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Monday, February 28, 2011

LSI to visit BMW Factory in Munich

LSI will also visit BMW's massive factory and museum in Munich, Germany.  Here are some clips about both the factory and the museum.





Sunday, February 27, 2011

LSI to visit Ducati Factory

We want to continue highlighting our Europe Lean Tour trip this week, so please stay tuned for the next few days as we provide more information about the hosting companies we are visiting.

Ducati Factory Visit

On the same day as the Lamborghini factory tour, LSI will also visit the Ducati factory, where the exotic super bikes are being built.

What's it like to be there? Take a look at some videos from youtube:

The birth of Ducati:



Factory overview:

Friday, February 25, 2011

Lamborghini car names

How did Lamborghini come up with these interesting names? Here's the info:

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Lamborghini History

Here's a brief history of Ferruzzio Lamborghini and how he re-invented super cars. During our Italian visit to Lamborghini, LSI will also have an opportunity to meet the nephew of the founder.

LSI to visit Lamborghini

As part of our Europe Lean Tour, LSI will also visit the famous Lamborghini factory in Italy. Is it possible to incorporate lean thinking in a process designed to build low-volume, custom cars? You'll be surprised.

Here are a couple of youtube clips which provide some insights about the factory:



Wednesday, February 23, 2011

LSI to visit Mercedes-Benz Factory and Museum in Germany

Our one-of-a-kind benchmark tour to Europe is slowly getting finalized, and we just confirmed the visit to both Mercedes-Benz factory and the museum as part of the tour program.  This one week program starting May 9th will take us through Germany (Stuttgart and Munich) as well as to Italy (Bologna).  Our first visit will be the Mercedes tour, and it is definitely going to be our highlight.  Although these are not our videos, these youtube videos provide some glimpse into what we can expect on our first visit.  The program is now almost full, with only one spot left. If you would like to join us, please call our office at 604-264-1000.
 



Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Lean Network Comedy Show




Sorry for the delay, but I was finally able to upload photos from our recent LSI Comedy dinner show, where our current Blackbelts, Greenbelts and their sponsors got together for an evening of fun and games at the Granville Island Theatre Sports.  Improv show was super fun, and our Blackbelts and Greenbelts even played some games on the stage.

Who said networking dinner has to be serious and boring?

Our next Network event is on May 24th evening with a special guest Mike Hoseus. Don't miss it!

LSI Improv Comedy Night

Are you ready for Japan?





It's only about 10 days away from our renowned Japan Lean Tour program launch.  Having taken several hundred people to Japan, we've continuously improved our program over the past decade and it has become the benchmark trip of choice for many lean champions.

Blackbelts and executives are now getting ready for this event, and we are getting excited.  We will be posting day-by-day update each day starting March 6th Sunday, so please keep an eye on our blog and our youtube channel.

Our fall Japan trip program is 95% full already so if you are interested, please contact our office. In case you were not aware, Lean Sensei is the only company that includes Japan trip as part of our Blackbelt at no additoinal cost.

Past Japan trip videos can be seen at our youtube channel below:

Lean Sensei youtube channel

Mike Hoseus Coming Back to Vancouver





Lean Sensei is proud to host a truly special two-day Executive session in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada with one of the top co-authors of Toyota Way books:  Mike Hoseus.


To be held May 24th and 25th, this LSI Executive Certification program is designed to provide you with a deep understanding of Toyota Way and Transformation Strategy.

Key themes:
    * Leadership
    * Culture
    * Transformation
    * Principles
    * Sustainability

If you are interested, please contact us as it is now 90% full and will likely be sold out in by the end of this month.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Lexus LFA Gets Uncrated

 

Recently, Toyota played Show-n-Tell with the first Lexus LFAs to arrive in the U.S., inviting a representative from Club Lexus to witness the stylized drama of uncrating the $400,000 supercar.

Here’s an interesting article and about the whole experience of watching Toyota’s super sports car being uncrated.

Article link:


Video link:
 

Question of the Day



There are five types of people:

1) People who complain about problems
2) People who ignore problems
3) People who make problems more complex
4) People who delegate problems
5) People who solve problems

Which one are you?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Transforming the Universe

LSI believes that lean can transform the world.  But lately, we are thinking that transforming the world isn't good enough - we have to aim higher.  So with that in mind, LSI coaches have been busy getting special training in outer space....take a look:

Greenbelt for Service learns value stream mapping

Greenbelt for Service class continues and today, they learned a variety of lean tools - a shift in pace from yesterday's focus on lean principles and values.

