Lean Enterprise Solutions

Rapidly evolving technologies and changing global economic and strategic conditions require new approaches to all aspects of an enterprise’s operations. For over ten years MDC personnel have been involved in the application of Lean principles to areas beyond the factory floor. Lean for engineering and product development, service and support operations, and healthcare services are areas were MDC has taken basic lean principles and reinterpreted them for different processes, environments, and customer need sets. MDC's core lean capabilities include on-site seminars and a unique training simulation to efficiently transmit the powerful, but sometimes difficult, concepts of lean to engineers and enterprise managers. Using these principles, MDC has created lean engineering and lean enterprise training programs for a number of major US aerospace corporations. The MDC staff also collaborates with the Lean Advancement Initiative at MIT to make this knowledge available to educators through the LAI Educational Network.

Custom Solutions

MDC has years of experience applying lean outside the traditional factory setting: • Unique six-sigma blackbelt training for a large US aerospace corporation • Training to familiarize engineers with the fundamentals of lean • Lean seminars for healthcare and other corporate leaders and managers • Creating educational and training curriculum and simulations • Authoring papers on the application of lean in a number of innovative areas • Tools for value stream mapping and transformation of engineering processes • Facilitating the setting of goals and visions and the creation of value stream maps and improvement plans at a variety of industry, government, and academic sites Much knowledge is transferable, but every problem is different. Let MDC put our experience to work for you!

Lean Training

Lean, Six Sigma, and other continuous improvement methods and tools present special challenges for trainers and educators. It is difficult to teach process improvement without a set of processes as context. Lean techniques are not always intuitive, so simply explaining them does not give students the necessary insight. Lean techniques are applicable to any process, but the details matter – production, service, engineering, and health-care processes all demand different approaches and tool sets. The tools are easy to use ineffectively or even counter-productively, so poor training can have serious adverse effects on process improvement efforts. MDC responds to this challenge with a creative blend of traditional learning, active-learning exercises, immersive table-top simulations demanding both analysis of real processes and working with teams of real people, and real process expertise in a wide variety of fields. We have many solutions ready for immediate deployment; we are also ready to help you create training designed for your unique processes.

Lean Academy

Metis Design, in collaboration with the Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at MIT, administers the LAI Educational Network (EdNet). This network takes the knowledge created by MIT and associated researchers and creates practical applications, including university level curricula, training, tools, and documentation of current best practices. Some of the products of this collaboration include the LAI Lean Academy, a set of teaching materials that can be given as either a three-five day intensive course or a semester-long university course; the Lean Enterprise Value (LEV) Simulation, a powerful modular table-top simulation, which serves as the core for customized active learning experiences, from basic courses to advanced "black-belt" training, and a number of other products. Metis Design personnel also support LAI in helping LAI member companies with planning and transformation events, using proprietary LAI tools and techniques.