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Getting lean: Assessing key energy solutions — Georgia Tech event Aug. 22 in Augusta

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Georgia Tech is sponsoring an event entitled “Getting Lean with Energy Systems: Assessing Key Energy Solutions” on August 22, 2017 in Augusta, Georgia.  It’s perfect for Engineering Directors or Managers, Maintenance Managers, Operations Managers, or anyone involved with energy system design and/or maintenance.

By attending, you will:

  • Learn how performing an energy system assessment can help provide a detailed understanding of the energy performance of a specific system.
  • Understand how the information and data gathered can help you reduce energy costs, lower the number of repairs and downtime, improve performance, and extend the lifespan of the entire system.
  • Hear how other Georgia manufacturing companies have discovered opportunities and made strategic improvements using energy system assessments.

Cost to attend is $15.  Event includes lunch, networking, presentation, case study, and Q&A.

Speaker: Randy Green, Project Manager for the GaMEP at Georgia Tech.  Randy has over 20 years of experience with industrial power systems and is a U.S. Department of Energy Certified System Specialist in Steam and Pumping Systems.  He holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a Master of Business Administration degree from Georgia State University.

Learn  more and register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/getting-lean-with-energy-systems-assessing-key-energy-solutions-augusta-manufacturing-growth-tickets-35969873861?aff=Flyer

This quarterly lunch and learn educational series delivers actionable tips and tools of the trade specifically designed to help Georgia Manufacturers grow their business.  To learn about more upcoming GaMEP events, visit: http://gamep.org/manufacturing-growth-educational-series/

To learn more about GaMEP, visit: http://gamep.org/

Georgia Tech hosts statewide events this quarter to help Georgia manufacturers

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Georgia Tech is conducting a Manufacturing Growth Meeting series during the last quarter of 2014 across the state of Georgia, consisting of educational and networking events designed to deliver actionable tips and tools of the trade to help Georgia manufacturers grow their business. The series is hosted and taught by the GaMEP at Georgia Tech – the same instructors that bring you expertise in the process improvement, sustainability, and energy courses.

Meetings are held in various locations around the state and topics vary based on feedback from the manufacturing companies in each area.  Meetings are currently scheduled to be held in Lawrenceville, Savannah, Douglas, Augusta, Jefferson and LaGrange.

All meetings are $15, include lunch, and are from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Here are the meetings currently scheduled around the state:

Lean & Safe: Integrating Safety Management and Process Improvement

Has your company ever implemented a process improvement, only to realize it had an adverse effect on safety? Or vice versa? Learn how to integrate safety management into lean processes from the start and prevent potential conflicts.

  • Jefferson, GA
  • Date: October 14, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Where Lean Meets Green

Learn how to include energy and environmental wastes into your Lean systems– a strategy proven to maximize your return on investments. This discussion will help you discover where your facility wastes dollars in excess energy consumption, reduce operating costs and start a next step action plan to improve your company’s energy management.

  • Augusta, GA
  • Date: October 28, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Solving Problems with Effective Employee Training

Issues with quality, production time and even workplace culture can often be eliminated with good employee training. So, what’s the best way to train a large workforce that often includes inexperienced or temporary workers? Discover a method for training employees that standardizes work processes, creates uniform standards and encourages company-wide improvements.

  • Savannah, GA
  • Date: November 11, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Bridging the Generational Gaps in Your Workforce

At a time when three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y) co-exist in the workplace, how do you create an environment that addresses the needs and expectations of the entire workforce? Discuss each generation’s unique qualities and learn how organizations can use this knowledge to motivate employees, reduce turn-over, improve morale, and improve the overall culture of the workplace.

  • Douglas, GA
  • Date: December 3, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE
  • Lawrenceville, GA
  • Date: December 11, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE
  • LaGrange, GA
  • Date: January 29, 2015
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Douglas, Lawrenceville and Savannah events focus on lean, green, safety and problem-solving topics

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Georgia’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), with help of regional partners, is launching innovative events in November, December and January, in three areas across Georgia.

These two-hour events will include networking, a one-hour training presentation on a specific topic, and a case study.