Here, you can see them applying the value stream mapping tool.


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Blackbelts complete Lean Assessment

Just last week, our Blackbelt program kicked off with "Lean Strategy and Lean Assessment" module - designed to teach participants an effective way to strategize lean, develop lean roadmap, and create a winning formula for achieving lean excellence.


This module is also offered as a separate, independent Executive Certification program, allowing busy executives to learn key lean strategy topics without taking the entire Blackbelt.

Our winter class of 2011 Blackbelts had extremely busy week but successfully completed their first assignment on Lean Assessment at a local private company that was just starting out in lean journey.
Here is a brief overview of our most powerful methodology: Lean Assessment

Lean Assessment Overview Brief

LSI to launch Greenbelt in Penticton BC

Ever wondered how you could improve the service that you deliver to your clients? Have you ever identified areas in your job that you thought needed an overhaul? Or perhaps you’ve heard of ‘Lean” and would like to become lean certified? Then the Greenbelt for Service Program is for you.


This spring, Lean Sensei International will deliver the best in lean training in Penticton, BC.  LSI offers Greenbelt in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and has offered customized Greenbelt in Los Angeles and Oklahoma in the US.

Our experienced coaches will provide you the tools that you need to facilitate and coach lean projects within your organization. What’s more, we guarantee that you will improve your skills as a team player, motivator and a true lean champion.

If you are ready to become a lean certified trainer, capable of developing your own training materials within your company register now for our upcoming program. Check the dates below, mark it on your calendars and call us if you need any additional information.

Module 1: Apr 26-29: Kick-off & 5S

• Lean Philosophy & Principles

• Team Building and Lean Tools

• 5S Kaizen

Module 2: May 16-20: Process Time Reduction

• One-minute Homework Report

• Process Time Reduction Kaizen

• Presentation Skills

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Module 3: Jun 13-17: Value Innovation

• One-minute Homework Report

• Value Innovation Kaizen

• Present Your Completed Projects

• Final Exam

• Graduation

Registration is in full swing and space is limited. If you or anyone you know may be interested, please take action today.

For more information, please email: admin@leansensei.com or call us toll free 1-888-574-5326 or direct (604)264-1000.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Coffee Shop Simulation

Live: Greenbelt for Service Class

Now the Greenbelt class is learning about 5S, setup reduction, process flow, kanban, and customer value through LSI's Coffee Shop simulation.  They are having fun but more importantly, they are learning a lot!


Greenbelt for Service Launched!

Live from Terminal City Club here in Vancouver, we just kicked off our new Greenbelt for Service program this morning.  This program is designed to create lean champions in non-manufacturing sectors.  Here are some shots - we will be here all day today and tomorrow to cover the basics of lean principles and lean tools.



Our famous egg dropping game

Shared Value

The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value




by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.

Even worse, the more business has begun to embrace corporate responsibility, the more it has been blamed for society’s failures. The legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history. This diminished trust in business leads political leaders to set policies that undermine competitiveness and sap economic growth. Business is caught in a vicious circle.

A big part of the problem lies with companies themselves, which remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation that has emerged over the past few decades. They continue to view value creation narrowly, optimizing short-term financial performance in a bubble while missing the most important customer needs and ignoring the broader influences that determine their longer-term success. How else could companies overlook the well-being of their customers, the depletion of natural resources vital to their businesses, the viability of key suppliers, or the economic distress of the communities in which they produce and sell? How else could companies think that simply shifting activities to locations with ever lower wages was a sustainable “solution” to competitive challenges? Government and civil society have often exacerbated the problem by attempting to address social weaknesses at the expense of business. The presumed trade-offs between economic efficiency and social progress have been institutionalized in decades of policy choices.

Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together. The recognition is there among sophisticated business and thought leaders, and promising elements of a new model are emerging. Yet we still lack an overall framework for guiding these efforts, and most companies remain stuck in a “social responsibility” mind-set in which societal issues are at the periphery, not the core.

The solution lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress. Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center. We believe that it can give rise to the next major transformation of business thinking.

What Is “Shared Value”?

