22 October 2007 - Queensland Event
AME Pacific Rim Conference Debrief
QMI Solutions

The AME Pacific Rim 2007 conference was held in Melbourne from the 14th to 17th August. This was an opportunity to hear first-hand from several enthusiastic people who attended the conference and several site tours. The conference showcased several international guest speakers and was split across 5 different streams. The streams included:

• Defining Globalisation.

• Defining Improvement.

• Defining Collaboration.

• Defining Humanisation.

• Defining Perpetuation.

Attendees were informed as to the future direction and objectives for the AME in Queensland.

16 October 2007 - Victoria Event
Dinner with the President
Yarra Yarra Golf Club

Members and guests met AME President Mark Thomas for evening drinks and a first-class BBQ dinner on the terrace of the prestigious and newly renovated Yarra Yarra Golf Club clubhouse.

Mark presented his reflections on the hugely successful AME Pacific Rim Conference – “ Defining the Excellence”. This was an opportunity for members to jog their memories, hear a different perspective, or simply catch a glimpse of interesting sessions they missed.

Mark also presented a summary of the “speaker evaluation forms” and sought feedback on those topics that the delegates found particularly interesting. This information will help the AME to tailor guest speakers and future events to ensure maximum benefit to members.

20 September 2007 - Victoria Regional Event
The Visual Workplace Seminar
Barkly Motor Lodge

Speaker - Oscar Roche - Management Resource Plus

Visual brings about a focus on the process. The implementation of visuality results in the transfer of vital information into visual devices that then create exact behaviour, on time every time. If you are a traditional manufacturer, visual will optimise your existing system. If you are on the lean journey, visual will enable your conversion and make your gains sustainable. In both situations, productivity will increase due to the elimination of waste.

11 July 2007 - Victoria Regional Event
Visual Workplace Management
Barkly Motor Lodge

Speaker - Ray Edwards - Corporate Partners

Mr Edwards showed how visual management tools such as mini business boards can assist goal alignment, engagement and whole of business involvement if they are used at various levels throughout the organization.

Selecting the right measures, prioritizing the issue, mentoring and support and the key aspect of leadership were discussed at length, including the role of line leaders and supervisors in achieving a sustainable culture.

29 June 2007 - NSW Event
Lean Learning Day
DSRD Parramatta

50 people attended the NSW AME Lean Learning day on Friday 29 th June at the DSRD Parramatta offices. The 8 sessions ranged from Introductions to Lean Manufacturing to detailed case study presentations on using Lean Tools.

The day was split into two streams which allowed attendees the flexibility to attend sessions that they could benefit most from. Topics included: Lean/Six Sigma, Lean Intro., Goal Alignment, TPM, Flow Simulation, Value Stream Mapping, 5S & Quick Change-Over. The presentations were a combination of introductory theory on the topic followed by actual case studies, all sessions were interactive with attendees coming away with a much better understanding and appreciation of where & how the Lean tools can be applied in their own business.

Feedback from the day was extremely positive that we have decided to run two Lean Learning Days in 2008, probably in March & September.

AME would especially like to thank the presenters and their companies for their time and contribution to make the day a great success, these include: Alex Crossley, Shalendra Jattan, Doug Fisk, Chin Galapathy, Grant Nicholls, Michael Blatchford & Adrian van der Stel.

24 May 2007 - NSW Event
Lincoln Electric Plant Tour

Lincoln Electric at Revesby in NSW hosted a site tour on 24th May where over 30 members attended to hear their journey to achieve manufacturing excellence. Karl Schroder, Manufacturing Manager, firstly presented a brief history of the Lincoln Electric business and improvement initiatives before a plant tour.

Lincoln have since 2002 used Six Sigma, Lean manufacturing and TOC programs to focus on manufacturing improvements and customer satisfaction. Karl highlighted the need to have management support for such programs and emphasized the importance to be working on the “right things” to improve process flow and not just use Lean tools in isolation of the bottleneck issues. Karl felt that the turning point for them was when they collected the Data to give them the real facts, communicated the real situation to staff & employees and had Transparency of issues within their business. The business is now seeing real benefits of their TOC program and importantly Lincoln is seeing the culture of employees now starting to get on board with the improvement programs.

AME thanks Lincoln Electric for their hospitality to host members and share their journey to achieve Manufacturing Excellence.

