Happy New Year! Welcome to the January 2010 edition of our monthly newsletter, Learning to Lean. In this month's edition, we will talk about the application of lean to administrative and office processes and functions.

Announcements

In just about one month, our 2010 Lean Manufacturing and Lean Office Certification programs will begin in Orange County, CA. Individual classes are also available for registration. The schedule is below; click here for more details.

For those of you for which classroom training in Southern California is inconvenient, we continue to offer our online lean certification and training programs. To learn more about online lean training including pricing, click here.

Course (Click course name to download description, click date to register)	Date
Lean Certification Program - Spring 2010	Feb 10-11; Mar 10-11; Apr 7-8; May 5-6
Lean Office Certificate Program- Spring 2010	Feb 10; Mar 10-11; May 6
Introduction to Implementing Lean	Feb 10, 2010
Value Stream Mapping	Feb 11, 2010
Lean and Value Stream Mapping for Business Processes	Mar 10, 2010
Kaizen Events: 5S, Visual Controls, and Mistake Proofing	Mar 11, 2010
Quick Changeover and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)	Apr 7, 2010
Creating Continuous Flow Manufacturing Cells	Apr 8, 2010
Lean Production Control and Inventory Mgmt.	May 5, 2010

Any of our courses can be brought to your facility and customized to meet your requirements.

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

Lean Office

While lean implementation almost always begins with the "money-making" processes of an organization- for manufacturing companies, this is manufacturing, application of lean principles must eventually extend to the entire enterprise. Functions such as sales and marketing, purchasing, accounting, IT, and others each have an influence on the value streams that deliver the product or service to the customer. If they are ignored, application of lean thinking in places like manufacturing will hit a brick wall quickly. (A commonly cited example of this is when traditional accounting/measurement systems cause organizations to revert to their old ways just to "make the numbers.")

This month we feature three articles about the application of lean to office/administrative processes. First, we define lean office. Next, we talk about wastes within an office environment. Finally, we talk about mapping administrative processes.

The materials referenced in this newsletter will teach you more about lean. If 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