A growing number of companies known for their hard-nosed approach to business—such as GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Unilever, and Wal-Mart—have already embarked on important efforts to create shared value by reconceiving the intersection between society and corporate performance. Yet our recognition of the transformative power of shared value is still in its genesis. Realizing it will require leaders and managers to develop new skills and knowledge—such as a far deeper appreciation of societal needs, a greater understanding of the true bases of company productivity, and the ability to collaborate across profit/nonprofit boundaries. And government must learn how to regulate in ways that enable shared value rather than work against it.

Capitalism is an unparalleled vehicle for meeting human needs, improving efficiency, creating jobs, and building wealth. But a narrow conception of capitalism has prevented business from harnessing its full potential to meet society’s broader challenges. The opportunities have been there all along but have been overlooked. Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face. The moment for a new conception of capitalism is now; society’s needs are large and growing, while customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking business to step up.

The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again.

Moving Beyond Trade-Offs

Business and society have been pitted against each other for too long. That is in part because economists have legitimized the idea that to provide societal benefits, companies must temper their economic success. In neoclassical thinking, a requirement for social improvement—such as safety or hiring the disabled—imposes a constraint on the corporation. Adding a constraint to a firm that is already maximizing profits, says the theory, will inevitably raise costs and reduce those profits.

A related concept, with the same conclusion, is the notion of externalities. Externalities arise when firms create social costs that they do not have to bear, such as pollution. Thus, society must impose taxes, regulations, and penalties so that firms “internalize” these externalities—a belief influencing many government policy decisions.

This perspective has also shaped the strategies of firms themselves, which have largely excluded social and environmental considerations from their economic thinking. Firms have taken the broader context in which they do business as a given and resisted regulatory standards as invariably contrary to their interests. Solving social problems has been ceded to governments and to NGOs. Corporate responsibility programs—a reaction to external pressure—have emerged largely to improve firms’ reputations and are treated as a necessary expense. Anything more is seen by many as an irresponsible use of shareholders’ money. Governments, for their part, have often regulated in a way that makes shared value more difficult to achieve. Implicitly, each side has assumed that the other is an obstacle to pursuing its goals and acted accordingly.

Blurring the Profit/Nonprofit Boundary

The concept of shared value, in contrast, recognizes that societal needs, not just conventional economic needs, define markets. It also recognizes that social harms or weaknesses frequently create internal costs for firms—such as wasted energy or raw materials, costly accidents, and the need for remedial training to compensate for inadequacies in education. And addressing societal harms and constraints does not necessarily raise costs for firms, because they can innovate through using new technologies, operating methods, and management approaches—and as a result, increase their productivity and expand their markets.

Friday, February 11, 2011

MBTI Assessment - Part of Greenbelt Program

 I believe that MBTI is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking assessment available to help individuals and organizations achieve their potential.

Greenbelt class of 2011 Winter is going through this right now!  Live shot below:


MBTI Types



What is MBTI

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) is a short, self-report questionnaire used to measure and describe people’s preferences for how they like to get information, make decisions and orient their lives. Created by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers, the MBTI® instrument was designed to make Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types understandable and useful in everyday life. The MBTI® instrument provides a versatile measure of personality that looks at eight personality preferences people use at different times. These eight preferences are organized into four, dichotomous scales, which are illustrated below. After more than 50 years of research and development, the current MBTI® tool is the most widely used instrument for understanding individual personality differences. Last year alone, over two million people gained valuable insight about themselves and the people they interact with by taking the MBTI® instrument.

(David’s comment: In my recent certification course, I found out that US Navy, US Army, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and many other major organizations are now using MBTI as a way to enhance teamwork and as a development tool for leaders).

Using MBTI to solve problems

The MBTI ® assessment can help teams solve problems more effectively because it gives each team member a clearer understanding of two key things. First, looking at the Sensing and Intuition preferences will show team members how they take in and present information. Second, focusing on the Thinking and Feeling preferences will clarify how they make decisions with that information.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that research indicates that teams composed of people with similar preferences usually make quicker decisions. This is because everyone gathers information and evaluates it in similar ways – a recipe for agreement. The downside of this speed is that the absence of opposing preferences can result in poor decision making. The challenge for homogeneous teams is to make sure that the opposing preferences are taken into account.

Teams composed of members with a variety of type preferences have a different challenge – getting people with different ways of taking in information and making decisions to solve problems together without conflict and misunderstanding. This often requires developing an appreciation for what people with opposing preferences do when solving problems.

