Overall, I thought the conference was excellent and I learned an incredible amount.  Most valuable, was the opportunity to network with many great Lean minds about their experiences on their journey.  I had expected that most people attending would be from manufacturing and this was really not the case.  The conference had a very diverse set of atendees from every industry including healthcare, high tech, financial and government. 

The theme of the conference was creating a Lean Management system.  Most speakers talked about the challange of moving away from a tool driven approach toward creating an environment that promotes Lean thinking at all levels.  This was exciting to me, since it confirmed out approach we are taking with the Model Line.   The one thing every speaker and attendee agreed about was the importance of leadership involvement and modeling in the success of a Lean transformation.  Below are two of my favorite quotes from the event:

‘There are three kinds of leaders.  Those that tell you what to do.  Those that allow you to do what you want.  And Lean leaders that come down to the work and help you figure it out.’ –Shook

‘A Lean transformation is a long-term process.  To be successful you will need to change the thinking of one leader at a time.’–Balle’

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