Breathing new life into manufacturing and creating good, high-paying jobs are top priorities for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), and they’re continuing this effort by teaming up with companies that demonstrate best practices leading to enterprise excellence through shared learning with like-minded individuals and organizations.
During the AME board of directors meeting April 14-16, the AME Champion’s Club, a group made up of senior leaders at companies throughout North America, visited the Ogden, Utah, facilities of automotive safety systems manufacturer Autoliv.
“Autoliv uses lean to manage their business; it is their culture and is engrained in everyone,” says Pat Carguello, director of the AME Champion’s Club. “The meeting scored near perfect in our participant evaluation because Autoliv is truly a best-in-class operation, and our members walked away with some exceptional knowledge and insights that may help improve their own operations.”
The AME Champions were not the only individuals to benefit from the event; Autoliv leaders also recorded AME’s thoughts during a successful question and answer exchange between the two groups.
“We were able to gain fresh ideas and thoughts containing ‘nuggets of opportunity’ from our AME guests, while they felt the power of our workers’ creativity being unleashed,” says Tom Hartman, senior director at Autoliv’s Lean Consulting Group. “AME invested the time and passion necessary to discover in one visit what many fail to find in a lifetime.”
The AME Champion’s Club was established in the mid-1990s exclusively for “Champions of Excellence” within a company. Membership enables these change agents to interact directly with those who hold similar responsibilities in other organizations, and to obtain the education and networking most beneficial for senior-level professionals. As change agents, these individuals have the means necessary and will play an important role in helping to improve the future outlook of manufacturing jobs in North America.
About the Association for Manufacturing Excellence
The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) is the premier not-for-profit organization dedicated to the journey of continuous improvement and enterprise excellence. AME’s membership is composed of a trusted network of individuals who are committed to leveraging the practitioner-to-practitioner and company-to-company shared-learning experience. Through engaging workshops, seminars, plant tours and industry-leading conferences, AME members are continually discovering and implementing new continuous improvement strategies and best practices. AME offers its members a multitude of valuable resources to help them stay abreast of current industry developments, and improve the skills, competitiveness and overall success of their organizations. For more information, visit www.ame.orgor e-mail info@ame.org.