To help teams with both of these challenges you can use a problem solving model developed by Isabel Briggs Myers. This model for good problem solving involves four steps which incorporate both ways for gathering information (S-N) and for making decisions (T-F).

Step One: Gather the Facts

With the use of the Sensing preference gather the relevant details of the problem you are facing.

Step Two: Brainstorm Possibilities

With the use of the Intuition preference identify possible causes of the problem and develop potential solutions.

Step Three: Analyze Objectively

Use the Thinking preference to consider the cause and effect of each potential solution.

Step Four: Weigh the Impact

Use the Feeling preference to consider how the people involved will be affected by the proposed solutions.

For each team member this problem solving approach will utilize two of their preferences and require them to utilize two of their least preferred functions. For some team members, using their least preferred functions will be a manageable challenge. For others, it will be important to work with colleagues who have opposing preferences when making important decisions in order to take advantage of their expertise.

If you are working with a team that is overloaded with certain types ask them how they can make use of the preferences that are missing. For example, if most team members prefer Sensing, what can they do to make sure that they use Intuition to make interpretations and develop possibilities? They might need to set aside a time to brainstorm possibilities or give the minority Intuitive members the floor.

No matter what the teams make up, a helpful way to have a team focus on each of the four steps is to set up four stations. At each station have a piece of paper with the following headings:

What are the facts?

What are the possibilities?

What are the pros and cons of each solution?

What is the impact on our people/organization for each solution?

Get the team to identify a problem or issue that they have been struggling with lately. Then have the team list the relevant details at each station for a set amount of time (15 minutes for example). When they are finished you can debrief the group by asking about any scarcity of information that relates to missing preferences; having the team focus on their common blind spots; and generating ideas on how to incorporate different points of view.

Source: psychometrics.com

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Toyota Acceleration Not Caused by Electronic Flaw, Government Concludes


Government officials on Tuesday announced that they have found no evidence of an electronic flaw in Toyota vehicles that would cause unintended acceleration.

Incidents of "sticking" accelerator pedals and a design flaw that could result in accelerator pedals becoming trapped by floor mats continue to be the only known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota cars, according to the Transportation Department.

"We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota's electronics systems, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

At issue are car crashes in 2009 and 2010 involving Toyota vehicles that some drivers said were caused when their vehicles suddenly accelerated. By March 2010, Congress ordered the Transportation Department to look into the issue. LaHood then pulled in the expertise of NASA scientists, who conducted a 10-month analysis to determine whether Toyota's electronic throttles caused the unintended acceleration.

"NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations," Michael Kirsch, principal engineer and team lead of the study from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC), said in a statement. "NASA and NHTSA engineers stood side by side in this study to try to find the root cause of the problem. We have a strong team including some of the best electronics and software experts in NASA."

The NESC was established in 2003 after the Columbia space shuttle accident with the goal of bringing in experts from around the world to help solve complex problems.

DOT said NASA evaluated the electronic circuitry in Toyota vehicles and analyzed more than 280,000 lines of software code for any flaws that could cause acceleration. At Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA tested mechanical components of Toyota cars that might have prompted unwanted throttle opening. At a Michigan facility, meanwhile, NASA experts exposed the cars to electromagnetic radiation to see if that might cause unintended acceleration.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

LSI Comedy Night!

We just returned from our "comedy night" evening show where our Exectives, Greenbelts and Blackbelts got together for an evening of fun and networking. More info and photos to come....here are some for now!  A big thank you to the Improv Theatre Sports team who hosted our event!




Monday, February 7, 2011

Blackbelt Kickoff

Today was the kickoff day of our flagship program, Blackbelt Certification.  An exciting day for 16 participants who arrived from all over North America!  Take a look to see what the first day was like....

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Trust Issues

 How to restore trust in business

Source FT.com

NOTE: you can click here to download the actual presentation:

Trust Barometer PDF
 
Business has had a disastrous year. Iconic companies have crumbled, profits have evaporated and unemployment has grown rapidly. Pundits have mourned the bleak state of trust in business and governments. What has been mourned has now been measured.

According to the 10th Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed 4,500 upper income, highly educated people in 20 countries, nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) say they trust corporations less today than they did a year ago. In the US, home of some of the greatest corporate collapses, the survey recorded the most dramatic plunge: only 38 per cent say they trust business to do what is right (a 20 per cent drop from last year) and just 17 per cent say they trust the information they get from a company’s CEO.

