12 Special Interest Sessions (SIS)

Come share your ideas with friends and colleagues. Once again, the Idea Exchange Café will be open for the interactive sharing of best practices among all participants. There will be six facilitated sessions on a variety of relevant topics taking place over two days. Come for the coffee - stay for the ideas!

Session Facilitators

Robert Hafey
AME Volunteer

(Other facilitators to be announced)

SIS1-01:  Tuesday, October 16  -  9:30 am - 10:40 am
Dos and Don'ts When Starting the Lean Journey
Advice for those who are beginning their lean journey.

SIS1-02:  Tuesday, October 16  - 11:00 am - 12:10 pm
Administrative Lean
How lean efforts can be moved from the shop floor into the administrative functions of a business.

SIS1-03:  Tuesday, October 16  -  1:30 pm - 2:40 pm
Employee Engagement Methods
How you can engage employees in your continuous improvement activities to ensure cultural impact.

SIS1-04:  Wednesday, October 17  -  9:30 am - 10:40 am
Continuous Improvement of Safety
Methods that can be used to make safety a continuous improvement activity.

SIS1-05:  Wednesday, October 17  -  11:00 am - 12:10 pm
Reward and Recognition Related to Lean
"What's in it for me?" - How companies use reward and recognition to drive improvement.

SIS1-06:  Wednesday, October 17  -  1:30 pm - 2:40 pm
Lean Techniques and Tools that Drive Cultural Change
Methodologies that companies use to positively impact work culture.

Tuesday, October 16 - 4:30 - 6:00 pm

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence is pleased to announce the formal creation of its new national Consortia Program. This special interest session will be for those interested in learning more about the program. This session will be an informal networking meeting and presentation with companies who are already members of the five AME Consortia in Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati-Dayton, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Southern Wisconsin.

A special invitation is extended to those conference attendees from Indianapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Miami, Rochester, Dallas, and San Diego. These cities have been identified as target sites for AME Consortia in 2013-2014. Come and learn how you can be part of AME's next big growth channel.

AME has a strong vision for its consortia model. All companies and their representatives will be within a 60-mile radius of each other to facilitate deep, personal, and frequent contact among members. Each consortium will be strongly in control of its own program and membership. While each group will fall under the legal guidelines of AME's 501c3 non-profit status, individual groups will establish membership guidelines, program content, fee structure, and local governance structure under the direction of our management partner, Optima Associates.

AME's goal is to ultimately have upwards of 50 consortia in operation in the next 10 years, eventually creating a structure for AME to become a national umbrella organization for consortia.

SIS2-01: Tuesday, October 16 - 9:30 am to 12:10 pm

Help develop AME's Strategic Plan! Join us in an interactive session that looks at the issues, problems and roadblocks experienced by manufacturers trying to revitalize manufacturing in North America. Three noted panelists will discuss three key areas impacting manufacturers:

• Increasing competitiveness through relentless continuous improvement that drives customer value.
• Understanding reshoring's impact on the manufacturing operational bottom line through total cost of ownership analysis.
• Building a better trained workforce.

This session will address your issues and roadblocks and provide you with alternative solutions that you can implement to strengthen your company. Send your successes, issues and questions to the session facilitator, Paul Kuchuris at pkuchuris@ame.org, prior to the session so that we can include them in the discussions.

Session Facilitator:

Paul G. Kuchuris, Jr.
President, Association for Manufacturing Excellence

Panelists:

Harry Moser
Founder, Reshoring Initiative

Luke Faulstick
President, CEO, and Co-owner, Power Partners Inc.

Ron Bullock
Chair, Bison Gear & Engineering
Chair, NAM Manufacturing Institute

SIS2-03: Tuesday, October 16 - 1:30 pm to 2:40 pm

Lifelong learning is vital to the growth and success of your career. Lean certification can be a big part of that. The certification components give you the opportunity to present your lean knowledge and experience and showcase your continuing growth and development. It helps you evaluate and accelerate your professional lean development. This session and its panel of practitioners will explain the benefits of lean certification. The panel will describe the certification model and the excellent support tools used to prepare you for lean certification. You will hear about the Lean Body of Knowledge, the recommended reading lists, the behavior and competencies model and the lean registry. And you'll be able to ask questions. Whether you represent a company or are a solo practitioner, lean certification can be a big part of your continuous improvement and success.

