Event Summary

John Oskin
Executive Vice President
Informance International

Benchmarking - OEE, The Reliability Index And Other Metrics That Impact Productivity

How does your plant's performance compare to others? While each manufacturing industry has its own customer, manufacturing and regulatory requirements, it's beneficial to look outside the four walls of your own plant to compare performance metrics and best practices to gain knowledge and understanding. During this dynamic presentation and panel discussion, explore how leading companies leverage internal, external and cross-industry benchmark studies to solve problems, improve performance, and enhance continuous improvement efforts.

Benchmark research study results by John Oskin, Informance

Panel discussion: Tim Goshert, Cargill; John Oskin, Informance; Jose Wilkens, GPAllied

Special research study: Participate in the exclusive blind benchmark research study. Take the online survey to include your plant/company. All results will be presented in aggregate only, and your responses will remain confidential. You will receive a survey via email several weeks prior to the event - your participation will greatly enhance the research study and the presentation.

Tim DelVecchio
Director Supply Chain
Akzo Nobel Decorative Paints

From "Best Practice Sharing" to "Best Known and Proven Practice Transfer"

While many companies are engaged in best practice sharing, AkzoNobel Decorative Paints US takes a slightly different but (we think) more powerful approach - best known and proven practice transfer. Through targeted metrics review to identify the best performance - our company's entitlement - we proactively identify the keys to success and transfer them to all sites through standardized tools and organizational structures.

Peter T. Hock
Senior Director Continuous Improvement
ConAgra Foods

From Bean Counter to Business Partner: Engaging Finance Leaders To Drive Operations Improvement

Many organizations grapple with deep-rooted divisions between Operations and Finance. Business reality casts Finance in a role that can be perceived as obstructionist. Controls and procedures are seen as red tape. Data systems are a burden and rarely deliver business insight. Financial reports seldom reflect the progress being made.

But meaningful, sustained improvement can’t be pursued blindly. Improvement efforts done willy-nilly create excitement and engagement, but may do more harm than good. How can Finance be engaged to provide data and insight to focus and measure sustainable results?

The prescription is simple: Peter Hock, ConAgra Foods Sr. Director of Continuous Improvement and seasoned financial professional, provides a framework for engagement and change management, and discusses the tools and systems that provide meaningful insight to support lasting improvement.

Timothy Goshert
Worldwide Reliability & Maintenance Manager
Cargill

together with

Mike Aroney
Principal Advisor
GPAllied

The Role of Leadership and Change Management in Driving and Sustaining Operational Excellence

Why have so few companies achieved stronger results? The reason is simple - they often fail to fully address the non-technical element of such an initiative - the human factor. The component with the greatest variation in any manufacturing system is the "human", yet many managers neglect to address this aspect because it is non-technical. 

Most organizations are very good at solving technical problems because they have good problem solvers with sound technical skills. However, as Michael Hammer states in Re-Engineering the Corporation: "The technical problems are the easy problems... the soft stuff is the hard stuff." It is the failure to manage the "soft stuff" - changes in the organization's culture - that leads to sub-optimal results in performance improvement initiatives that are transformational in nature. While understanding the reason for failure may be simple, the road to success is not.  It requires both Leadership and Change Management.

Patricia Hatem
Supplier Development Manager
Johnson Diversey

Do you have what it takes to change?

Most improvement initiatives are needlessly overwhelming. Whether you've been asked to lead an improvement initiative, or if one is already in place, there are things you can do right now to get control and have a greater impact on change. In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to steer an objective course and eliminate subjectivity, how to be consistent and deliver appropriate discipline in the production facility, how to use data to manage, and how to talk, talk, talk to your people. Former plant manager Pat Hatem will share "war stories" from JohnsonDiversey's flagship plant in Racine, WI, and explain how plant management prepared a foundation that led to successful ongoing performance improvement.

Scott Schienvar
Director of Logistics
L'Oreal USA

Driving Performance Isn't Always Glamorous: L'Oreal's Journey

It's not easy to establish a culture of continuous improvement, especially when teams feel good about their performance. Learn how one L'Oreal plant made the transformation from complacent to champion of performance improvement, and has become the model for a broad initiative. Discover how the team struggled and overcame obstacles throughout the organization, created success metrics and leveraged technology and best practices to achieve their performance goals.

Richard Mosgrove
Vice President of Operations & Special Projects
Ventura Foods

Think Like A Leader, Drive Results

It begins with accountability. Anyone in the organization can have a significant impact on results by taking ownership and leading others toward a unified vision. Certainly, to affect corporate culture, senior management must play a significant role. But even then, it's the leaders out on the floor that have the greatest impact on teams. Regardless of his/her title, when a leader has a vision, executes the strategy, and embraces personal and team accountability, there will be measurable gains.

During this dynamic presentation, you will hear how Ventura Foods inspires leadership throughout the organization, and how accountability is not a "punishment", but a means toward operational excellence.

Manufacturing Intelligence Symposium

What does "Operations Excellence" mean? Informance helps manufacturing customers achieve best-in-class performance in their manufacturing facilities with actionable insight for the plant and enterprise, and services to drive operating strategies. Presentations by Informance management and experts will demonstrate how customers achieve immediate and strategic improvements from Informance EMI solutions. During the informative workshop, you will learn about manufacturing intelligence for the visual factory, actionable intelligence for the enterprise, planning intelligence for S&OP production planning optimization, and probability of success decision models.

John Oskin
Executive Vice President
Informance International

Visual Factory

Continuous improvement project goals are sometimes tough to reach, especially when team members don't understand "where we've been," "where we are," and "where we're headed." The visual factory, or "visual reinforcement" is pivotal to reaching project goals. Often, plant management and line workers live in a reactive state of putting out old fires. This is apparent when they rely on day-, week-, or month-end data review. The visual factory is a real-time approach to meeting project targets. During this presentation, you will learn how manufacturing facilities across a variety of industries leverage the visual factory, and respond quickly as improvement opportunities arise.

Marc Mailman
Product Manager
Informance International

Enterprise Reporting

Operational Improvements certainly contribute to financial performance. But, is it possible to quantify those contributions in terms of hard dollars? Most manufacturing companies struggle to bridge the gap between operational metrics and hard dollar savings or revenue uplift. To properly drive business decisions based on operational metrics, manufacturers must employ performance analysis within and across plant facilities. This enterprise financial performance visibility takes shape using multiple sources throughout the plant. During this presentation, delegates will discover how to properly organize and interpret manufacturing data in order to enhance plant performance.

John Oskin
Executive Vice President
Informance International

S&OP

Inaccurate standard rates and old planning rates in the ERP system may be to blame for idle lines and backlogs. When production runs finish sooner or later than expected, idle lines or backlogs create issues across inventory, customer service, labor costs and many others. Accurate and timely analysis of downtime and cycle time can result in appropriately set standard and planning rates. The result is a validation of each existing rate or an adjustment, higher or lower. During this presentation, you will learn how to integrate manufacturing data into planning rates to accurately set standard rates within ERP systems.

Pat Crane
Vice President of Sales
Informance International

EMI with a Financial Context

Regardless of the economic climate, most manufacturers are always looking for ways to quantify savings opportunities and reduce manufacturing inefficiencies. The Informance perspective of "all downtime is not equal" paves the way toward understanding and quantifying the value of improvement opportunities, and learning how to accurately prioritize changes and improvements. During this presentation, you will learn about approaches to determine which changes will yield the greatest savings or financial contribution.