Happy New Year! Welcome to the January edition of our monthly newsletter, Learning to Lean. In this month's edition, we focus on the basics of lean implementation.

Announcements

We are offering a public lean certification program. Click here for details. The following individual public courses may be taken separately or as part of a certificate program. We can also bring any of these courses to your facility.

Course (click on date to register/read more)	Date
Introduction to Implementing Lean	Jan 27, 2005
Value Stream Mapping	Feb 17, 2005
Creating Continuous Flow Manufacturing Cells	Mar 10, 2005
Creating Level Pull / Kanban Systems	Mar 31, 2005
Material Flow and Kanban (purchased parts)	Apr 14, 2005
Kaizen Events: 5S, Visual Controls, and Mistake Proofing	May 5, 2005

Click here for details on all of our training offerings, both on-site at your facility and public.

We have created a survey in which you can tell us what types of public workshops you would like to see us offer. Click here to take our anonymous survey.

Implementing Lean

Many organizations have made attempts at implementing lean. However, most of them have not systematically implemented; they have implemented spot improvements. Furthermore, most haven't created a firm foundation from which to build on. They've treated lean as an industrial engineering exercise instead of a culture change. In the next few editions, we are going to revisit some foundational aspects of lean implementation.

This month we feature three articles that should help you understand more about effectively implementing. Firstly, we give you an overview of lean implementation. Our second article talks about building a foundation for lean. In our third article, we talk about the seven wastes of manufacturing.

The materials referenced in this newsletter will teach you more about implementing lean effectively. If the articles, links, and books to the left have piqued your interest and you would like to learn more, feel free to call us at 866-559-5598 or visit our website and click on "Contact Us."

To subscribe to this newsletter, visit http://www.emsstrategies.com/newslettersignup.htm. Please feel free to forward Learning to Lean to colleagues or use it in your publication. We only ask that you do so in its entirety.

EMS Consulting Group, Inc. - 7040 Avenida Encinas, Suite 104-189 - Carlsbad, CA 92011