3 May 2007 - NSW Event
Applying Lean to Office and Administration
DSRD Parramatta

Speaker - Don Tapping - Lean Author

Don Tapping presented an overview of implementing Lean Office techniques to a group of 30 AME members on 3rd May in Sydney . Don is an internationally recognised publisher and speaker on Lean and has followed Lean’s journey from manufacturing, R&D, office & admin. and now healthcare services.

Don’s presentation was interactive and practical and AME members appreciated Don’s relaxed and informal presentation style.

14 February 2007 - Vic Event
MtM Auto - Members Only Site Tour
South Oakleigh

Hosts - Peter Sloan & Barry McKinnon - MtM

Peter Sloan and Barry McKinnon of MtM gave a very informative presentation on how MtM are using their production supervisors and leaders to run the factory without management intervention. They have focussed on returning the 'power to the floor'. We were taken on an extensive tour  during which time we viewed MtM's Kanban system in operation and saw how the company have adapted Lean to their production systems. MtM have recently invested in a number of new factories to house their assembly lines and to unlock their waste.

The AME would like to thank Peter and Barry for their time in showing us around their factory and for providing us with insight into their processes.

20 September 2006 - NSW Regional Event
Crane Copper Tube Site Tour and Presentation

Crane Copper at Penrith hosted a site tour where 30 members heard of the Crane Copper journey over the past 12 months implementing Lean Manufacturing using the Visual Workplace Management process.

The tour started with an introduction by Peter Davidson, General Manager who stressed the importance of the process being led and championed by the senior management team. Crane spent time initially in gaining a clear understanding of the businesses Vision, Mission, Values & Key business outcomes which were used to align activities and behaviours throughout the business to gain buy-in and accountability of all employees.

The Manufacturing manager Shane Hawken and Lean Implementation Manager Grant Nicholls then took the team through the Visual Workplace Management process highlighting the Quality, Speed, Cost & People/Safety performance charts. Significant improvements have been made in the business in staff morale, waste reduction, house keeping, reduced change over times, working capital reduction and improved DIFOT however the business acknowledges that the journey has only just begun and are optimistic about achieving future business improvements.

The group then went on a tour of the plant followed by a Q & A session and a vote of thanks by AME for Crane staff sharing their Lean Experience and for giving up their valuable time to do so.

23 May 2006 - Victoria Regional Event
KAIZEN World Expert Visits Ballarat

 

Mr Masaaki Imai, known as the "Lean Guru" and father of Continuous Improvement spoke to a record attendance of more than 120 AME members and representatives from a wide range of regional manufacturers at this highly successful Ballarat breakfast meeting.

 

Mr. Masaaki Imai , winner of the 1999 Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence, has authored the seminal works on KAIZEN which are known throughout the world and have become a guide in helping companies to establish world class manufacturing. He also founded the KAIZEN Institute in 1985, a consulting company headquartered in Austin, Texas with major operations throughout Western Europe, the Americas and the Far East.

His first book, KAIZEN:The Key to Japan ’s Competitive Success, has been translated into 20 languages and sold more than 300,000 copies. He has traveled the globe educating companies on Japan’s methodology to produce high quality products faster and cheaper. He has also been credited for creating much of the drive by western companies to emulate the philosophies and practices found in Japanese businesses.

23 May 2006 - Victoria
To Gemba with a Guru

AME and SEN members accompanied and shared in the knowledge and experience of renowned Mr Masaaki Imai from the KAIZEN Institute. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn from a master practitioner by accompanying him on one of two site visits to DORMA BWN Automatics and Volgren Australia.

The site visits culminated in Mr Imai's summation of the sites and was followed by a Q&A session.

28 April 2006 - South Australia

AMCOR Glass Site Tour

Amcor’s new glass wine bottle plant commenced production in July 2002. The new plant incorporates a 196 square metre furnace, one of the largest dedicated wine bottle-making furnaces in the world. A second furnace was installed in November 2004 in order to increase capacity and meet the demands of customers.

Amcor Glass is currently producing around 1.2 million bottles a day, which is in line with the plant’s annual production capacity of over 400 million bottles per year. A selected range of bottle shapes and colours are produced, targeted at the premium segment of the wine industry.

Amcor is supplying bottles to the vast majority of wine companies including all the major wine groups. These customers are responsible for more than 90% of the wine produced in Australia.

