Thanks to an already hectic travel schedule, including going to Japan this Friday, this was the first year in many that I wasn't able to make the annual conference of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. This is always my favorite conference as it is the largest lean conference in the world, but more importantly because it is put on by practitioners for practitioners, and therefore is more grounded in the real world of lean manufacturing.
I did send five people again this year, and have found it is a great motivational and reward tool for both managers and individual contributors. One of them sent back some notes from just the second day of the conference, and I thought I'd share them with you.
Good morning Kevin
Incredible day and some amazing speakers. Major take aways:
Dan Jones, Chairman Lean Enterprise Academy UK:
He REALLY motivated me!
Ken Goodson, Executive VP Op, Herman Miller
Matt Long, Lean Coordinator Herman Miller
Ok, that is all for now!
Imagine having five people come back into your organization after experiencing five days of such lessons. Controlling and channeling that passion is a leadership issue in itself, but an issue I'll take any day. Whenever I send people to learning events I ask them to prepare a presentation to my staff and the continuous improvement teams listing what three to five things they learned that we should implement now, and what are three to five ideas that are pretty cool and we should consider in the future. That provides focus and a record of learning.
Next year's AME Conference will be in Cincinnati. Start planning now.