How to Prevent Lean Implementation Failure
10 Reasons Why Failures Occur

The goal of implementing Lean/World Class Enterprise is to improve and grow American businesses by making them globally competitive. With the news filled with debates about outsourcing, and moving businesses overseas, being globally competitive while maintaining their facilities in the US sounds like just what American business needs. So how successful are American companies at implementing these techniques? A recent report from Industry Week magazine sadly summarizes the current state of implementations.

Industry Week reported that 72% of the 884 U.S. companies responding to their survey were in various stages of implementing an improvement strategy such as Lean or World Class manufacturing, Agile manufacturing, Six Sigma, TPS, Theory of Constraints, or others. Of these companies, 75% reported that they had made "no" or just "some" progress toward their World Class manufacturing goals. Only 2% of the companies reported achieving World Class manufacturing status.

Why aren’t more companies showing significant progress in their goal to become World Class? This workshop has answers.

Relevant to both experienced Lean/World Class implementers and companies just beginning the World Class Enterprise (WCE) journey, this workshop discusses the ten reasons implementations fail (in order of severity) and what companies can do to prevent or recover from their occurrence.

Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:

• Understand the vital role company management plays in successful implementations
• Understand why Lean implementation failures occur
• Be able to review their own implementation plan for potential problems
• Make adjustments and improvements to their current plan

Larry Rubrich has over 25 years of experience in engineering and manufacturing in the automotive, industrial, and consumer products areas. He has held the positions of product engineer, chief product engineer, product manager, customer service manager, area manufacturing manager, continuous improvement manager, and plant manager with Fortune 100 corporations.

Larry has been dedicated to the study, development, training, and implementation of advanced World Class Enterprise techniques in U. S. businesses. Larry spent time in Japan studying Japanese management and manufacturing techniques. He also worked directly with a top-level Japanese consulting group hired by a U. S. company to implement the Toyota Production System (TPS) in its plants.

In addition to co-authoring the widely acclaimed book, Implementing World Class Manufacturing – Business Manual, Larry’s second book, How to Prevent Lean Implementation Failures …. 10 Reasons Why Failures Occur, was published in September 2004.

Larry is a registered Professional Engineer, an Adjunct Professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and founder of WCM Associates.

WCM Associates is a business consulting & book publishing company dedicated to making American companies globally competitive through the implementation of Lean/World Class Enterprise.

WCM Associates is also recognized for publishing the break-through Lean accounting book, Who’s Counting – A Lean Accounting Novel by Jerry Solomon.