John Forbes Nash believes each of us belongs to a community, a network who have a shared commitment and affinity. As such they will behave in a predictable manner since there is nothing to gain by any individual changing their position unilaterally. In reality, to disturb the predictability never even crosses the mind of the members.

As such, a Nash Equilibrium exists. The dynamics of a community – its traditions, nostalgia, and bonds – will not be disrupted by a threat originating from within the community, but rather a disruption that is introduced to the community from the outside. Some examples of such a disruptor might include: a merger, change in the “C-Suite”, a surprise competitor, the loss of a key customer, and a near global economic melt-down.

So how can an internal disruptor be engineered and deployed in a controlled manner so that transformational change can occur when YOU want it to occur? Applying Game Theory and the Nash Equilibrium, Joseph will investigate the circumstances under which change takes place – and when it does not. And finally, we will discuss the creation of an effective disruptor and how it can be deployed in a controlled and sustainable fashion.

Corporate lean programs are trending all over the world. On the surface, launching them appears to carry little risk. These programs promise continuous improvement in the plants, which should more than cover the cost of managing them. But how these systems are implemented can make it or break it regarding their costs and paybacks. Based on five years of research in the Volvo Group, this presentation shows the pattern of performance improvement that can be expected from implementing lean in the plants of a multinational manufacturer. Knowing this pattern helps us understand how to manage the implementation of a lean program through the different maturity stages of a plant.

Graham's career has spanned senior management roles in manufacturing, haulage, policing, and now healthcare. Whilst in a manufacturing leadership role he discovered the value of the workforce, and through his career has been able to demonstrate how HR can create advocacy and engagement. In this keynote Graham explains how HR can be used not as a blocker, but as a catalyst for lean management.

What Problem is Top-management Trying to Solve? (How do they Know?)

All of us who have been in charge of a Lean implementation know that involvement and stakeholder management are very important, when it comes to top management. The question is when top management asks their employees to change and adapt to a “Lean culture” – a new way of working, can they:

1. Still continue with the old Systems Command and control management style?
2. Still use the same measurement methods and KPI’s as we used to?

Key take aways from this breakout session:

1. A list of typical consequences if you continue with Command & Control management (created in the break out session)
2. Tips about Lean measures such as; Demand Profile, Process Quality & Lead Time and how to use them.

Jacob and René will with their solid Lean background from both Production and Service, share their observation and reflections and hopefully provide you with some valuable insights.

AIG is the world’s largest insurance organisation, with more than 88 million customers and a network of over 62,000 people in more than 90 countries. It is a leading provider of worldwide property casualty, life and mortgage insurance, retirement services and aircraft leasing.

This presentation will describe AIG’s strategy in the wake of the global financial crisis to build a new way of working based on Lean principles. It will describe the framework that has been established to embed continuous improvement, customer service delivery and individual empowerment, and which connects the management system to the principles, values and philosophy of AIG.

Rewards and Recognition… How are you motivating your people?

Employee recognition is a crucial factor in employment engagement and involvement in continuous improvement – but what works for some companies and people can often have the opposite reaction for another organisation. This is an open ideas exchange, where you, the delegate are the speakers. So if you have experiences in his subject, positive and negative, then come and share in an informal small group activity.

Dacia: When Frugal Design and Engineering Lead to Success

In 2013, Dacia was the fastest growing automotive brand in Europe. This success originates in the late 1990s when the Renault CEO launched the X90 project with a vision of a “modern, robust and affordable car” at a selling price of 5000€.

For many years the automotive industry had sought to make “the affordable car” without success, often by reducing the quality of an existing, successful model.

The breakthrough from technology ‘push’ to concept ‘pull’ became possible because of constant lean thinking and discipline. The project, developed in France and Romania, faced numerous challenges, but the relentless application of Design to Cost principles in both product and process conception enabled the breakthrough needed to start to this ongoing success story.

The presentation will tell this story from the pre-Dacia mistakes of misaligned value engineering through to the principles that enabled this success.

