Contact:
Adam Stoehr
VP Education and Research
Excellence Canada
416–251-7600 or 800-263-9648 | adam@excellence.ca

Lean Advisors Inc., Intersol Group Ltd. and Excellence Canada develop alliance to help Canadian governments and corporations become world-class leaders.

OTTAWA – March 23, 2015 – Today Lean Advisors, Intersol Group and Excellence Canada announced a joint partnership to support public and private sector organizations to achieve excellence through a sustainable, integrated approach to running their operations.
Canada survived the economic downturn of 2008 and is now poised to compete with the world. But, in order to compete, Canadian industry and government must become ‘world-class’ organizations. And ‘world-class’ is not about being the biggest or having control of the major markets. It’s about being able to meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them by their clients, stakeholders and competitors. The goal is to be able to provide services and products better, faster and at less cost while improving staff engagement and involvement in the required changes. If they are successful they will become ‘world-class’ and will become global leaders and models for the future to the benefit of all.

The road to success will require a multi-faceted strategy. No one tool or area of focus will be enough. They will need three (3) things:

1) a Well-defined Standard which can be conveyed to all staff,
2) a Solid, Proven Process Transformation Methodology and,
3) a Change Management Approach that is effective across all leadership and staff.

To achieve this goal, Excellence Canada, Intersol Group Ltd. and Lean Advisors Inc. have formed an alliance that will be able to support any public or private sector organization in pursuing these key strategic elements. “Our clients now have the ability to tap into expertise for any of their needs as they progress on their journeys to Excellence, said Adam Stoehr, Vice President of Education and Research, Excellence Canada. Canada has been in need of this type of integration of expertise and credibility for a long time. Now it’s here!”

“Now organizations will be able to set a strategic vision and communicate that direction to support all staff and provide the knowledge and tools required to successfully create the change needed to become best-in-class”, said Larry Coté, President & CEO, Intersol Group and
Lean Advisors Inc.

Intersol Group with its 25 years of experience and professional staff assisting groups, large and small, on how to engage staff, align strategy and drive common, supported direction.

Lean Advisors Inc. with over 30 years of experience coaching, teaching and adapting Lean (process transformation) in all sectors.
Excellence Canada (formerly the National Quality Institute) with over 30 years of experience improving performance through coaching, teaching and recognizing Excellence with the prestigious Canada Awards for Excellence.

The future vision is attainable by those exceptional organizations that want to lead. This partnership is now capable of supporting, coaching, training and officially recognizing all phases of success through an entire journey to becoming ‘World-Class’.

About Lean Advisors, Inc.
Lean Advisors, Inc. is one of the most respected Lean consulting groups in North America. Lean Advisors, Inc., founded over 14 years ago and based in North America, has built a team of senior consultants with hands-on experience in a variety of sectors. In addition to their work with industry, the company has led the way to successful Lean practice in fields such as Healthcare, Education, Government and Manufacturing.
Our senior consultants’ mastery of Lean and Kaizen methods, combined with hands-on industry experience, has prepared them for tough ‘real world’ issues such as resistance, outside perceptions, conflicting agendas, and the need for senior management support. They help individuals become Lean leaders within their organizations as they overcome resistance to change and instill a Lean culture of continuous improvement. To learn more, please visitwww.leanadvisors.com

About Intersol Group Ltd.
Intersol Group Ltd. is a bilingual team of experienced consulting, facilitation and learning professionals whose expertise lies in harnessing and building lasting organizational capacity for its clients. Since 1989, the Intersol team has successfully delivered over 6,000 projects to hundreds of public sector, private sector and non-profit organizations across Canada.
Whether the focus is on shaping vision and strategy, on managing change, on stakeholder consultation, or on high performance teamwork, Intersol helps organizations leverage the knowledge, experience and expertise inherent in their own people.
Using processes, methods and tools that engage people to collaborate effectively and efficiently, we work with clients in the areas Stakeholder Engagement and Public Involvement; Direction Setting and Organizational Effectiveness; and Individual Effectiveness and Workplace Learning. To learn more, please visit www.intersol.ca

About Excellence Canada (formerly the National Quality Institute)
Excellence Canada is an independent, not-for-profit organization that is committed to advancing organizational excellence across Canada. Excellence Canada has helped thousands of organizations become cultures of continuous quality improvement and world-class role models, through its four-level Progressive Excellence Program.

As a national authority on Quality and Healthy Workplace®, Excellence Canada provides excellence frameworks, standards, and independent verification and certification to organizations of all sizes and in all sectors. It is also the custodian and adjudicator of the prestigious Canada Awards for Excellence program, of which the Patron is His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General of Canada. To learn more, please visit www.excellence.ca

Visit www.leanadvisorsonline.com or Call  (877) 778-6413.

Endorsed by:

Lean is a strategy and way of thinking that creates more value for clients by eliminating activities that are considered waste. Any activity or process that consumes resources, adds cost or time without creating value becomes a target for elimination. Lean focuses on the client and what the client feels is ‘value’.

Our approach is to focus on end-to-end ‘system-level’ improvements (as opposed to ‘point improvements’). Improving the end-to-end system-level work will dramatically improve your results – cost, quality, speed of service and flexibility. In order for a process to reach its full potential, it is important to initially understand what is happening from a system perspective (end-to-end). We must transform the selected Value Stream(s) – from request of the product/service to the actual delivery of that service. Not focusing on the end-to-end process will result in only ‘point improvements’ and create what we call ‘Exciting Chaos’. This ‘Exciting Chaos’ will inhibit the process from reaching its potential and could ultimately undermine the success of the organization. With our innovative methodology, we eliminate the risk of obtaining only minimal results and ensure your success both culturally and technically.