By a 3:1 ratio, respondents want tougher regulation of business. At the same time, two-thirds think business should partner with government to solve global issues like the credit crisis and energy costs. Yet to play the meaningful role it must in shaping the new world, business will have to make the case that it can be trusted – and have that case believed. At the moment, this appears a daunting task.
So where does business go from here?

Business leaders need to think differently about what it means to be a public company. No longer can their sole objective be to maximise profits. Our data suggest a strategy of “public engagement”, by means of a fundamental shift in both operations and communications.

The four pillars of “public engagement” are:

• Private-sector diplomacy: Business has both the opportunity and the responsibility to become a primary actor in developing solutions to global problems. Business must partner governments and NGOs to address key policy issues and the world’s most pressing problems, not merely the ones that have an impact on their bottom line. This is an opportunity for business to act as a private sector diplomat, recommending appropriate regulatory frameworks across borders. If companies fail to take the initiative to do so, they run the risk of having policies thrust on them.
• Mutual social responsibility: Companies must realign their business practices so they deliver dual objectives: benefit society and the bottom line. Companies must integrate into their products and services approaches to societal problems such as climate change, healthcare and energy independence. Immediate stakeholders such as employees and customers must be invited to participate in a company’s social responsibility decisions and actions – and the public at large must be kept informed about the progress the company is making toward those goals.
• Shared sacrifice: CEOs must demonstrate that they too feel the burden of the recession. At a time when workers are losing jobs and investors are seeing stock values plummet, voluntary executive pay cuts and forfeiting of bonuses send a powerful message that leaders are in tune with the realities facing employees. Leaders also must communicate with employees about the problems confronting the company and welcome their voices. This type of transparency and collaborative spirit will help engage them in finding and embracing solutions.
• Repeated, swift and accountable communications: 60 per cent of our respondents said they need to hear information about a company three to five times before they believe it. The CEO should set forth the company’s position, but then it must be echoed by others – by individuals who often sit outside the company – including industry experts, academics and ordinary citizens. Companies will be well served by moving from a mindset of control to one of contribution.

Mainstream media continues to be a critical way to reach opinion formers, but it is not the only one. Companies should inform, with a real commitment to speed, the conversations among the new influencers – always under way on blogs, in discussion forums, and bulletin boards. Every company can be a media company by creating easily accessed, substantive online content that can be improved by the public.

An adherence to transparency is at the core of each of these pillars. Organisations must be forthright and honest in their actions and communications. When problems arise within companies, stakeholders need to see senior executives take a visible lead in acknowledging errors, correcting mistakes and working with employees to avoid similar problems going forward. The essence of public engagement is the commitment of companies to say – and do as they say. In a time of utter distrust, business leaders must make the case for actions and then demonstrate their progress against those goals.

Among our global audience of 25-to-64-year-olds, being able to trust a company is one of the most important factors in determining a company’s reputation. It ranks just below the quality of a company’s products and its treatment of employees, on par with a company’s financial future, and more important than job creation, giving back to the community, and innovation in products and services.
Business has had the benefit of the doubt for the past 25 years. It must now re-earn the mantle of authority by restoring the confidence that has been so widely lost. Without trust, it will be difficult for it to help rebuild the financial system or have the licence to innovate – much less operate.

Calgary Greenbelt Kickoff



We successfully kicked off another Greenbelt program in Calgary this week with 15 people!




The group worked hard for the past 3 days on a hands-on 5S kaizen at one of our hosting companies, Trophy Foods Inc. and will be returning for Module 2 Feb. 28-Mar. 4 and Module 3 Mar. 21-25.

We would like to thank Canadian Pacific Railway’s Calgary Office for hosting the lecture portion of our 3 module program for the past few years. 



The Greenbelt class had an exciting module 1 week!  They are all exhausted but looking forward to module 2 and 3 coming up in the next several weeks.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Hamburger University in Shanghai Is Sizzling

It's where McDonald's intends to develop leaders for a massive Eastern expansion

Zhou Xiaobu runs from one end of a table to another, grasping a piece of a jigsaw puzzle her team is assembling as part of a leadership training exercise for McDonald's managers. "Go, go, go!" yells their instructor, exhorting them to work for the prize, a box of Danish butter cookies that will go to the first group to build the company's trademark Golden Arches. Above their heads a sign reads: "Learning today, leading tomorrow." The thick green binders stuffed with paperwork on each of the 31 students' desks indicate this is no place for slackers.

