Dr. Evelitsa Schweizerhof, the global operations and Six Sigma manager at Ford Motor Company, will provide one of the two keynote addresses at “Lean Manufacturing 2005: Lean Tools for Maintenance & Reliability,” a national conference on lean best practices. The event, presented by Noria Corporation and its Reliable Plant magazine, will be held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It includes pre-conference workshops on October 3 and the case study conference on October 4-5. More than 200 industrial professionals from across the country are projected to attend this conference, which will feature leaders from best-in-class companies explaining how they utilize lean tools and techniques (the Toyota Production System, cellular manufacturing, RCM, Six Sigma, value stream mapping, mistake-proofing techniques, kaizen, TPM, etc.) to increase the reliability and performance of their plant machinery. Lean helps companies remain competitive in a global marketplace where speed, cost and efficiency is king. Schweizerhof will provide an overview of the Six Sigma deployment strategy and evolutionary process at Ford Motor Company. The growing demand for delivering faster and greater results has created a natural merger between Six Sigma and lean methodologies, promoting a continuous improvement (kaizen) mind-set. This presentation provides the framework and integration approach behind the Six Sigma kaizen methodology and its profound results in the culture and the business. Schweizerhof has a PhD in mechanical engineering, is a Six Sigma master black belt, and studied kaizen and lean in Japan. She worked in the aerospace industry as a lean kaizen sensei before taking the global operations position at Ford Motor Company. At Ford, she developed the Six Sigma kaizen process that is used at all of the company’s plants. Other speakers at Lean Manufacturing 2005 include: Rick Baldridge, reliability functional leader and Maintenance & Reliability Center of Excellence steering committee member, Cargill – KEYNOTE speaker Luc Claisse, vice president of Operational Excellence, and Ahmad Ashour, Operational Excellence leader, ABB Richard Word, senior reliability leader, Whirlpool Chris Hykin, mill reliability manager and director of operator-driven reliability, International Paper Beau Groover, lean implementation manager, Nordson Corporation Mike Burmood, deputy director of facility services, Raytheon Systems Company David E. Brown, Reliability and Maintenance Center of Excellence leader and director of manufacturing excellence, Hercules Inc. Dr. Jay Lee, director of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems, University of Cincinnati Christer Idhammar, president, IDCON Inc. The pre-conference workshops on October 3 will be: - “Effective plant reliability management,” presented by Drew Troyer of Noria Corporation - “Rx: driving lean to Its fullest potential,” presented by Terry Keown of Life Cycle Engineering To learn more about this conference, visit www.lean2005.com or call 920-568-9768.
