Main Conference Day 1: Thursday, February 24, 2011

7:00 Registration for Workshop & Coffee

7:30 Increasing Your LSS Team’s Creativity Using Creative FAST Methodology

Understanding and effectively responding to different dimensions of stakeholders’ Quality expectations is the prerequisite for the survival of organizations in today’s fast-changing global market environment. To be successful in responding to these challenges, organizations must concurrently deploy a mix of different creativity and analytical tools and methods.

In this workshop, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Dr. Michael Mladjenovic will lead you through a hands-on live demonstration of Creative FAST methodology. You will learn how to:

  • Examine opportunities and overcome creativity challenges
  • Understand different creativity types
  • Transform your thinking to higher level of abstraction
  • Identify and prioritize your creative solutions

Dr. Michael Mladjenovic
Master Black Belt
LifeLabs

8.30 Registration for Main Conference & Coffee

8:55 Chairperson’s Welcome & Opening Remarks

9:00 Keynote: Evolving A World-Class LSS Initiative

Maple Leaf Foods is one of Canada’s largest food processing companies, with sales of $5.8 billion and 24,000 employees. After launching its performance improvement program in 2000, Maple Leaf now has 130 full-time Six Sigma resources, in addition to 1,800 certified Green Belts—and an annual savings of approximately $60 million. In this session, Vice President of Six Sigma Bruce Miyashita will detail some of Maple Leaf’s successes, hurdles, goals, and challenges such as:

  • Keeping the Six Sigma program robust and sustainable
  • Making Six Sigma an extension of Maple Leaf’s values
  • Encompassing both strategy formulation and strategy execution within the Process Improvement program

Bruce Miyashita
Vice President of Six Sigma
Maple Leaf Foods

9:40 Creating A Culture Of LSS & Process Excellence

In order to more thoroughly and effectively use Lean and Six Sigma principles throughout your institution, you need to create an overall culture of Process Excellence; rather than just trying to sell the methodologies and tools, it becomes important to build and align a case for change and embed the approaches and cultural values as part of your business model and part of your employees’ daily behaviors. This session will address tactics for:

  • Building a case for change that is aligned with your business challenges
  • Focusing on engagement to make Process Excellence real to the broader organization, and ultimately the default setting for all involved
  • Uniting disparate departments and branches in a common pursuit of excellence

Eric Michrowski
Director, Process Improvement Centre of Excellence
TELUS

10:20 Morning Speed Networking & Refreshment Break

Put those Lean skills to the test, folks! Find out as much as you can about one another in this 45-minute networking break—meet, greet, and learn about each others’ single biggest implementation hurdle, success, or aspiration. It’s like speed dating, but with less pressure.

10:40 Maintaining Your Process Improvement Program Through Economic Downturn

When the economy dips and companies need to reduce unnecessary expenditures, one of the first eliminations made is frequently the firm’s LSS program. Implementation and training can, of course, be costly, but, time and again, institutions that cut their LSS programs ultimately realize this step was a false economy. This session will consider topics such as:

  • Examining the performance of Canada Post during and after the recent recession
  • Persuading upper management of the benefit of retaining LSS programs
  • Identifying economies that can be made to lower program costs

Daniel Koepke
Director of Process Excellence
Canada Post

11:20 Moving Beyond Manufacturing: Applying LSS To Transactional And Back-Office Processes

Although LSS was first implemented in the manufacturing arena and continues to be widely used in that industry, companies soon recognized the value of LSS, as demonstrated by the manufacturing industry, and began to suspect that LSS processes could prove similarly useful in other areas. Increasingly, firms have been looking to apply LSS methodologies to their transactional operations and in their back offices. This session will discuss:

  • Which tools and methodologies work best in the back office
  • Common problems companies face in adapting their LSS programs
  • Benefits of applying LSS to transactional operations

Tina Capotorto
Director, Process Improvement
GE Oil & Gas

12:00 Networking Luncheon

1:00 Rallying Continuous Management Support For Your Process Improvement Initiative

One of the key aspects critical to the success of any Process Improvement program is the support of upper management. Without leadership support, it is difficult for programs to gain traction and employees, seeing the lack of management commitment, may feel as though Process Improvement principles are optional, rather than vital. In this session, you will learn how to:

  • Clarify the value of the Process Improvement principles, and overcome resistance to change
  • Persuade leadership to really lead—they need to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk
  • Demonstrate the ROI of proper management support

Chander Sharma
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
RBC

1:40 Using LSS To Improve Customer Satisfaction…and Using Customer Feedback To Improve Your Organization

Feedback from both employees and customers is vital to the continued success of your company: Without input, you can only gauge your performance by your profits, which doesn’t tell the whole story. By incorporating the idea of customer service excellence into your larger performance excellence department, you can create a more responsive program, as well as ensure more loyal customers. This session will address the steps you need to take in your program, including:

  • Relying on customer and employee feedback to identify problem areas ripe for improvement
  • Effectively applying LSS methodologies to ameliorate these problems
  • Identifying the benefits of customer satisfaction and creating reliable metrics to measure your performance against your customers’ standards

Mark Fitzsimmons
Director, Quality and Process Excellence
Cummins Western Canada

2:20 Afternoon Networking & Refreshment Break

2:40 Ensuring Employee Buy-In And Adoption Of LSS Practices

To put it bluntly, if your employees don’t accept the reasoning behind LSS or refuse to put the techniques into practice, you simply can’t have a functional LSS program (let alone a successful program). You need your employees to buy into both the idea that there is a need for LSS and the principles of LSS. This session is designed to help you learn how to:

  • Persuade employees to change their preexisting work patterns and techniques
  • Demonstrate the value of implementation—not only how LSS methodologies will help the company, but how they will help your employees’ daily activities as well
  • Properly train employees and encourage them to “own” their LSS projects

Dwight Bryan
Black Belt, Operational Excellence and Lean Six Sigma
Cardinal Health

3:20 Registration for Workshop

3:30 Adapting Your Process Improvement Program to the Changing Economy

Like most value-added programs within any company, LSS and Process Improvement initiatives are often slashed or significantly pared down during times of recession…only to be reinstated or expanded once the economy improves. As demonstrated by firms who kept their Process Improvement programs intact during the recent recession, maintaining such programs, with their inherent emphasis on running lean operations, can in fact be an asset that will help you ride out the turbulent economy. In this workshop, an industry expert will help you formulate a feasible plan for dealing with economic change by considering the following factors:

  • Maintaining a relatively steady program size (repeated downsizing and upsizing can be both demoralizing and time-consuming) during different economic climates
  • Perpetuating your preexisting projects during recession (and determining when to increase your portfolio)
  • Avoiding the pitfalls of overconfidence and over-commitment during times of prosperity
  • Ensuring the flexibility and adaptability of your initiatives

Chander Sharma
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
RBC

5:30 End Of Main Conference Day 1