Meetings in Lawrenceville, Savannah, and Douglas, GA are scheduled as follows:

  • Where Lean Meets Green: Building a roadmap to sustainable solutions – Nov. 13, 2013 – Douglas, GA – Learn how to include energy and environmental wastes into your lean systems–a strategy proven to maximize your return on investments.
  • What’s New With OSHA? – Dec. 5, 2013 – Lawrenceville, GA – Learn how new special emphasis programs will impact Georgia manufacturers.
  • Effective Problem Solving: 6 Essential steps to solve problems in your organization – Jan. 16, 2014 – Savannah, GA – Learn to develop a problem solving methodology that focuses on processes, not people, and build problem solving skills at all levels of your organization.

Cost of each event is $10 – $15, and breakfast or lunch will be provided.

For more information or to register, visit: http://gamep.org/events-training/all-events-training/manufacturing-growth-educational-series/

Customer discovery is topic of new 6-session course offered by Georgia Tech

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How often does your team leave the office to talk to customers and potential customers about their overall product and service needs?

Reports provide good data, but customers provide great insight.

Beginning August 14, 2013, the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is kicking-off a series of six educational sessions designed to help you discover new customers and grow your business.

This intensive program will challenge you to ask the tough questions and provide you with real direction to organically grow your business before you invest excessive time and money.

By participating, you will learn how to:

  • Use rapid discovery learning cycles, and interact with several current and potential customers a week.
  • Gauge new customers, understand their problems, and learn about their needs.
  • Find new customers for your existing products or services.
  • Determine how to position your company to new customer markets.
  • Report your findings to the group and learn through real exercises.
  • Gain feedback from Georgia Tech coaches that can be applied to the next learning cycle.

For location, contact information, and cost, please click here: http://tinyurl.com/q4j9lo9

 

As local governments shrink, private consultants reap rewards

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“I would probably bring in McKinsey,” Mitt Romney once told the Wall Street Journaleditorial board, explaining how he might, should he win in November, hire management consultants to help shape a presidential cabinet.

Romney, a devotee of corporate culture who began his career at the Boston Consulting Group, promises to transfer that technocratic ethos and private-sector reverence to the Oval Office. Indeed, management consulting firms are already marketing themselves to state and municipal governments as professionals with the necessary business savvy to help manage a downsizing austerity state.

“When crisis strikes consultants are called. Consultants thrive on chaos,” says Tom Rodenhauser, managing director at Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory, which tracks the industry. “When a municipality is facing huge budget issues, and they can’t solve the problem themselves, they’ll call in consultants and make the tough choices that either politically or practically elected officials can’t make.”

Consultants, like Romney, have the appeal of “real-world” experience which, in early 21st-century America, means experience in the hard-nosed competitive marketplace outside of the public sector’s one-time easy comfort. Since August 2008, the number of public employees has already been cut by 662,000 nationwide. Consultants draw on experience from a private sector that has relentlessly slashed employment, broken unions and outsourced work for decades.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/10/local-governments-shrink-private-consultants-reap-rewards/3648/

Respect for People: Raising the value of your most important assets

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Join Georgia Tech for the annual Lean Consortium event and learn about the evolution of lean from the factory floor to human development. This year’s seminar focuses on becoming more competitive by incorporating the Harada method into your organization through linking the development of people to your organization’s success.

Lean Consortium Event Details:

Respect for People
 Date: Thursday, May 10, 2012
 Time: 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. (registration begins at 9:00 a.m.)
 Location: Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway
 Price: $295*
 Keynote Speaker: Norman Bodek

*If you have 5 or more from the same company, the group rate is $240 per seat. Contact Tim Israel to secure multiple seats at this rate.

Seminar Topics:

 The Harada Method: strengthening leaders to inspire employees to develop success goals and work out the detail plans necessary for attaining them
 Understanding and Incorporating the human side of Lean
 Turning managers into active coaches to build a winning team

Benefits of Attending:

 Understand ways to grow employees to make your company more competitive
 Learn to empower and involve employees in the improvement process
 Discover ways to enhance communication throughout the organization

Speaker:

After 18 years working with Data Processing companies, Norman Bodek founded the publishing, consulting, and training firm PCS Press Inc., where he is working to broaden the implementation of lean from the production floor to the entire enterprise. He is an author of over 100 Japanese management books on tools for continuous improvement. Norman is an accomplished presenter, having led numerous seminars, conference sessions, and training events on many continuous improvement subjects. He is also co-founder of the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence.

