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News and views: Association of Manufacturing Excellence 20th Annual Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA - Conferences and exhibitions Article
The article entitled: "News and views: Association of Manufacturing Excellence 20th Annual Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA" is in the Conferences and exhibitions Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...
ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: Frank Wright, Planning Risk & Change Manager at Ordnance Survey, was fortunate enough to join over 1000 delegates for this five-day event, the theme of which was Focus on Global Enterprise Excellence with a Mission to ‘Inspire a commitment to global enterprise excellence through shared learning.’
MORE INFO: News and views: Association of Manufacturing Excellence 20th Annual Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Frank Wright, Planning Risk & Change Manager at Ordnance Survey, was fortunate enough to join over 1000 delegates for this five-day event, the theme of which was Focus on Global Enterprise Excellence with a Mission to ‘Inspire a commitment to global enterprise excellence through shared learning.’ Frank said that the conference offered a huge range of opportunities to network and to learn from others; too many to be covered by one person in the time available. The activities at the conference were split into four main themes: Workshops Best practice sessions Visits Keynote speeches Best practice sessions were numerous and so split into five flights: Develop/Grow new products; Manufacturing Enterprise; Lean Beyond Manufacturing; Leadership; Globalization. In addition there was a CEO roundtable and a ‘Great China Debate’ facilitated by Larry King from CNN, at the close of the conference. “I attempted to cover what I thought would be of use to Ordnance Survey, whilst deliberately not wanting to limit myself to the familiar”, said Frank. “The Americans take this seriously. Even allowing for the showcase nature of what we saw and heard, and a little drum-beating, it is clear that America is taking the idea of improving operations very much to heart. And it is not just manufacturing; sessions from Bank of America, US Dept of Defence, ThedaCare Medical Centre and our own RAF, showed that this will work for any type of activity, often with spectacular results. “If there was one message that came out from all of the sessions it was simply “This works if there is someone of influence who believes in it and leads the transformation from the front.” This was never spelled out in any presentation, but it was the common link between all the successful organisations that I heard from. “One other common message is that you really do have to involve the people, get them on board, because they are the ones that will make the difference in the end. Thorough training and involvement with people at all levels in the organisation is essential – you cannot successfully impose the improvement. “A third theme was that everyone had tackled their transformations in different ways, depending on the incompany situation when they started and the drivers forcing the change: financial, political, cultural or blind faith. Forget any ideas of reading a book and applying the techniques to take you to the nirvana of production: one piece flow, pulled by the customer with perfect quality. You will often have to feel the way and see what is right for your company; for your situation. At the end of the day though, it comes down to efficient, high quality, repeatable, customer focussed and lean operations run by well trained and motivated people. However you decide to tackle it though, you must have a plan or a roadmap setting out where you want to go.” Local industry opened their doors to delegates. Buses set off each day to factories producing goods as diverse as beer, cardboard boxes, Toyota cars and even coffins. “The enthusiasm for improving production was infectious”, said Frank, “and these companies actively encouraged and welcomed ideas from us as we went round”. Will all of this be enough to stave off competition from emergent economies? Maybe. The final debate looked at various ways of tackling the threat: fight, using any means including protectionism; get slick and beat the opposition; use it – outsource or build in those emergent markets; be selective – use them for the things they can do well and keep the value adding at home. See www.ame.org for details of the programme.
PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management
Page number: 11 Word count: 610
Vol 31 - No 01 - February 2005
The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.
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