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Plus Sixteen Breakout Session Options:

• Speed is King! Rapid Product Production
  - Michael Beauregard, RE Consulting LLC
  Whether it is for product lead times or for product or service development efforts, speed is the king. The faster we can complete an order or the faster we can get a new product or service launched into the marketplace, the better we can compete. In this session, we will cover some of the tools and techniques, such as Design FMEA and Design of Experiments, which companies employ to successfully launch new products in fractions of the times that they took previously. We’ll see how these companies turned years into months and, in at least one case, months into days.
  
  
• Implementing A Strategic Deployment System -- Real World Applications
  - Joe Colletti- Woodledge Group, Lee Erdmann- City of Hartford, Matt Guyer- Reflexite Americas
  This presentation will provide an overview of the Strategic "Focused Planning" Process and its application within a municipal and a manufacturing setting. After an initial review of the Process itself, there will be an assessment of the benefits and barriers encountered by two organizations that are using the Process to amplify their efforts to achieve their respective strategic plans. There will also be time devoted to questions and answers in a panel discussion format after the presentations. If you are involved in the strategic planning efforts of your organization, this is one presentation you should not miss...


• Measuring Service Quality
  - Tommy Davis, Davis Learning Resources
  It is well known and generally accepted that measurement is essential for improvement. While there may be a number of methods to measure product quality, it is also generally conceded that service quality is uniquely difficult to measure. The customer is frequently a party to the service and because people vary from day-to-day if not hour-to- hour, it follows that the service event is different each time it is performed. Further, customer expectations are the standard by which the customer assesses service quality and customer perceptions are the outcomes that are judged. This session will explore some of the similarities, but particularly the differences, between service and product quality. It will also explore a valid and reliable methodology for assessing service quality along five service quality dimensions. Attendees will apply this approach to a specific service with which they are familiar in order to evaluate the tool for themselves.


• Implementation of Transformation: An ICU (TICU) Project - The Hartford Hospital SICU Experience.
  - Dr. Eric Dobkin, Hartford Hospital
  This presentation will demonstrate the results of an organized program to change a culture and improve patient safety and outcomes. It will highlight the impact of the use of a cockpit checklist and the use of Evidence Based Medicine to facilitate change. In addition it will present key factors learned that led to making this type of project successful.


• Change Management - Building Your Personal Resilience as well as the Capabilities of your Team and Organization.
  - Dr. Bob Albright, Rensselaer Lally School of Management
  Change is naturally uncomfortable! Human beings are essentially “creatures of habit who tend not to readily embrace change. Today’s managers must be able to recognize the inherent human tendency to gravitate towards familiar practices. They also must understand the psychological stages people go through when faced with major change in the workplace. To be an effective change agent, you must be able to identify “Resistance to Change” in yourself and within others. In this session you will learn how to make yourself more “resilient” and how to help others to better manage change.


• Customer Complaints: Are you viewing & managing them properly?
  - Joe Azary, Azary Technologies LLC
  Customer complaints will come even as quality improves. Companies must look at customer complaints as opportunities to impress their customers, opportunities to make their companies and products better, and as a “gift”. Some customers will not bother to complain, but will abandon the product or service. A complaint is a chance for the company to retain that customer. Companies that properly address a customer complaint will probably retain that customer for a long period of time.
  
  This session will discuss:
  • Review of types of complaints
  • Value of complaints
  • Methods for receiving and documenting complaints
  • Complaint investigation and root cause analysis
  • Corrective and Preventive Action
  • Trend Analysis
  • Communicating customer complaints within the organization and to management
  • Using complaints as tool to increase customer satisfaction


• Holding the Gains - Ensuring that quality improvements are sustained
  - Harry Kenworthy, Quality Productivity Improvement Center LLC
  Why do we have difficulty holding onto the improvements that have been made as a result of our quality initiatives? How well does Six Sigma address holding the gains? What role can Visual Controls play? How can we overcome the resistance to change?


• Quality is a Culture - How managers fail in motivating their organizations and people
  - Bob Klancko, PE, CSP, CHCM, Klancko & Klancko LLC
  It is all about subtle signals - as a leader you may think that your public encouragement of maintaining a 'quality' organization, product, system is effective - however, are subtle signals there that are telling your employees that this is form and not substance. 'Quality' is a culture that requires the total buying in and support of eveyone in the organization - it is not a 'your job and my job' delienation it is an 'our job mindset'. We will examine a few 'real life challenges' of where the message and implementation have not connected.


