Lean training comes to your own door

Gateway to Industry and Cardiff University’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) have launched a flexible six month training programme for manufacturing business leaders, aimed at improving their ability to manage using tools to analyse business performance and develop better competitive strategies. It’s the first course to be delivered through the Centre for Engineering Manufacturing Excellence (CEME), which is a joint venture between the London Development Agency, Heart of Thames Gateway, Ford Motor Company and Barking & Havering Colleges. Like some of the TIC (Technology Innovation Centre) courses in Birmingham, it’s delivered in users’ own factories and tailored to focus on their businesses, rather than case studies and theoretical companies. Manufacturing managers assess and judge their own success factors by studying their own companies, and benefit from specialist individual support and advice on strategic business subjects from Cardiff’s LERC experts Professor Peter Hines and Mike Dale. Jacqui Wordsworth, Gateway to Industry Manager says : “Senior managers in manufacturing businesses find it difficult to spend time off-site to think or act strategically. By making these world leading experts accessible to [them], we are confident they will develop their own skill base and move their businesses forward. If successful, we plan to work with Cardiff University to extend courses throughout the Thames gateway region.” The Gateway/LERC partnership makes the point that consultancy McKinsey’s study, ‘Reviving UK Manufacturing’, states that foreign-owned companies operating in the UK, are over 50% more productive and US-owned plants, and up to 90% more productive than comparable UK plants – yet all draw from the same talent pool. McKinsey recommends three disciplines for greater productivity, and these will all be covered in the course – deploying leading-edge lean manufacturing techniques; aggressively managing performance; recruiting and developing high calibre people.