Presenter: Steve Withers

Senior Consultant, Black Belt, Lean Advisors, Inc.
http://www.leanadvisors.com

Steve Withers has 30 years of process improvement experience using lean thinking, six sigma, process management, and change management skills.

Before joining Lean Advisors, Steve was the Director of the Lean Sigma Centre at Canada Post, where lean thinking has contributed in excess of $200 M in savings over the last few years, as well as improvements to on-time delivery, safety, and quality. At Canada Post, Steve was responsible for setting the lean strategy, leading and coaching major process improvements, and for deploying CPC’s intensive lean and six sigma training programs.

Steve received his hands-on training while working directly at the Lean Enterprise Institute for three years, and has helped them develop some of their existing educational products. While working at LEI, Steve gained hands-on experience in helping many different types of organization – some examples include, Gorton’s (food preparation), Northrup Grumman (aerospace and electronics), Lockheed Martin, Newmont Mines (gold mining), Trillium Healthcare, Tyco Healthcare, Xomed Medtronic, Kitchenaid, Whirlpool, EMS (NASA and space), Puerto Rico Electronics, Xantrex (electronics), Crane Valve, Hermes Electronics, California Microwave (aerospace), Forethought Insurance, Solectron (electronics), Hidden Hitch (automotive), Eaton Automotive, Fisher Controls, and Thomas & Betts (electronics).

Steve has a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto, and has attended the University of Tennessee’s Lean Systems Design program, Michigan State’s Logistics and Process Improvement programs, Design for Six Sigma training, and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He is a certified Process Management instructor. He has been a guest lecturer on lean at St. Mary’s University, the University of Sao Paulo, Carleton University, Ottawa University, and at the Ministry of Transport in Tokyo.

Steve is known for his dynamic training style, and for his ability to motivate teams to make rapid and sustainable change in any type of organization.

PMI OVOC Saturday Seminar Series – September 15, 2012

At Canada Post, Steve was responsible for setting the lean strategy, leading and coaching major process improvements, and for deploying CPC’s intensive lean and six sigma training programs.

Steve received his hands-on training while working directly at the Lean Enterprise Institute and Lean Advisors, Inc. during their early years, and has helped them develop some of their existing educational products. To read more about Steve Withers click here.

When implementing Lean, how can your organization handle change when they are already working at capacity and everything is a priority?

The thoughts and ideas that emerged from the participants of our Lean Executive Day were so valuable we have consolidated the notes for the benefit of our online community.

Create a product family matrix (in offices too) that will identify the value streams; ensure each one has a leader, and with key metrics point to the most important value streams to improve. This will help to prioritize your resources, and get consensus from senior staff.

Make sure to use value stream mapping to plan improvements to ensure the most important issues are prioritized

- Without a value stream approach you may be wasting your improvement resources in areas that will not yield an end-to-end improvement (or even make things worse!)

- A value stream plan also provides important improvement sequencing to make sure the product or service flows smoothly as improvements are made.

- A future state value stream plan is based on critical system design principles (not random brainstorming) that a good consultant will transfer to your improvement teams. (Teaching them to fish – so to speak)

Make sure that there are strong champions in place to ensure that value stream improvements keep moving and have resources

- The champion should break through barriers that are hampering progress

- The champion can assign resources to the improvement teams

- The champion should meet with the improvement leaders at least biweekly to keep things moving

- Champions show the right amount of impatience, and demand great results

Use consultants to grab attention.

-A consultant being on site tends to focus the attention of internal staff, often because the improvements are getting outside scrutiny. Usually this means that improvements happen more to schedule, and get the resources needed.

Make sure that lean is not a second cousin to the overall corporate strategy

- Make sure that lean is embedded in the organization’s key strategies so that it is not an afterthought receiving poor resourcing

- Measure your improvements and make them part of regular reviews. What gets measured gets attention. One good way to do this is with A3’s (one page reports for each improvement)

Make sure that lean is part of leader’s business plans and scorecards

- It is more likely that lean improvements will get the attention and resources needed if they are part of the written goals of the leaders

- Make sure in communication and change planning to continually reinforce how lean improvements are helping to achieve organizational goals

Communicate! Keep lean on everyone’s mind, so that they keep moving forward.

When management (especially middle) or staff is over loaded and can’t handle any further new demands on their time, use a ‘Managing Capacity’ Value Stream Analysis to determine what the management and staff are forced to do day-to-day in order to meet the current pressures and responsibilities.  Sometimes called an Activity Value Analysis, the next step is to design a future state plan that eliminates the non-value and allows them to work on more value – must be done with exec support as part of the strategic deployment charter.

On February 7th, the filled  to capacity event was attended by executives, across many industries, that spent a day discussing with their peers and our leadership team their experiences and challenges with their own lean implementations.

Workshops covered various topics such as resolving conflicting organizational pressures, handling change, managing priorities and achieving support at all levels.

Participants received  tremendous value from attending and the feedback from those who participated was that having the opportunity to brainstorm, gain ideas, insights and strategies to navigate individual situations made this event a success.

A Lean Executive Day focused on the Public Service sector will be taking place this
spring.

Contact Us if you would like to learn more about the topics covered and how
we can help your organization, or to find out about the upcoming Public Service
Executive Day.