How much resources - people, computers, printers, etc. - are dedicated to all administrative processes in your organization? If an organization is going to achieve significant gains in its lean journey, it will need to create flow by adopting the lean staff model. The entire organization has to adopt the lean concept of creating more value, and identifying and eliminating waste. With so much of an organization's costs generated by overhead, how can an organization expect waste to be eliminated without focusing on administrative functions?

The tools are similar to what organizations apply in the manufacturing environment. The methodology is structured differently, and how an organization defines a "product family" may involve a mental shift in thinking. They key is to systematically analyze the flow and work on processes that will provide the biggest return to the customer.

Who should attend?

Engineering, administration, information technology, human resources, financing, purchasing, customer service and operations personnel.

Speaker: Craig Steenbergh, The Steenbergh Group

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Every once in a while we discover that others don't always see things the same way we do. We seem to be in conflict. Sometimes conflict is disabling, preventing future progress. Sometimes conflict is laughable upon discovering a misunderstanding. This hands-on seminar provides a number of exercises to help you develop approaches and skills that allow you to move past conflict and work more effectively, both in one-on-one relationships and group situtations.

This session includes:

• Introduction: Seminar overview, goals, introductions, assumptions, ground rules.
• Types of Conflict: Political, interpersonal, intrapersonal.
• Why People Argue: Discuss and compare the causes of conflict; intrapersonal considerations; role of diversity; use of analysis tools (DISC, Myers Briggs, etc.)
• Interpersonal Conflict: Consider role of thinking style and attitude; consider historical models of conflict resolution and their success; introduce and practice a model to organize contributing factors.
• Interpersonal Conflict - Resolution Techniques: Roger Fisher's 5 Step Process. This section is supported by a series of techniques to exercise each of these steps, including role plays.
• Group Conflict: Consider role of thinking style and attitude; consider historical models of conflict resolution and their success.
• Group Conflict - Resolution Techniques: Practice a series of steps to help groups move past conflict and build consensus. Each step is supported by a series of techniques students will practice and evaluate; we will select techniques from the chart that are most appropriate to your organization.
• Organizational and Culture Considerations: A presentation by your company's legal department outlining do's and dont's in dealing with conflict in your company.
• Organization-Wide Opportunities to Reduce Conflict: Building a culture which proactively promotes open communication.
• Next Steps: Plan for your successful implementation of this new thinking.

Who should attend?

Company leaders with their planning team, Project Team leaders, internal facilitators.

Speaker: John Canfield, independent trainer and facilitator.

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Learn how to dramatically improve your firm’s overall performance by identifying and implementing the optimal top-level, non-financial performance metrics. As a first step, we will review the PMIC Leadership Framework and the PMIC Corporate Metrics Matrix which is based on a synthesis of “Balanced Scorecard” concepts developed by Kaplan and Norton, and “Business Process Reengineering popularized by Hammer. We will look deeply into the “core” business processes of 1) Operations, 2) Sales, and 3) Innovation to learn how to develop a set of metrics that is balanced across the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives (Financial, Customer, Internal, and Employee) and balanced across the three core business processes.

This seminar will present a clear straightforward method for participants to identify their most important top-level metrics and teach them how to implement business processes and improvement practices so that their team hits the targets that are established.

Please call 616-430-0828 for the current schedule or for more information go to www.metricsreporting.com.

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Learn how to dramatically improve the way your firm identifies opportunities and turns them into innovative new products and services. We will look at a summary of the key principles embodied within the writings of the world’s best authors on the topic of innovation. Our focus is absolutely pragmatic. This is not a seminar on theory alone. This is a workshop that teaches business leaders how to apply theory and proven best practices to their business needs. You will leave the workshop with tools you can put to use the next day.

This seminar will present a clear straightforward method for participants to identify, prioritize, and track progress on their organization’s most important innovation opportunities. You will learn:

1. the key principles of innovation by the world’s thought leaders,
2. an Innovation Business Process that will enable you to effectively manage innovation and develop your management team to become highly effective managers of innovation,
3. how to design and implement structured reviews of innovation opportunities and track progress on those opportunities so that innovation is encouraged and supported,
4. how to design and implement an innovation management matrix to manage the prioritization of your innovation opportunities and track progress on key opportunities,
5. how to set innovation performance improvement goals,
6. how to measure progress on your innovation goals, and
7. how to identify and support “champions” in your firm.

Please call 616-430-0828 for the current schedule or for more information go to www.metricsreporting.com.

Download the flyer (DOC, 125 KB).

Contact us to register for this workshop.