• Bringing in the Business - A Cost Effective Approach to New Business Development
  - Ron Lilly, Alltis Corporation
  The elements of marketing are increasing in priority with America's manufacturing companies today. Industrial marketing has been adopted by many leading companies as a competitive advantage to grow their business in tough times as well as prosperous ones. New business development, tactics that build image and brand, innovative product development processes that manage limited resources, website programs that self-qualify inquiries and the new consultative selling approach of a solutions provider will be reviewed in this new strategy of "Lean Marketing". These proven tools will be briefly reviewed and then assembled into a cost effective strategy that can deliver consistent sales and profits in a pro-active manufacturing organization.


• Lean Approaches to Service System Improvement
  - John Maleyeff, PhD, Rensselaer Lally School of Management
  The management of a service system offers significant challenges due to a number of factors, most notably the uncertainties that abound. When a customer requests a service, the types of service requested, and the duration of the service, are just a few forms of uncertainty that service managers in particular have a difficult time controlling. The inability to inventory services and competitive pressures to lower costs often leads to inadequate staffing levels, so that the customer pays the price with excessive waiting times for obtaining the requested service. This talk focuses on: (a) the application of lean and other business principles to reduce uncertainty through lean service system audits, and (b) the systematic removal of waste using basic lean methods. Numerous examples derived from local service systems are provided.


• Proactive Labor Relations
  - Lee Palmer, Connecticut Public Employer Labor Relations Association
  By embracing the concept of preventive labor relations you will anticipate and address issues and problems before or as quickly as they arise. Don’t leave potential matters to chance, invest in your most valuable resource – human capital.

  This session will focus on the preventive measures that have been utilized to avoid complaints, grievances, and costly litigation. Participants will explore practical ways to reduce labor unrest. We will discuss the role of labor management committees, team building, core competency development, and supervisory training, in reducing or eliminating contractual or legal entanglements. We will demonstrate why you don’t have to be a labor relations expert to effectively manage your workforce. Go beyond the “win-lose” and “win-win” to break down the traditional barriers between labor and management. Leave this session with the proactive skills necessary to improve morale and create a culture of corporation within your organization.

• Building Quality into Your Strategic Plan
  - Allyson F. Schulz, MPH; Joy Dorin, MBA, MPH - Qualidigm
  How does an organization weave that intangible called quality into its strategic plan? Within the Hoshin planning framework, Qualidigm leaders will discuss effective ways to engage staff in your strategic plan, how to measure progress and success, and communication tools that create visibility for the organization's goals and objectives. Qualidigm will also share ideas for how to adapt the planning tools used in the for-profit arena to the non-profit environment.


• Using Lean Principles to Improve Service Operations
  - Edward Arnheiter, PhD - Rensselaer Lally School of Management
  Attendees will learn about the five principles of lean management, and hear about implementation details in an environment where efforts were aimed at service process improvement rather than on parts manufacturing. In this session, attempts by Loctite Corporation, a large industrial adhesives company, to implement lean principles in the management of its dispensing and curing equipment operation will be studied. The company initially considered the equipment operation a secondary business that simply provided service support for its core product; industrial adhesives. In addition, most Loctite equipment manufacturing activities were outsourced, so suppliers played a key role in the lean transformation.


• Information Overload and Quality
  - Thomas Foard, Connecticut Quality Council
  We are all constantly overwhelmed by information. The unconscious and automatic choices we make can and do have tremendous impact on what information we perceive. Using basic models and experiential activities this workshop will provide some insight into how information overload effects all of us and some simple techniques we might use to manage it.


• Your Web Site - If You Build It, Will They Come?
  - Diana Taft, Taft Consulting
  The Internet is the most important tool your company can use. But is your website meeting your company's objectives?This seminar will cover site design, quality, useability, and marketing visibility. We will also give you some tools to help you evaluate your website's effectiveness as well as low cost/high impact changes that you can make to help you meet your company's goals.


• Lean Leaders: Are They Different?
  - Bob Emiliani, PhD - Rensselaer Lally School of Management
  Many manufacturing and service organizations are now on the Lean journey. The question is, do they possess the leadership necessary to achieve high levels of improvement in both financial and non-financial performance? Or will leadership deficiencies ultimately cause Lean efforts to fail? This talk will dive into the details on the many ways in which Lean leaders are different. It will discuss the attributes of effective Lean leaders and identify what Lean leaders do day-to-day that is different from what other top leaders do.