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”.  True, the process is based upon the Toyota Production System first developed at the Toyota Motor Works in Tokyo , Japan .  But the system is neither “Japanese” nor “only for auto makers.”    In fact, the concepts have been employed world-wide with dramatic results in every type of process and discrete manufacturing as well as in service industries ranging from banking and insurance to healthcare and even the military.  As different as these various enterprises are they have learned to ask the right questions, to focus their workforces on reducing or eliminating impediments to customer service.  

Contrary to conventional thinking, Lean is a not simply a set of tools to be layered onto existing system, but is a critical strategic shift in management thinking: Asking the right questions.   What are those questions?  Dr. Shigeo Shingo, co-creator of Toyota ’s incredible improvement system once stated, “The best place to look for improvement is in places where it is thought not to exist.”  Where are those places?  This is management’s challenge to understand.  The answers are given in Bruce Hamilton’s May 19 presentation at our next dinner meeting.  

Bruce Hamilton is President of the GBMP, a Boston-based non-profit provider of lean technology.  Prior to joining GBMP, he 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 and Toast VSM (recipient of the 2011 Academic Shingo Prize) as well Moments of Truth, a how-to leadership video targeted to management and supervision. He also posts twice per week to the lean blog, www.oldleandude.com.   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.