Some organizations will buy their innovation capability by partnering with new product design firms who provide the ideas, prototypes, and final models. The organization's employees work to implement the outside firm's ideas. Other organizations consider their own employees a key source of both ideas and implementation. These organizations work relentlessly to uncover the potential of their employees by helping the employees learn how to both improve and innovate on an ongoing, ever improving, basis. Learn to improve the business performance of your organization through structured new product and service introductions.

"Leadership is not about what you know - it's about what you do with what you know." James Belasco

This session includes:

PART I - THE QUEST FOR INNOVATION

1. The Innovation Imperative - confirming your company's need for innovation
2. The Problem - innovation barriers and myths
3. The Guaranteed Innovation System - best practice overview

PART II - DESIGNING THE SYSTEM

1. Priority - comparing innovation to other company imperatives
2. Policy - review of current and need policies to support innovation
3. Innovation Platoons - plan to organize your employee teams
4. Process - review/develop current vision of Innovation Process

PART III - FUELLING THE SYSTEM

1. Problem Orientation - align innovation teams with current business needs
2. Platforms - align innovation teams with market/technology targets
3. Payback Metrics - develop your implementation scoreboard
4. Innovation - What to do tomorrow morning and every morning thereafter

Who should attend?

Company leaders with their direct reports.

Speaker: John Canfield, independent trainer and facilitator.

Contact us to register for this event.

The Leading & Sustaining Lean workshop guides the lean practitioner/leader/coach through the process of establishing and communicating the strategic direction of a lean transformation. Participants will gain a greater understanding of the philosophy, concepts and process of a Lean Tranformation. Participants will learn the keys to "how to" lead or "champion" a lean transformation at an organization. Participants will learn several simple techniques to maintain the momentum and "champion" a lean transformation.

In this session

• Learn how to effectively lead, implement and sustain a Lean initiative.
• Learn how and why to align the organizational objectives with a Lean initiative.
• Learn the "process" and keys to lead, monitor and control a Lean transformation.
• Learn how to identify and eliminate the roadblocks and resistance of a Lean transformation.
• Learn and understand how to use Lean tools to transform an organization.
• Learn how to get people on board for the improvement initiative through improved communication and alignment of objectives.
• Learn how to establish and monitor key Lean metrics.
• Learn how to coach and mentor lean practitioners.

Who should attend?

Company leaders, managers, first-level supervisors, and anyone involved in an organizational improvement effort.

Speaker: Rob Ptacek, Competitive Edge Training & Consulting.

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Lean Manufacturing is a strategy for achieving significant improvement in performance through elimination of waste in the total business process. GRCC’s Training Solutions, in partnership with The Right Place Inc., offer community members the learning foundation to transform their organization. This certification program has been designed by practitioners, Lean leaders and academicians as a beginning–of the endless pursuit of continuous improvement. This comprehensive, world-class manufacturing, learning system will help you manage the magnitude of cultural change accompanying the Lean conversion process, no matter where you are in the journey.

How the Program Works

The Lean Champion will earn a certification after completing 17 classes, and a viable Lean Implementation Project for their organization. Participants must achieve an 80% competency score in all classes and complete homework assignments. Each course is designed to enable participants to take the skills and tools from each module and apply them to business processes that drive bottom line results.

Commitment Level

Prior to acceptance into the certification program, your organization must agree to sponsor your efforts. Sponsorship includes time at project meetings, funds, and a Value Stream to which you can apply the principles, and measure improvements so you can start creating a Continuous Improvement Culture. Time commitment is also a key element of your success in the Lean Champion Program.

Why Choose Our Lean Champion Program?

• Our program requires management commitment: sponsors from upper management are involved in reviewing the project component of the program.
• Early in the program, the champion and sponsor initiate and follow a lean project process for real improvement in your operation.
• Because this is a local program, you save the costs of travel and lodging and through the improvement project there is the possibility of realized gains.
• Training effectiveness is measured in three ways: in-class assessment for knowledge, homework is assigned for application, and a customized project for implementation.
• Besides the measures of training effectiveness, the content of this program is aligned with the Shingo Criteria for Manufacturing Excellence

Core Sessions Dates

Go to GRCC's Training Solutions Lean Workshops for a schedule of dates and time.

Registration Deadline for Certification: August 15, 2008.
Classes may be taken individually without certification.

If you would like additional information about the program please call Phillip Greene at (616) 234-3811 or Dan Keyes at (616) 234-3627. For Course Objectives and Outcomes, go to GRCC's Training Solutions Lean Workshops and click on Lean Champion Program.

This training will give participants knowledge of how Lean principles and techniques can be applied to minimize waste, reduce costs and improve quality. These principles and techniques include recognition of value-added and non-value-added, workplace organization and visual controls, cellular manufacturing, one-piece flow, standardized work, error-proofing, quick changeover, and pull systems.