26 April 2006 - New South Wales

Cochlear Ltd Site Tour

With Cochlear, you can count on three things: technical product innovation, world-class design, and lifelong commitment. Their 60,000 Nucleus recipients and thousands of hearing and educational professionals make up the largest cochlear implant community in the world. Cochlear’s community is continually supported by their guiding principles.

At the heart of Cochlear’s product development is one simple idea—innovation. Whether that innovation is focused on performance or features, the principle is the same: Think of ways to deliver capabilities that nobody has thought of before, and improve those that already exist. That’s how Cochlear have come to lead the industry with the highest-performing, feature-packed cochlear implant systems.

Cochlear has 70% of the global market for cochlear implants. Cochlear performs all implant manufacturing in Lane Cove and is nearly 12 months into a Lean transformation

16 March 2006 - Victoria

Hawker de Havilland Site Tour

Hawker de Havilland is the primary Australian aerostructures with with multi site operations employing approximately 1300 people at Fishermans Bend in Melbourne and Bankstown in Sydney. Core capabilities cover R&D, design, test, fabrication and assembly of aerostructures components embodying advanced composite and metallic materials.

Significant components such as control surfaces and major structural assemblies are produced for many of the world's large commercial and military aircraft. Hawker de Havilland is a major sole source supplier of aerostructure assemblies to the world aircraft industry, exporting its manufactured products to the USA, France, UK and Canada. By meeting the stringent challenges of international competition and by providing innovative solutions, major contracts have been secured with the world's leading aircraft manufactures such as Airbus, Boeing Commercial Airplane, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Lockheed Martin, Bombardier and BAE SYSTEMS.

Approximately 95% of Hawker de Havilland's output is exported

28 February 2006 - New South Wales

Pacific Fabrics Site Tour

Pacific Fabrics is a major garment manufacturer who has learnt to work side by side with imports to sustain a large manufacturing business in Sydney's west.

Attendees will see how Pacific Fabrics have focused their manufacturing operations to compete on the world stage through a committed team-based workforce and supporting best practice programs.

The business employs 150 employees and is focused on providing their customers with high quality and competitively priced goods whilst maintaining manufacturing volume flexibility. The business realised that their best strategy for survival and growth was to provide flexibility in volume and product range whilst providing customers with fast response times.

The engagement and committment of staff was seen as crucial in achieving manufacturing excellence and the business set up a team-based structure supported by quality and OH&S programs focused on increasing productivity.

Pacific Fabrics realises that it has to continually strive to better meet the needs of the market as overseas suppliers provide a continual threat to survival

27 February 2006 - Victoria

Roy Coleman - Harley Davidson

In 2006 it’s all about your leadership and your ability to implement and sustain improvement. It’s time to get focused and take action!

This is your chance to come and hear from a spectacularly successful company like Harley- Davidson - one of the world’s most iconic motor cycle companies.

“Life as we know it at Harley-Davidson is about great journeys, a series of touch points that produce inspired moments for riders and results for shareholders. Every year, about one half of all new Harley Davidson motorcycles are sold to existing Harley owners. 80% of all owners say they’re extremely likely to buy again. That says a lot about customer loyalty. It also speaks to our ceaseless drive – through products, services and experiences – to deepen relationships and to deliver value at every mile. And, every mile of the way, “ we ride with you.”

7 December, 2005 - Victoria
15 December, 2005 - New South Wales

Christmas Cocktails with Boston AME Conference Feedback

Most of us were not fortunate enough to travel to the USA for this year’s AME Conference in Boston at the end of October. However, at least 16 Aussies did make the trip and have brought home news of what they learned there. So, we had a party as well as the chance to hear some of the key learnings, without the cost or effort of making the trip ourselves! Fantastic!

17 November 2005 - South Australia
Philmac Pty Ltd - Breakfast Meeting and Site Tour

Philmac is a world leader in the design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of innovative, high-quality fittings and valves for pipeline systems and irrigation products. We learnt how Philmac have used Lean principles in their development of this excellent business.