Lean: Learning from Disaster

In 2006 Steve started leading Lean in UK Universities, the first time the methodology had been seen in the sector.

Working at the forefront of developing a lean approach for Universities led to rich learning. Often it felt like never a week passed when we weren’t in fear of losing our jobs; but, we worked through this and developed a model for lean in HE that has now been taken up globally.

This presentation will identify the learning garnered from those experiences, focus on practical conclusions that transfer across sectors, and speak to the importance of working across organisational boundaries.

Key learning:

• Hints on starting lean in virgin territory or re-starting a stalled initiative
• Identification and handling of commonly experienced issues
• Developing strategies to respond to unforeseen problems

The Courage to Coach

Implementing a lean programme in an organisation is no mean feat. Cultural change in any firm is difficult because the culture is the people and human nature is a stubborn beast. So when we are told effective coaching and leadership are the most important factors in deploying lean, our immediate reaction is it is easier said than done. Here we will discuss the success and challenges of having the tenacity to lead and inspire a workforce to add value and eliminate waste.

How to Drive Culture Change to Achieve World Class Manufacturing
Early on, Tetra Pak identified that success with World Class Manufacturing (WCM) was going to require high levels of commitment and involvement throughout the organisation. An important aspect of this is recognising that The Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is about change and people and in order to accelerate this process you need to have people who believe it and understand it in order to be fully engaged.

Purpose
This case study focuses on the how our culture change programme helped Tetra Pak achieve its success. Andy firmly believes in order to achieve sustainable World Class Manufacturing, you need to create distributed leadership across the whole organisation and involve everyone from the shop floor upwards. Andy will share how he took his organisation from a few disciples and a lot of sceptics to engaging the whole organisation. He will start by recognising what you need to drive culture change, so that your people are aligned and engaged and how that leads to a culture that adapts to change and embraces continuous improvement.

Outcomes by the end of the workshop

• How to create distributed leadership, improving the effectiveness of decision-making and increasing ownership of solutions.
• How to increase levels of engagement so that employees embrace and implement change.
• How to achieve alignment around the company’s organisational goals and strategy.
• How to strengthen a culture of continuous improvement with high levels of trust, commitment and enthusiasm throughout the organisation.

Service Jidoka 
One of the key pillars of the Toyota Production System is that of jidoka, the use of intelligent machines to increase quality and relieve employees of monotonous, repetitive work. Following a long held tension between Lean and IT, we have been slow to acknowledge and integrate jidoka principles within lean service design. This session will explore best practice examples and will encourage attendees to consider organisational opportunities for lean service IT solutions.

Learning Outcomes:

• An understanding of the application of jidoka within service through practical examples
• Core concepts of customer value and how lean IT service design can help
• Appreciation of how they can apply jidoka within their own service operations

 The Operational Excellence Enterprise Readiness Model

What would you think about a company whose official defect rate was over one-third (1/3rd) of the annual production and whose overall defect rate was considerably more?  Such was the case of Toyota, which produced 10mil vehicles in 2012 and had 3.5mil+ vehicles subject to recalls in 2013 (in addition to the service bulletins).

Yet upon examination, it is discovered that the root-cause of the recalls are not the result of a deficiency in the actual manufacturing process, but the result of efforts and actions which occurred elsewhere within the enterprise and its value-chain.  It begs the questions; “Is the Present-State of Continuous Improvement enough?  Is it time to evolve it further?”  Should companies be satisfied with being known for “making defective products very efficiently”?  And, if not, what can be done to take it to the next level?

In this session, we will discuss the:

• “Present State” of Continuous Improvement; its methodologies and tools,
• deficiencies that become exposed and obvious with maturity,
• possible “Future State” of Continuous Improvement and the paths there.

Business practices show that growth strategies often are too narrowly defined to yield anything more than incremental improvement in manufacturing areas. This may be a fair starting point to capture obvious savings, but to be successful it is crucial to implement an enterprise-wide approach.  Growth strategies need to be demand-driven and leveraged to help employees systematically solve real-time problems.

