LEAN PERFORMANCE U

LEAN PERFORMANCE U

· Think Inside the Box

LEAN PERFORMANCE U

"I was looking for a program that could give us the tools to look at our operation and determine how to achieve better efficiencies without sacrificing quality or safety. The approach was professional from the start and I had no doubt that we had chosen the right provider."

          Kathleen Mayer, MS, RN
          Flight For Life Program Director
          St. Anthony Hospitals

Please see the Event Calendar page within this site for a current of scheduled Lean Performance U events, conferences, and workshops.

Lean [leen] Containing little or no excess or waste; thrifty in management; economical.

Performance [per-fawr-muhns] The manner or the efficiency with which something fulfills its intended purpose.

The concept of Lean, as originally derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS), is the identification and subsequent reduction of waste, time and cost, and the improvement of quality and value to the customer.

Is it a coincidence that TPS can be traced back to 1948 . . . the same year that NASCAR was formed? Probably, but it gives pause for consideration. There may be no easier example to witness the results of Lean application than that of today's motor sports pit crews.

These "over-the-wall" athletes change four tires, fill the car with fuel, make mechanical adjustments, clean the windshield, and service the driver in under 13 seconds. Less than a decade ago it took race team pit crews more than 18 seconds to perform the same tasks.

So what changed?

The answer is competition. Race outcomes are decided by thousandths of a second after five hundred miles of racing and any team is capable of winning any given weekend. Professional race teams wishing to remain competetive must evaluate every aspect of their performance . . . mechanical and human. Perform or perish.

Lean Performance U is a hands-on workshop-type event offered at PIT Instruction & Training facilities and in selected locations throughout the country. Lean Performance U and the corresponding "Think Inside the Box" presentation received the Elliott Masie Learning Consortium 2006 Innovative Learning Leadership Award.

This is your opportunity to experience what it takes to compete as a Pit Team Athlete at the highest level of motor sports racing and utilize the learnings to impliment positive changes in your business to be more competitive in your industry.

This program is been utilized by companies small and large around the country for its unique ability to address key challenges in a most unique and entertaining manner.

Begin in the classroom with an introduction to the racing industry, its development, operation and performance based metrics and beginnig to create correlations to your own business and industry needs. The session includes an introduction to the history and development of racing pit crews, overhead pit stop video analysis, and how teams predict, plan, prepare, and perform for competitions.

The hands-on experience creates unique situations requiring practical application of the concepts integral to a successful team. The experiential program puts into practice the developed concepts from the classroom session. Each team performs a series of pit stops and faces a variety of challenges in order to demonstrate the effects of communication, standardization of work, efficiency, and other topics previously addressed. Each pit stop is followed by a period of debriefing and discussion.

Following the classroom session and a lunch meal, participants are selected into pit crew teams and each team is assigned a “coach” from the PIT staff. Participants will don the uniforms and handle the tools of professional pit crews and perform your own pit stops on our own Nextel Cup cars under the guidance of an experienced facilitator.

The following day participants return to the classroom to watch the video of the pit stop experience and begin discussing what can be learned and begin developing a “compelling business case” and action plan for improving efficiency and effectiveness.

You may also choose to have a seperate event just for your group or company and PIT Instruction & Training is pleased to customize an program to meet those needs.