Such is the seriousness of purpose found at McDonald's new Hamburger University near Shanghai, where the chain aims to crank out a new generation of leaders to fuel big expansion plans in China. While the 20th-floor training center is no Harvard, landing a spot at the Chinese campus of Hamburger U. (McDonald's has seven worldwide) is actually more difficult than getting into the Ivy League icon. (Less than 1 percent of McDonald's applicants get in, making Harvard's 7 percent acceptance rate look downright welcoming.) Zhou was one of only eight people hired from among 1,000 applicants for a management trainee position in the central Chinese city of Changsha. She then had to compete with 43 other workers at her store to be named first assistant manager, earning her a slot at Hamburger U.

Getting into the school is so competitive because more than 26 percent of China's 6.3 million college graduates were unemployed as of July 1, compared with a 4.2 percent jobless rate for its urban workforce. That has caused grads who wouldn't normally consider a food-service career to give Mickey D's a look. "The main reason McDonald's put up Hamburger University is to professionalize the sector, making it easier to recruit better people," says Joel Silverstein, president of Hong Kong-based consultants East West Hospitality Group.

McDonald's is counting on students schooled in store operations, leadership, and staff management at the Shanghai campus to power its mainland growth. So far it's been outpaced by rival Yum! Brands, parent of KFC and Pizza Hut. McDonald's operates 1,300 stores in China and aims to have 2,000 by 2013. Yum already has 3,700 in China, where it earned 44 percent of its $1.33 billion operating income in the first three quarters of 2010. An approving Wall Street sent Yum's market value up 40 percent last year, vs. McDonald's 23 percent.

McDonald's plans to raise investment in China by 40 percent this year after boosting such spending by 25 percent in 2010. It opened a record 165 outlets in China last year and plans 1,000 more by the end of 2013. Analysts say the chain can't meet that goal without minting more local managers to run individual stores and chart regional strategy. "They are preparing a base that will allow them to accelerate that rate of expansion," says Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer of OakBrook Investments.

Hamburger U., which will cost McDonald's 150 million yuan ($22.8 million) in the five years through 2014, trained 1,000 of McDonald's almost 70,000 Chinese employees last year, says Susanna Li, its head. An additional 4,000 will attend classes through 2014. "We'll make sure the people pipeline is ready," she says.

The bottom line: McDonald's has big growth plans in China. It has opened a Hamburger University campus there to train managers to run those new stores.

Quote of the day

 
"If I had a choice between looking into the past vs looking into the future, I will always choose to see the future.  That's because you can't change the past, but you can influence the future."

David Chao

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Blackbelt begins next week!

Everyone at LSI is very excited to have yet another Blackbelt class starting next week here in Vancouver. This class promises to be one of the most exciting group, and we are counting the days to the launch!  Keep your eye on our blog as we plan to do a daily blog during the Blackbelt kickoff week. The photo below is from one of our past Blackbelt presentation day (yes someone actually delivered a judo demo!).

Get Lean Certified.... now in Toronto!

Greenbelt TORONTO 2011 SPRING


Is 2011 the year for you to get LEAN CERTIFIED?

Do you have what it takes to facilitate and coach lean project management skills within your organization? Would you like to improve your skills as a team player, motivator and a true champion?

If you are ready to become a certified trainer, capable of developing your own training materials within your company, please join us for the Greenbelt programs.

In addition to our programs in Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg, LSI also offers Greenbelt in Toronto (for the last few years).

The schedule is as follows:

Module 1: Mar 14-18: Introduction to Lean

• Lean Philosophy & Toyota Principles

• Team Building and Lean Tools

• 5S and 5S Kaizen Blitz

• Homework & Preparation for Module 2



Module 2: Apr 4-8

• Presentation Skills & Design Your Own Simulation

• Cycle Time Reduction

• Homework & Preparation for Module 3

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator


Module 3: Apr 26-29

• Office Kaizen

• Present Your Completed Projects

• Final Exam

• Graduation

Registration is in full swing and space is limited. If you or anyone you know may be interested, please take action today.

For more information, please email: event@leansensei.com or call us toll free 1-888-574-5326 or direct (604)264-1000.