Capture the full potential and apply OpEx practices to all business functions. This presentation will demonstrate how continuous improvement activities were successfully leveraged throughout the business enterprise:

• Business process improvement in administrative functions
• Using new product development to reduce lead-time
• Closing the gap: link strategy to business execution and grow bottom, as well as,  top-line company performance

When management plan changes in the organisation, they often spend significant time to plan everything in many details. At a certain day they inform the employees of what and how to do and only spend little time explain why. And then the employees are expected to support, understand and deliver the results. It is hard if you don't understand why.

The often seen lack of taking time to explain purpose and create understanding kills the use of asking questions. When learning is fun, it is obvious that making a difference becomes easier and more people should learn that Lean Leadership builds on this knowledge and support the creation of a learning environment.

Lean can only work when we

• Understand the problem
• Are able to help solve it bringing forward ideas and theories to be tested
• See leadership open to listen and learn

How can we go back and make sure everyone is on-board?

Join fellow delegates, speakers, sponsors and guests at the informal networking dinner on the evening of the 25th June. The dinner gives a great opportunity to meet and develop your own personal network in a relaxed and informal setting.

Accolade Wines is the world’s fifth biggest wine company. The firms Bristol facility, Accolade Park, has transformed its global supply chain enabling them to compete in a domestic climate of rising duty and aggressive retailer pricing. The site has been built with a lean philosophy since its inception and in this presentation Richard will illustrate the challenges that their business has faced and their journey to becoming a world class manufacturing site.

Diageo is the world's leading premium drinks business, with brands including Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, Captain Morgan and Guinness. It trades in around 180 countries, employs over 28,000 people and has x manufacturing facilities across the globe.

Diageo has been on a change journey to embed lean manufacturing practice across all sites. To support this ambition, a capability program was launched to ensure all employees have the ability to use lean methodology and tools.

The presentation will describe the strategy that Diageo developed to implement this program in diverse locations. It will cover challenges faced, critical success factors, examples of impact to date and the role that formalised accreditation played.

Bringing our Processes to Life

In this breakout, Klaus will explain how the company went from silo-thinking to process-thinking, working with employees across different functions locally and between the subsidiaries. Starting their lean journey in 2008 the company historically worked in silos, but management soon realised Solar needed to focus more on everyday processes. This began their transformation, undertaking several activities to create awareness of what process thinking is and what it means for their daily routines.

To make process thinking a big part of your daily work, Solar needed to make people responsible for certain tasks and, thereby, give them roles to fulfil. Klaus will explain how the creation of group process owners, local process owners and business process specialists made a significant impact on their lean journey and their implementation of a new IT platform.

Breaking Down the Barriers to Creating High Performance Work Teams 

Getting buy-in and engagement into their ‘High Performance Work Team’ programme provided many challenges for John and the Operational Excellence team. Rolling out a 16 week programme to production staff provided positive results, however applying the same training to non-production staff revealed many barriers and challenges to their initiative. In this case study John will explain the issues and challenges faced in engaging non-manufacturing functions in the programme. John will illustrate the difficulties of the second wave in getting employees to apply the learning from their training. John will explain how and why they had to change the way they trained non-production staff and how focusing on value in the eyes of the customer provided key in breaking down the barriers.

Lean Transformation: How To Make a Real Difference? 

Conventional wisdom suggests that corporate lean programmes will transform operational effectiveness and competitive advantage. In our recent LMJ article we argued that organisations have persistent cultures that can undermine innovative approaches and have a tendency to return to what they know best. The consequence is that established ways of working and thinking, at all levels of the organisation, subvert and corrupt Lean Transformation.

We believe that a useful way of making sure that Lean Transformations really do make a difference is to consider the Capability, Practice and Outcomes Model. Simply, the model suggests three guiding 'handrails' for Transformation:

1. Are we becoming too focused on building and administering capability?
2. How much meaningful CI Practice are we actually conducting?
3. Is there evidence of positive outcomes; do we know if our Lean Transformation is actually making a difference to operations?