Central Georgia companies and organizations partner to implement lean projects

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EI2 has launched an initiative in central Georgia to help smaller manufacturers implement lean principles, a set of tools widely used in manufacturing to help identify and steadily eliminate waste from an organization’s operations. So far, four manufacturers, a hospital and a non-profit charitable organization are enrolled in the Group Lean Implementation Project, also known as GLIP.

“GLIP is a good way for smaller organizations to pool their resources and learn from each other,” said Paul Todd, a lean specialist with EI2. “Manufacturers and non-manufacturers alike can learn how to eliminate non-value added activities and at the same time find out what works for them in their continuous improvement process.”

The following organizations are participating in GLIP:

  • Advanced Metal Components in Swainsboro,
  • Duramatic in Glennville,
  • Easter Seals of Middle Georgia in Dublin,
  • Hollingsworth & Vose in Hawkinsville,
  • Meadows Regional Medical Center in Vidalia and
  • SP Newsprint in Dublin.

As part of the new initiative, EI2 lean specialists Todd and Danny Duggar have led lean overviews, assessed where each organization is in its lean journey, and developed value stream maps, which are diagrams used to analyze the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

As part of GLIP, group members rotate hosting events at their facilities, working on specific projects and discussing challenges and successes to date. Already, the team has conducted projects in single-minute exchange of die (SMED) techniques, which shorten the changeover time to reduce production lot sizes and improve flow. The team also applied 5S – a method for organizing the workplace – that stands for sorting, straightening, shining, standardizing and sustaining.

Not only do participating companies benefit from the lean implementations, but they can also take advantage of the Georgia Retraining Tax Credit, in which a company’s direct investment in training can be claimed as a tax credit. Training programs must be approved by the Technical College System of Georgia, and the tax credit can be used to offset up to 50 percent of a company’s state corporate income tax liability. To be eligible, the retraining program must be for quality and productivity enhancements or certain software technologies.

“By utilizing Georgia Tech assistance, we get ideas from professionals who are very well trained and adept in what they’re doing. The other group members bring fresh ideas from organizations with different cultures, backgrounds and types of work that we can take and apply to our companies,” said Daniel Smith, industrial engineering manager for Duramatic Products. “It gives all of us a chance to get out of our comfort zones and see how other companies manufacture so we can use it as a benchmark to improve what we do.”

— by  Nancy Fullbright, Georgia Tech- June 1, 2011.

Piedmont Fayette Hospital reduces length of stay with Georgia Tech assistance

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U.S. emergency departments serve as the front door for more than half of all hospital admissions, resulting in long wait times, crowded conditions, and highly variable care and outcomes. In 2008, the average length of stay in U.S. emergency departments was four hours and three minutes. In Georgia, the statistics were slightly worse, ranking 34th out of the 50 states with an average wait time of four hours and 20 minutes.

The emergency department (ED) at Piedmont Fayette Hospital, a 143-bed facility located 30 miles south of Atlanta, was not immune to any of these modern health care challenges. According to Dr. Richard Mitchell, lean champion for Piedmont Fayette and subsequent chief medical officer, the average length of stay for patients that were treated and sent home was more than four and a half hours, as many as eight percent of patients were leaving without being seen and patient satisfaction scores were in the single digits.

“There was a lot of turmoil when we started,” he recalled. “Piedmont Hospital already had a contract with Georgia Tech to conduct lean projects to analyze and streamline flow processes, and Piedmont Fayette’s executive staff wanted us to look at processes in the emergency department.”

In July 2008, Jennifer Trapp-Lingenfelter of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute helped train Piedmont Fayette staff in lean principles, an operational strategy that focuses on eliminating waste while increasing value-added work. Lean techniques improve profitability, customer satisfaction, throughput time and employee morale. The project began with a value stream map, a diagram used to analyze the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer.

“With detailed review of patient flow through ED, the first thing we realized was that the department was physically set up backwards. The sickest patients were being taken all the way through the department to the back of the ED and being placed in smaller rooms while the least sick patients were being seen right in front of the ED right off the ambulance entrance in an area that had previously been the hospital’s intensive care unit,” noted Trapp-Lingenfelter. “So the larger, more equipped rooms were being used for the lower acuity patients.”

To address this situation, the team re-assigned rooms and nursing stations so that the sickest patients are now placed in the large rooms at the entrance of the emergency department. The charge nurse was relocated from the front nursing station to be able to better manage incoming patients from the ambulance and reception areas.