17 November, 2005

Melbourne - Vincent Bozzone & Jay Baron AME
thanks TIFA (Tooling Industry Forum of Australia)

Vincent Bozzone on “The 7 things you have to do to cut Lead Time” and Jay Baron on “Excellence”

Vincent Bozzone is the author of the popular book, Speed To Market: Lean Manufacturing for Job Shops, which is used in job shops and university courses around the world. Vincent is an MBA graduate of Columbia University and the Past President of the Association for the Management of Organization Design.
Dr. Jay Baron has been researching techniques for achieving process and dimensional control in sheet metal stamping and auto body assembly. Dr. Baron has also been researching evolving technologies in the auto industry. He has studied plants in Europe, Japan, and North America looking at body shop design and flexibility. Dr. Baron holds a Ph.D. and Master's Degree in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University

of Michigan and an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

26 October, 2005
NSW - LEAN MANUFACTURING WORKSHOP

The Lean Manufacturing Workshop gave attendees the opportunity to better understand the benefits of implementing Lean Manufacturing within their business. The workshop covered presentations from four different presenters in two streams on Lean tools and processes such as 5S, Mini-Businesses, Value Chain Mapping and Quick Changeovers as well as case studies of the impact & benefits gained from using each. The Workshop was suitable to seasoned practitioners looking to further improve their business as well as managers looking to start down the Lean Manufacturing path.

29 September, 2005

Site Tour of Kraft Foods  in Port Melbourne

Kraft’s Port Melbourne facility is the sole manufacturer of Vegemite world-wide. They also make peanut butter, salad dressings and convenience meals and are in the early stages of their Lean journey. AME Members met the people involved in this initiative.

27 September, 2005

Adelaide -  Members and Friends

Atendees learnt how the Flinders Medical Centre, SA Water and Inghams all got started on their lean journeys. The three case studies included:

1. PATIENT FLOW—How to get started on the lean journey inHealth/Service industry—a case study from Flinders Medical Centre
2. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT—How did SA Water start out on the Lean journey in a shared services environment?
3. GETTING UNDER WAY—How Inghams used lean to ease capacity for growth in a vertically integrated supply chain and food processing environment.

22 - 23 September, 2005
Lean Accounting Summit

Beginning the Journey of Lean Cost Management
Dearborn, Michigan, USA

"Mark your calendars for a journey into a critical lean frontier lead by those who have already been there and can share their knowledge. If the industrial world is to be changed, the journey must start somewhere and somehow. Be a part of beginning this new journey and contribute to the future."

01 - 02 September 2005
Tasmanian Manufacturing Conference: 'Profit through process innovation'

Attendees Learnt how to improve profits through reducing costs in the manufacturing processes. There were First-hand experiences from Tasmanian manufacturers and advice from national and international experts.

Conference Workshop: 'Profit through process innovation' The workshop was a major feature of the Tasmanian Manufacturing Conference and offered an unparalleled opportunity for Tasmanian manufacturers to participate in a quality training session that has helped manufacturers

15 June, 2005 - Site Tour: Rheem

“Changing Culture in a Difficult Environment”

Rob Meyer, Manufacturing Manager of Rheem Australia at Rydalmere, was one of the excellent speakers at the recent AME Conference in M  elbourne. For those who missed his presentation, here was a chance to catch up! Those in attendance saw first-hand the improvements at Rheem.

Rob Meyer said: "I will show the attendees the 5D System and what we are doing with 5S. There will also be a chance to look at a One-Piece Flow system as used in our Lean Manufacturing systems. There’s a lot more to see, and I’ll happily show people what they’re interested in.”

The AME celebrated National Manufacturing Week, the premier event for Australian manufacturers, by hosting events in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. The common element in all three events was the Keynote Speaker. The AME was pleased to present Joe Fisher, Manager of Operational Excellence for the Canadian operations of Eaton Electric who presented the story of building Eaton’s Milton plant, Toronto, into Eaton Electrics' highest rating plant, world-wide.

Other speakers included: Brendon Rundle - Amcor Cartons; Rob Meyer - Rheem Australia; Jim Gaffney - Davey Pumps; Phil Berry - NIKE Inc.; PPG Industries; Seamus Power - Autoliv; Bob Richardson - 2006 Commonwealth Games; Darren Bahl, Dean Pinninger - AME Systems; Mark Davey - PZ Cussons; Anthony Clyne - Arnott's.
Each of the days was concluded with a panel forum.

View Images

23 February 2005 
Panel: Journey to Manufacturing Excellence

Ian Young, AME Board Member and Coordinator of the Manufacturing Best Practice Program facilitated a fascinating and interactive panel discussion. If you were the owner of a business, why would you bother to go through the long and testing journey to manufacturing excellence? We heard the reasons from three business owners who have something to say about this.