Session Facilitator:

Jeff Fuchs, LBC
President, Neovista Consulting LLC
Director, The Maryland World Class Consortia
Chairman, Lean Certification Oversight and Appeals Committee 2012

Session Panelists:

AME, SME, The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence and ASQ Lean Certification Oversight and Appeals members spanning multiple industries.

SIS2-04: Wednesday, October 17 - 9:30 am to 10:40 am

SIS2-05A: Wednesday, October 17 - 11:00 am to 12:10 pm

The AME / APQC Benchmarking Community of Practice (BCoP invites you to learn how to make your company more competitive by learning faster than the competition. This year's face-to-face session will also feature AME Manufacturing Excellence Award recipients, and industry thought leaders, who will be sharing best practices and lessons learned on their journey to achieving enterprise excellence. This face-to-face session has been popular in past years. Panel members share what works and what doesn't, with the opportunity to network and ask questions, in an informal group setting. It also provides a ready-made network for queries all year long where you have access to over 1188 practitioners and 525 companies. Steering Team members are from Boeing, Eaton, Rockwell Collins, Newport News Shipbuilding, Raytheon, APQC and AME. Come to learn from several leaders that will share rapid-fire.

SIS2-05B: Wednesday, October 17 - 11:00 am to 12:10 pm

Baby boomers are starting to retire, and that means many closely-held companies are going to be put up for sale. Some of these companies will consider the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) option, as these plans have many benefits. ESOPs are an extremely successful business organization model, and they are highly tax-favored. ESOPs allow owners to sell part or all of their stock to an employee ownership trust using future tax-deductible corporate earnings. Sellers can defer capital gains taxes on the sale, the company gets to deduct its contributions to the trust and the trust can borrow money from a bank or the seller to fund the transaction. There's no better tax-favored way to sell a business. And unlike other transition alternatives, ESOPs allow owners to sell out in stages and retain a role in the company for as long as they like. This special session will help you better understand these Employee Stock Ownership Plans that have so many advantages. Loren Rodgers of the National Center for Employee Ownership will discuss the ESOP general rules and benefits, and Patrick Ormsby and Norm Kocol will discuss how using ESOPs led to highly successful transitions for their companies.

Session Facilitator:

Loren Rodgers
Executive Director, National Center for Employee Ownership

Panelists:

Patrick Ormsby
CEO/President, Bimba Manufacturing Company

Norman Kocol
CFO, Mapes and Sprowl Steel

SIS1-07: Thursday, October 18 - 9:30 am to 10:40 am

SIS2-08: Thursday, October 18 - 11:00 am to 12:10 pm

Toyota and Apple design successful products because they understand what their customers truly want, and then design their products to meet those needs. The new Temple Squeeze Machine has been designed and built using the same philosophy. Earlier this year, AME practitioners, autism experts and employees of Therafin Corporation came together in two workshops. There, they used voice of the customer information and applied 3P methodology to develop lower-cost alternatives and improve the design of Temple Grandin's Squeeze Machine for those with autism.

This is a product that was built out of necessity. Temple Grandin has autism and built the Squeeze Machine to help her deal with her anxiety in school. Once she saw the usefulness and effectiveness of her Squeeze Machine, she adapted and designed a similar machine to sell commercially. The Squeeze Machine is now built and marketed by Therafin Corporation, and voice of the customer and 3P new product development techniques have made this an even better product.

Come see a prototype model of this "new and improved" Squeeze Machine and learn how voice of the customer and 3P new product development techniques can be used to improve your manufacturing processes.

Session Facilitator:

Scott Schiave
Director of Marketing and Communications, Association for Manufacturing Excellence

Session Panelists/Participants

Ken Rolfes
President, KDR Associates, Inc.

Ed Minnock
VP, New Business Development, Targeted Convergence Corporation

Tricia Sutton
President , Sutton Enterprises, Inc.