The Office of Process Improvement is hiring 2 Student Process Improvement Coordinators. The successful candidates will work with the department on specific improvement goals as well as support the Michigan Tech campus community in carrying out diverse improvement efforts. More position information is available on NACElink, Job ID#15871. Candidates must be available to work over the summer of 2012. This position is year round and the hours are flexible. $9.00/hour.
Things have been heating up with the work for the grant project (goal: to expand the use of Lean Principles across campus, strengthen labor/mgmt relationships). The committee is developing two training programs that will be taught by an an external consultant. We will be looking for all levels of employees to apply for the training programs. Here are descriptions of them:
LEAN FACILITATORS
This cohort is designed to be half represented (union) employees and half non-represented employees. This group will develop a practiced understanding of what makes a Lean Organization, the Key Principles of Lean, and various tools and concepts. They will understand their role in improvement events, and will practice their skills by facilitating on-campus improvement events after the training.
LEAN IMPLEMENTATION LEADERS
This training is for non-represented staff that are positioned in their department or work areas to plan and implement a lean transformation. The training will give them a working knowledge to become a Lean practitioner and hands on experience applying Lean problem solving methods.
Stay tuned for details on a series of information sessions to learn more about these opportunities.
Things have been busy, October came and went in a blur. October was the first month of an 18 month grant cycle for a $55,006 grant received from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Labor-Management Cooperation Grant Program.
The grant will support the Continuous Improvement Labor-Management Advisory Committee; an 11 member committee, composed of six “management” staff and five union staff (all three of Michigan Tech’s unions represented). The committee was put together to further develop the Continuous Improvement using Lean Principles Program as a method to improve labor-management relationships and increase staff participation in enhancing work environments.
Goals of this project include:
- Develop a Continuous Improvement/Lean Facilitators’ Training Program to train new facilitators and provide continued education to current facilitators.
- Recruit and train a cohort of 10-15 new campus facilitators, consisting of at least 50 percent unionized staff members.
- Develop an outreach and training program to introduce supervisors and management to the Lean model of continuous improvement and how it can enhance work processes and labor-management relations.
- Provide training to Michigan Tech employees who are key to managing and expanding the Lean continuous improvement programming developed as part of the Project.
- Sharing Michigan Tech’s model at a regional and national level via publications and presentations at key conferences, meetings, and workshops.
It is an exciting time period for Michigan Tech’s Lean Journey, the next 17 months will be busy yet rewarding.
The Continuous Improvement website will be launched later next week. There will be a presentation of the website at the Staff Council meeting on Thursday, April 21st at 12:00 PM in the MUB Datolite Room 100. Everyone is invited to attend.
The website launch will also be announced in Tech Today!
Today the Continuous Improvement website will be sent to a select group of individuals to undergo beta testing. A group has been selected to help rid the site of any broken links or bugs and to help ready it for it’s public release in one of the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned for the launch!
Hello Everyone! Welcome to the Continuous Improvement Blog.
This blog is set up to complement the Continuous Improvement Website (which will be on-line soon!), to keep our campus community up-to date and involved in University improvement efforts. Here are a few things you can expect hear about through this blog:
- Announcements of new or updated tools and resources,
- Announcements of continuous improvement overviews, trainings and report outs
- Success stories, lessons learned, pictures and other examples of on-campus improvement initiatives
- Links and information to outside resources, webinars, and trainings
- Quick tips and other educational posts, and
- Guest writers sharing their stories.
I am also very open to suggestions you might have for future blog posts!
-Wendy Davis