Discussion Themes

• What does sufficient capability look like in your organisation?
• How will you recognise the achievement of organisational readiness?
• How can you plan for transition to the capability phase of your Lean Transformation?
• What makes CI practice meaningful? (We suggested five tests in our article)
• What are the challenges to and enablers of meaningful CI practice?
• Who displays the strongest commitment to meaningful CI practice in your organisation?
• Do you collect evidence of positive outcomes from your Lean activities?
• What counts as evidence; employee commitment, market share, profitability, customer satisfaction?
• Can you link the inputs and outputs of Lean Transformations to competitive advantage?

This presentation will focus on breaking down the barriers often put up by teams who resist the implementation of lean and continuous improvement (CI). More specifically, it will look at current lean and CI practices within the Ministry of Justice, one of the largest civil service departments and home to one of the most expansive cost cutting programs currently underway in the public sector. As well as reflecting on key questions raised by the challenge of implementing and maintaining lean and CI practices within the Ministry, this session will offer advice and practical guidance concerning the use of lean and CI in situations where practitioners encounter scepticism, resistance or even open hostility.

Faith has worked in the Ministry of Justice for 13 years and offers her personal guide to surviving the cut and thrust of lean and CI implementation. Away from the theoretical perspectives which have come to dominate much of the discussion and debate around the subject of lean and CI, Faith offers practical everyday solutions and invites audience members to do likewise. Please come along and be ready to share your experiences (good or bad) in what promises to be an informed and lively session.

Chase Engagement – not Productivity

If your lean efforts focus on the productivity benefits it will bring, then your lean activity will almost certainly fail. In this breakout Mark will argue the engagement proposition is the prize and the key to lean sustainment. Firstly the session will illustrate through research how employee engagement has changed over time and it's bearing on a lean programme. Mark will discuss the importance of the engaged leader, and how many companies involved in lean fail to sustain improvements. Mark will then focus on the enablers of engaging leaders: Inspiring trust; clarifying purpose; aligning systems; and unleashing talent. At the end of the session attendees will understand that in successfully apply lean tools, you must first learn how to successfully engage with people. The sustainment key.

It is all about People – How to Create a Problem Solving Culture Throughout the Business

Don't leave the tools of lean process improvement in the hands of a few 'experts'. Creating a culture of engaged problem solvers in your business is not nearly as difficult as it may sound and is the best way to drive outstanding results from your Lean program.

Managing change through Policy Deployment

A lean improvement programme can, to many employees, seem a chaotic frenzy of waste identification, a confusing language, and interventions that lack logic and a narrative that employees can ‘buy into’. The workshop will provide an introduction to the critical ‘top down’ business planning process of “Policy Deployment” and show participants how to use the mechanism for maximum success. Policy Deployment serves as the driver for change and the process that sets the direction for change, liberates the general management and functional managers of a business to learn how best to change the business and engages all employees in a process of meaningful improvement. The Policy Deployment process is applicable to any business (manufacturing, service or healthcare) and makes visible the key change programmes of the firm in a way that makes everyone’s efforts feel important to the business and its future success. The workshop will be based on cases and short activities undertaken by the participants.

Understanding Muda, Muri, Mura

In this workshop we will play a simulation game to illustrate the impact of mura (variation) and muri (overload) on muda (waste). In particular the influence of utilisation and variation on lead time will be explored. When is each important? When not? The elements of utilisation will then be explored, leading to the four critical levers that all aspiring Lean leaders should understand.

The journey from loss to profit

Peter will be taking you through the journey of the Fremach plant in Trnava, Slovakia over a year long period. He will be sharing how they moved from making a loss to a profit and how they engaged the management team in the improvement process.

Peter is a down to earth speaker and attending this workshop will provide you with a better understanding of:

• The importance of balance in a business
• The importance of shared objectives and goals
• The journey from loss to profit
• The commitments of the team
• The value of the right consultancy

During the last two days you will have observed and gained new ideas, insights and practices, for you and your organisation.

Understanding and applying those is a key requisite of any external events and training.

In the closing session you will be asked to discuss and reflect in small groups on what your key takeaways have been for the last two days.