Seasons Greetings! Welcome to the December edition of our monthly newsletter, Learning to Lean. In this month's edition, we focus on preparing for lean implementation.

Announcements

We are offering a public lean certification program beginning in February 2007. If you register prior to the end of the year, you will receive a $200 discount. 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	Feb 1, 2007
Value Stream Mapping	Feb 22, 2007
Kaizen Events: 5S, Visual Controls, and Mistake Proofing	Mar 8, 2007
Quick Changeover and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)	Mar 22, 2007
Creating Continuous Flow Manufacturing Cells	Apr 5, 2007
Material Flow and Kanban	Apr 19, 2007
Lean Production Control and Inventory Mgmt.	May 3, 2007

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

Preparing for Lean Implementation

Many organizations that we encounter are preparing to launch lean programs beginning in the new year. Since this is our last newsletter of the year, we felt that it was appropriate to address the preparation that must occur prior to implementing lean.

This month' edition features three articles that should help you understand more about preparing for lean implementation and implementing lean. Firstly, we talk about the necessary steps to prepare for lean implementation. Our second article talks about the steps to lean implementation. In our third article, we talk about developing a foundation for lean implementation.

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