INTERVIEW – Dave Brunt tells us about the upcoming UK Lean Summit, one of the year’s must-attend events for lean practitioners.

Words: Dave Brunt

Planet Lean: Another UK summit is coming up! What can we expect?

Dave Brunt: The Summit is a two-day event taking place on April 8th and 9th. But, really, it is a week of lean learning we are offering, as we have capability development workshops on Monday 7th and a visit to both the Toyota vehicle assembly plant and the engine plant on Thursday 10th.

The purpose of the event is to share how Lean can be used to solve the problems of today and tomorrow, raises awareness of the latest developments in Lean Thinking and Practice, and provide insights into practical ways to get started, deepen or enhance your journey of transformation. Of course, it will also enable participants to build their own network of lean thinkers.

We’re continuing to develop our analysis of the themes we dived into last year. These are:

• The productivity challenge.
• Supply chain disruption.
• The environmental crisis.
• The growing use of digital.
• Managing inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.
• Talent development and retention.
• Developing new products and services to deliver value for customers.

PL: Can you give us an idea of the program?

DB: We mix plenary sessions with learning sessions. Each plenary are 30 minutes and the learning sessions are 1.5 hours in duration.

We’ll have a variety of keynotes, reflecting current topical subjects. Pierre Masai, who has recently retired from Toyota and now heads up the Lean Institute in Belgium, will discuss Lean IT – in particular the subjects of jidoka and JKK. We’ll have Oliver Conger, MD of British Rototherm, talking about how they are using lean and their involvement in the Welsh Government’s Lean Clusters programme. Toyota’s Simon Rowley will discuss capability development (he is Senior Manager for Operations Management Development, and his responsibilities also extend to the Toyota Lean Management Centre). Stephen Hepplestall will share the work law firm Weightmans are doing to apply lean to virtual processes. It’s a fascinating area and there are lots of hints and tips Stephen will share on overcoming the challenges of seeing work in virtual environments. Brian Chilton will share how he has been developing problem solving capability at TechnipFMC. This is always an area of interest for delegates as most “excellence initiatives” include problem-solving approaches. Brian has some great insights in terms of getting the process going and developing ongoing capability.

We’ve also got several speakers from the Lean Global Network. Oriol Cuatrecasas will present the work done to apply lean in restaurants. Mark Reich will share insights from implementing hoshin kanri and his new book “Managing on Purpose”, the latest Lean Enterprise Institute publication.  And we’ve invited Jim Womack back, as his reflections are always insightful.

Most plenary presenters will do a Learning Session, but we also have Learning Session-only speakers. This gives people a more practical insight into the subject being discussed. We will four learning sessions in parallel, two times each day. This enables delegates to mix and match attendance. We’ve added sharing sessions this year in the learning sessions and have NHS King’s College, and Kruk Italia participating in those. The learning sessions that haven’t got a keynote this year include Mike Moore, who will do some hands-on activity around lean, AI and kaizen. Nick Rich and Alisha Gibbons will share lessons learned from teaching lean to undergraduates at Swansea University. Ewan Gilmore and Sam Beckman are discussing how they navigate the obstacles of traditional management as they implement lean at Thales. Yu-Hsiu Hung from Taiwan is back with us to do a breakout on Lean Product and Process Development principles and the LEA team is doing four learning sessions on the key elements of the Lean Transformation Framework questions.

PL: Tell us more about the pre-summit workshops, please.

DB: The pre-summit workshops are all about developing capability. There are five one-day workshops. We’ve taken the opportunity for Mark Reich and Professor Yu-Hsiu Hung to conduct workshops on hoshin kanri and Lean Product and Process Development respectively. Peter Watkins is running one on Management Systems, while David Marriott is conducting one on core leadership skills for lean. I’ll be leading one on our new book. The title of the workshop is “Applying Lean Thinking and Practice.”

The idea is that we teach people about these subjects but also share learning processes that attendees can use themselves. Workshops are a great chance to learn afresh or brush up on your skills.

PL: What about the visits to Toyota?

DB: The are visits to the Burnaston vehicle assembly plant and to the Deeside engine plant. Toyota customized the visits for us, linking thto the themes they discuss at the Summit. I love going to see at Toyota. It doesn’t matter how many times you have been, you always see something new.

PL: Why shouldn’t people miss this summit?

DB: It’s the best event of its type. That’s not me saying that; it’s the customers telling us. Last year was a sell out and bookings are ahead of plan for this year, so reserve your spot to avoid disappointment. We have a lot of repeat customers who tell us the summit is always inspirational, so if you haven’t been, come and take a look. It gives a unique opportunity to learn while building your network.

_THE AUTHOR