Speaking Topics - Chris

Achieving Organizational Excellence - Five Steps to a Successful Organization!

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. - Sun Tzu (Chinese General and Author, b. 500 bc)

Strategy is important but without execution is no more than a statement of intentions. Building an excellent organization is equally important but can be a waste of energy and resources if not properly directed. It’s the mix of each of these that are the key factors to a successful organization; success is equal to strategy plus execution. At Ceptara, we think of achieving success using five steps, simple to understand, but challenging to accomplish.

Success is equal to Strategy plus Execution!

Learn how the five (5) steps can help you design a "go do" plan, drive your daily actions, and implement mechanisms to assure you're staying on track. Methods and tactics will be introduced to provide team and personal management technics such as strategy deployment, process and project management, manage by metric, Lean Six Sigma for continous improvement, and personal excellence. The participant will come away with a new system based perspective on their organization and gain or reinforce the understanding of working on their organization versus simply working in it.

Journey to Personal Excellence – How to Focus and Achieve your Dreams!

We're fine until we're not! Often in our lives there are inflection points, e.g. a new job, becoming a couple, your first child, starting a business, changing lifestyle, etc. Our success in navigating those inflection points is largely based on who we are, what we want, and how we go about achieving it.

Design your future and you'll realize it!

A simple model is presented to answer three questions, 1) what is important to me, 2) what should I focus on, and 3) what do I need to do. Discovering your passion and motivations, establishing clear goals, and putting a systematic approach in place to manage the everyday tasks and interruptions is the key to achieving your dreams. This chat is motivating, inspiring and practical. Attending will energize your dreams and introduce the practical methods and tools to start you on your journey to Personal Excellence.

Training Within Industry - How to Make Standard Work Stick

The Training Within Industry (TWI) service was created by the United States Department of War, within the War Manpower Commission in 1940. Its main purpose was to provide consulting services to industries that were critical to the ramp up of the war machine for World War II to assure there were enough trained and skilled personnel necessary to meet the demands of the war. At the end of its 5 year service record, the TWI program instructed over 1.6 million workers in 16,500 US plants.

Standard Work is a foundational method within Lean and is focused on creating predictable results in the most efficient way. Many companies struggle with defining standard work, especially in organizations that are dependent on specific individuals and tribal knowledge. And more importantly, once Standard Work is documented, they struggle with assuring that everyone is following the prescribed methods.

Come hear an introduction to using the TWI methods of Job Instruction, Job Relations and Job Methods to institutionalize and reinforce the adoption of Standard Work. You will be shown an overview of the TWI methods, using demonstrations, humor and expertise. You will be offered a few tips and real takeaways that you’ll be able to use immediately in your organization.

Revisiting the Theory of Constraints

We often try balance our systems to make sure everything is equally distributed. Not too much inventory, assure every production machine is busy, and no one is standing around.

That is exactly the wrong thing to do!

Eliyahu Goldratt published The Goal in 1984 describing the Theory of Constraints (TOC), a process for maximizing throughput. At the 2010 AmCon show in Bellevue, Washington, our founder, [Chris Lindstrom], presented a discussion about the Theory of Constraints.

The participant learned the history of TOC and how Goldratt's position in a software firm led to his abstraction of systems and how he turned his knowledge into a continuous improvement program. They were introduced to the concept of a constraint and what it can mean to an organization's throughput and the TOC methods; 'The Thinking Process', 'The Five Focusing Steps', and the importance of appropriate cost performance measures were discussed and illustrated via a couple of real-life examples.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in Purchasing - How to apply LSS Techniques to Supplier Management

On several occasions, we've had the chance to present how to use lean six sigma to individuals responsible for managing a company's supply line. Included in the Supply Line Management processes are; supply strategy management, qualification, selection, purchasing (transactional processing), performance monitoring, supplier auditing & review, and supplier recognition. The presented topic provides an overview of each process, the six sigma tools that can help to perform the process more efficiently and effectively, and case studies that provide examples of how the six sigma tools were used.

Introduction to Six Sigma
A Supplier Management Process
Sourcing Strategies
Supplier Qualification
Supplier Performance Monitoring
Supplier Auditing
Supplier Review
Supplier Recognition
Additional References

In each section we talk about the work performed in the section's process and a few of the six sigma tools that enable doing that work better. In many cases we provide case studies to further demonstrate how the six sigma tools can be utilized.