In addition to changing the layout, separate patient flow teams were established for sickest, moderate and least sick patients. The least sick patients now go into an “express track,” where they can be examined by a physician assistant. Physicians are assigned to either the moderate or sickest track, and patients move through the system more smoothly and quickly.

“Before if we had two doctors and each took a very sick patient, the moderately-ill patients were waiting for more than two hours to be seen,” Mitchell said. “The basic idea was to keep that highway open for those moderate patients, so that when the ED starts getting clogged up with sicker patients, you can see them.”

As a result of these changes, the time in department for discharged patients dropped from four and a half hours to three hours and 45 minutes, a savings of 45 minutes per patient (32,850 hours annually) in spite of the hospital’s rising patient volumes. The percentage of patients leaving without being seen dropped from six percent to three percent, and patient satisfaction scores soared from the single digits to 64 percent.

The team also conducted a number of projects in 5S, a method for organizing the workplace. Often-used supplies had been stored in a room at the periphery of the department, were not labeled and were difficult to locate. After implementing 5S (sorting, straightening, sweeping, standardizing, and sustaining), supplies were moved to a central area and were color-coded and labeled in user-friendly language.

“Before the 5S project, supplies had been labeled in a totally incomprehensible way so no one could find anything in the supply room,” Mitchell said. “When we turned the nurses loose and let them sort stuff, they probably got rid of 40 percent of the supplies we had. By asking them how to set up the ED, they were being listened to and empowered.”

Tammy Estrada, director of emergency services, agrees that having front-line staff involved made all the difference in implementing the lean projects.

“We are constantly doing lean every week,” she observed. “We’ve been able to build on the projects that these guys did – the techniques and the principles – and now it’s a part of our language and a part of our culture.”

Mitchell acknowledges that the biggest challenge of the project was sustaining the changes and not getting frustrated when significant changes in the hospital’s metrics weren’t readily apparent.

“We had perfectly good changes, and they were the right changes, but we had difficulty sustaining them. What we were missing was the intense follow-up and the involvement of hospital leadership,” he recalled.

For three months, executive staff and emergency department leadership held nightly telephone conference calls to discuss what had happened each day and to reinforce management’s commitment to the project. According to Lisa Hedenstrom, vice president for patient care services and chief nursing officer for Piedmont Fayette, this is when the team started seeing quantifiable changes. They now hold bi-weekly update meetings.

“If you believe in shared governance and giving employees control over their work environment and decisions that they can make then this is a natural thing to do because it allows the people who are doing the work to have input into how the process works in a very systematic way where everyone is valued and appreciated,” she said. “It’s really given us a much better culture to promote patient care, thinking of how we can do things differently.”

In addition to implementing lean in the emergency department, the Piedmont Fayette team also examined a number of processes elsewhere in the hospital: post-surgery discharge, wheelchair access, supply cart storage, radiology test orders, IV pump cleaning, outpatient CT scans, pre-op patient paperwork and women’s services. As a result of these efforts, the time to process admit orders has dropped from 120 to 60 minutes, time spent searching for supply cart items has been cut in half, and turnaround time to clean IV pumps went from 24 hours to mere minutes. In addition, the number of misdirected radiology orders decreased from 15 to less than two per day, and 21 percent more outpatients can be seen with the same number of staff.

Through its Healthcare Performance Group, Georgia Tech project leaders work with healthcare professionals to conduct lean assessments, teach basic lean concepts, develop value stream maps to analyze the flow of materials and information, create quality systems and implement rapid process improvement projects. For more information on healthcare performance improvement services offered by Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, contact Jennifer Trapp-Lingenfelter (404-386-7472 ) or (jenn.lingenfelter@innovate.gatech.edu).

About Enterprise Innovation Institute:

The Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute helps companies, entrepreneurs, economic developers and communities improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology and innovation. It is one of the most comprehensive university-based programs of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization and economic development in the nation.

Research News & Publications Office

Enterprise Innovation Institute

Georgia Institute of Technology

75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314

Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA

Media Relations Contacts: Nancy Fullbright (912-963-2509 E-mail: (nancy.fullbright@innovate.gatech.edu) or John Toon (404-894-6986 ); E-mail (john.toon@innovate.gatech.edu).

Writer: Nancy Fullbright – 9/30/2010

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