In addition, this course highlights the need for a Lean Culture that supports a Lean facility. Changing the culture within an organization is the most important requirement to move an organization from a hierarchical, traditional organization to an empowered, Lean organization.

In this session

• Learn how to understand the basic principles and objectives of Lean.
• Understand how continuous improvement is an ongoing activity and must be constantly reinforced.
• Learn how change must be sponsored by management and move down through the organization.
• Understand how Lean tools and techniques help eliminate waste from processes.

Who should attend?

Plant managers, engineers, shoft foremen, quality personnel aand those charged with implementing positive change.

Speaker: Brian Walquist, Manufacturing Manufacturing Technology Center-West

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This seminar helps individuals practice how to break out of their "thinking ruts" using techniques found in Dr. Edward de Bono's landmark book Six Thinking Hats. This is an excellent technique to suspend judgment while considering all of the aspects of an alternative before making a decision. One of the best dialogue tools ever.

"The exact contrary to what is generally believed is often the truth." Jean de la Bouyere

This session includes:

• Introduction of workshop overview, goals, introductions, assumptions, ground rules
• Better Decisions and Better Support
• The Phenomenon of Creativity
• Practice with the Hats
• Introduce the Hats
• Practice using hats to work through an issue that participants are currently wrestling with
• Other Considerations and Practice
• Full Length Exercise
• Other Creativity Techniques

Who should attend?

Project leaders, project participants, facilitators, anyone interested in learning to use a great dialogue tool.

Speaker: John Canfield, independent trainer and facilitator.

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Learn how to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your sales team by capturing your “organizational knowledge” and your sales “best practices” in a structured sales process. The sales process becomes the foundation for sales training, tracking new sales, team selling, and reporting performance statistics. A well-structured sales process also enables the Sales Manager to communicate more effectively with the team so that they can close more sales. Sales “opportunity tracking” insures timely tactical sales planning with regular attention to tracking the; status, competitive position, next actions, and customer contact frequency for each of the “top opportunities” in your sales tracking system.

Please call 616-430-0828 for the current schedule or for more information go to www.metricsreporting.com.

Contact us to register for this workshop.

Learn to create an operational planning document that guides company leaders and employees, and improves the executive team's ability to identify, prioritize, and assign opportunities, and contribute to improved company performance.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight D. Eisenhower

This session includes:

• Mission
• Principles of Values
• Vision
• Scoreboard
• Business Environment
• Goals
• Strategies
• Action Plans
• Plan Implementation Considerations
• Plan Monitoring Considerations

Who should attend?

Company leaders with their planning team, project team leaders, internal facilitators.

Speaker: John Canfield, independent trainer and facilitator

Contact us to register for this event.

The Developing Supervisor Savvy workshop is a fast-paced, comprehensive and stimulating training for supervisors, aspiring supervisors, leaders and managers. The workshop provides the participant with a practical understanding of how to be a more effective supervisor and lead people to improved performance. The fundamentals of supervision and leadership are put into practical terms, applications and tools to provide the participant a well-rounded understanding of how and when to use the key tools and techniques. Special consideration is given to goal setting and performance management, or "to to help others success" (motivation).

Key topics covered:

• Team Building and Valuing Diversity
• Communications - Written, Verbal and Presentations
• Performance Management, Goal Setting and Delegation
• Rewards, Disciple and Terminations
• Conflict Management
• Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Continuous Improvement and Resistance
• Interviewing and Meeting Leading Techniques
• Project and Time Management
• Anger and Stress Management
• Systematic Leadership Methods
• Principled Leadership and Motivation

Who should attend?

New, experienced or aspiring supervisors, team leaders and managers responsible for leading and getting work done through others will find value in attending and immediate use for the tools and techniques they learn in session.

Rob Ptacek, Competitive Edge Training & Consulting

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• Provides a thorough knowledge and understanding of world class supply chain management practices and their role in developing and maintaining competitive advantage;
• Provides experience in viewing supply chain situations from the perspective of suppliers to and customers of manufacturers;
• Provides an introduction to the tools and applications used in supply chain process evaluation and re-engineering;
• Provides experience and feedback in the use of both qualitative and quantitative data analysis; and
• Provides a knowledge baseline documenting supply chain management best practices.

This series will be offered in two 15-week modules. Module One delves into marketing and supply chain management concepts. Module Two concentrates on supply chain management processes.

The program’s structure is based upon the graduate-level Supply Chain Management concentration in The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management at Michigan State University, The Broad School’s Supply Chain Management Program is consistently ranked as one of the best in the country.

January 10 through December 11, 2008. Steelcase University Learning Center, Grand Rapids. Download the flyer for more information.

TO VIEW BROCHURE CLICK HERE- West MI SCM Certificate Brochure (PDF, 294 KB)