We have a number of great events scheduled. See the events tab for more information.

Please join us in recognizing the following as newly Certified Lean Masters.

• Anne-Sofie Kruger - Micro Motion Inc - Boulder

• Kevin Brown - Woodward Inc - Ft Collins

• Kent Sorenson - Wolf Robotics - Ft Collins

• Brandan Greeley - Wolf Robotics - Ft Collins

• Pat Ferren - APICS Northern Colorado

Lunch-N-Learn this month is on Feb 16th.  The topic will be New Product Development Best Practices for Supply Chain Performance.

We have events in Fort Collins, Longmont and Broomfield.  One hour for lunch, discussion, networking and it costs only $10.

Come network with others interested in expanding their skills over soup and sandwiches or salads.

See here for details;

Broomfield

Longmont

Ft Collins

Make your reservations today.

We had a number of profitable value stream improvement inititiatives during our recent class that completed in January:

• New Product Developement for a Service Organization
• Reducing Non-value Added Time in a Daily Production Review Meeting
• Improving Service Level While Reducing Inventory Risk for Special Order Items
• Improving Service Level While Reducing Lead Time for Low Volume, High Mix Items
• Improving Material Flow in a Machine Shop with both Batch and Kanban

Each participant worked on a project with tangible ROI that more than paid for their investment in time and dollars.

The next series of LEAN Master education is set for March 12.  Check here for details and location.

Having been involved in New Product Launch for many years with frequent launches, almost quarterly sometimes, I often am asked in APICS classes what is the most important aspect of new product launch.  Before I answer that let me first reflect back on a commonly cited industry benchmark that approximately says;

~ product launches that miss the target launch date significantly loose as much as 30% of the total product life cycle projected revenue ~

Our theme this month for Best Practices is on Product Development for Success.  It's never enough to have top notch engineering teams or a great Strategic Commodity Sourcing team if there is not a clear cut path built around standard work for launching new products effectively.  See the article provided here by Stage-Gate International.  We are not endorsing any single source or provider of support.  We are sharing some excellent perspectives on critical success factors for effective product development and launches.

Doing this badly can be very costly.  Doing it well allows your to execute with extreme clarity and precision which equals higher market share.  Let us know what you think.