View Images

17 February 2005
Tour of Eaton Electric

AME Members were invited to hear and see the results of Eaton Australia's recent journey to manufacturing excellence. The Site Tour commenced with an introduction by Vik Bansal, Managing Director of Eaton Australia and a Board Member of the AME in Australia. Eaton Electric Australia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global organisation, Eaton Corporation. Eaton Electric is a manufacturer of LV  and MV systems and electrical components. Internationally, Eaton is at the leading edge of the implementation of lean principles and has provided speakers to lean manufacturing conferences overseas, including the North American AME conferences. 

View Images

18 to 21 May 2004
Xcelerate to Xcellence

This was a 4-Day Conference held at the Melbourne Hyatt.  This was the AME's first major conference outside of North America and was attended by over 600 people (including transferable passes).  The conference featured 14 international presenters, plant tours, 6 full-day workshops and 30 practitioner sessions.

View Images

20 November 2003
An evening with Peter Hines

Hines is the director of the largest independent Lean Enterprise Research Centre in the world at Cardiff University.  Peter, a regular visitor to Australia gave us a good understanding of the direction of Lean in the European Auto industry.  Of particular note was the 3-day car where manufacturers attempt to remove all the non-value added activities to assemble a car from order to delivery in 3 days.

20 October 2003
AME Annual Dinner with Dale Crownover

The smallest company ever to win the Malcolm Baldridge Award, Crownover’s Texas Nameplate surprised the big end of town.  Dale’s message was “its not the technology, its not the product, ots not the equipment, it’s the people”.  This dinner evening at the Melbourne Hyatt was one of the highlights of 2003.

17 September 2003
Honda USA’s Dave Curry talks supply chain excellence

Curry’s straight shooting messages on supply chain excellence, JIT3 and value stream collaboration was a powerful counterpoint to the typical adversarial supply relationships experienced in Australia.

18 - 19 August 2003
Conference

AME’s first 2-day conference was held in Ballarat and featured GE’s Dan McDonnell from the US and Richard Kunst from Stackpole in Canada.  McDonnell’s chief Executive forum was well attended and participants got much from Dab’s decade of experience in an executive role.  Kunst session was so well attended that participants refused to leave after the close of the conference but stayed to engage Richard in continued discussion.

7 August 2003
An evening experience 5S in action

AME President, Gary Kerr lead the participants through a 5S simulation where we took a typical workplace through Sort, Set in Order and Standardise in a workshop simulation.  This was followed up with explanations of Shine and Sustain and photographs of the 5S’s from around the world.

16 July 2003
From Guitars to Clam Boats: An evening with Bob Kerr

Bob Kerr of Canada presented two stimulating case-studies of successful Value Stream Mapping projects.  At Garrison Guitars they took throughput from 22 guitars per day to 50 and in a project on a Clam fishing ship, achieved similarly spectacular results. Bob’s easy style and many photographs made it easy to feel confident in this powerful tool.

18 June 2003
Plant tour and leadership presentation of Masterfoods Petcare, Wodonga

We visited this large and complex plant and heard how the Lean team had reduced set-up time and continue to reduce batch size and inventory. Seeing is believing.

29 May 2003
Lean Fundamentals Workshop

Lean Leader, Tony Stone and Operations Manager Gary Kerr from ADI Munitions deliver a fast-paced action packed simulations demonstrating how to take a plant from Batch-and-Queue thinking to Continuous Flow.

29 April 2003
How to Create Cultural Change

A forum of facility Leaders discussing issues of  Change Leadership featuring Chris Ogilvy (Managing Director, Placard), Brendan Rundle (Operations Manager, Amcor), Kevin Nestadt, Nestadt Consulting, Piers Vellacott (Lean Leader, Nestle), and Gary Kerr (Operations Manager, ADI Munitions).

12 Dec 2002
North American Conference report back session

This well attended event attracted a lot of interest as member who had traveled to Chicago for this 5-day conference presented their impressions and their learnings.

Sept 2002

An evening of Excellence with female Lean Leaders featuring Mariela Castano of Kraft Canada and two local presenters discussing a woman’s perspective on leading a Lean transformation.

Aug 2002

Two Day Value Stream Mapping Workshop held by Mariela Castano of Kraft Canada. Mariela’s superior grasp of this tool was evident as she took participants through a full day of theory followed by a day mapping a value stream within ADI’s Bomb line.

Aug 2002

Two Days of Lean Leadership with Richard Kunst of Canada. This special event was attended by senior managers from around Victoria who gathered to hear just how to lead a lean transformation in a large organisation.