April 2024 Community Newsletter

LEA held their annual Lean Summit last month. There were 5 capability development workshops on Monday 22nd, the main Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday and visits to Toyota’s assembly plant in Burnaston and Engine plant in Deeside on Thursday 25th.

There were 210 attendees, from 90 different companies, from 17 different business sectors and 19 different countries. Highlights included keynotes from Jim Womack who discussed both the history of lean and the current challenges - relating them to the relevance of lean today. We also had two keynotes from different areas of Toyota. John Prince from TLMC talked about “Flexible Motivated Members” - the process for developing capability and Toyota’s Jon Hunt discussed the hydrogen fuel cell and what Toyota is doing in this area.

His title was creatively called “In search of Werewolves” where he challenged us that there are no silver bullets, rather a range of alternatives required to meet zero carbon ambitions.

Mike Moore discussed AI, lean and low code/no code applications and their kaizen potential. We were also fortunate to have Fabrice Bernhard explain the Lean Tech manifesto and Professor Josh Hung from Taiwan who discussed Lean Product & Process Development. Josh gave an interesting?example about developing a Motorbike Helmet with his University Students!

Our LinkedIn account has been ablaze with positive comments about the content and organisation. We also raised ￡24,050 for Toyota’s Charitable Trust as we donated 100% of the fee for the Toyota visits to the charity. ? We are now busy analysing the feedback before deciding what and how to share our learnings from this year in 2025. If you have any specifics you would like to see at the 2025 UK Lean Summit please let us know.?

Best wishes,

Dave Brunt

Capability Development Workshops

We kick-started the week with our Capability Development Workshops. In these workshops we used our latest learning processes and materials to support the capability development of each attendee in their chosen subject area,?including A3 Problem Solving, Core Leadership Skills, Value Stream Mapping, Team Working & Kaizen and Management Systems.

Here is our Senior Lean Coach, David Marriott in action taking his group through our 8 Step Practical Problem Solving Teach Poster?and case study.

UK Lean Summit 2024

This year's?Summit returned to the city of Liverpool, welcoming back familiar speakers and attendees from previous summits, as well as some new faces. Attendees had the opportunity to learn, share and network over the 2 days through our 11 keynotes, 12 learning sessions and evening activity (Cains Brewery and Retro Arcade).

Some feedback from this year's summit:

Interesting?topics, discussions and insights into other companies lean journeys.

Great exposure to new ideas and different ways of working. It was inspiring!

We will be uploading keynotes and learning sessions from this year's?Summit on our YouTube channel throughout the year. Subscribe to our channel here.

Toyota Plant Visits

Once again we gave?attendees?the opportunity to visit either their Engine Manufacturing Plant (Deeside, North Wales) or Vehicle Manufacturing Plant (Burnaston, Derby).

In the Engine Plant at Deeside?we saw how team members were developed to do and improve the work and the focus of leaders supporting them for a successful day. We discussed with their senior leaders about how much time they spent teaching & coaching at the gemba (90%!).

Over at the Burnaston Vehicle Manufacturing Plant, TLMC followed on from their?flexible motivated members keynote and learning session at the summit, where they shared their Floor Management Development Style (FMDS) Obeya.

Toyota also shared their capability development journey, from team member level right through to senior group leader and the progression stages, setting the member up for success, and the expectations of each member and leader to support their journey.

Request for Research Partners! ?

We have the ambition to populate our Learning Platform with over 40 different Learning Processes at 4 Skill Levels! Currently we are creating the processes and materials on a pull basis – as we need them when helping our customers on their problems to solve. ?

If however, there is a topic/subject matter that you currently need but is not available, we would welcome the opportunity to partner you to research and develop that material for you.? If you are interested in researching and partnering with us, contact us HERE. ?

As always, thank you for taking the time to read our Newsletter,

The Lean Enterprise Academy Team

Get in touch by either emailing [email protected] or completing our online enquiry form.