Chris Maxson has joined the Office of Process Improvement as an interim manager and will be assisting the office through September. Chris serves as the Skier Services Manager for Mont Ripley, which is owned and operated by Michigan Tech. Previous to MTU, Chris worked as a robotic technician on a start-up team for a company with a deeply rooted culture of continuous improvement.
Here Chris will introduce himself and share some thoughts about his new role:
By this time of the year, normally my work at Mont Ripley has drawn to a close and I’m off to some summer adventures before getting back to work in the fall. But this summer I’ve been given an exciting opportunity to work with Michigan Tech’s Office of Continuous improvement as interim manager. I have always enjoyed assisting with improvement projects, so a summer to continue my Lean journey will be great.
I have been getting the question, what is the Office of Continuous Improvement? What do they do? The first time I got this question, I thought the answer was obvious. I mean, we help us all work better, right? But after the fifth question, I began to wonder: wait, what does the Office of Continuous Improvement really do?
As it turns out, we not only improve processes; we are in the empowerment business. The role of Continuous Improvement is to share knowledge and spirit with the students, faculty, and staff of Michigan Tech, placing them on a path of eliminating extra, unnecessary steps in processes making room for more capacity and value every day for all of us. Michigan Tech’s Office of Continuous Improvement is an investment into its true assets, its people.
