News

Posted On: 08/20/2008

University of Tennessee to offer Lean manufacturing certificate program

PlantServices.com

The Life Cycle Institute has partnered with the University of Tennessee Center for Executive Education to launch Establishing Reliability Excellence for Lean Implementation (Lean Reliability) – a certificate program taught by practitioners focused on establishing foundational reliability in support of Lean manufacturing. 

According to Dr. Alex Miller, dean of the Center for Executive Education, the main obstacles to implementing Lean include:

1. resistance to change from employees;
2. lack of integration of Lean into the overall business plan;
3. lack of stability in current business processes, which can occur in the form of people, materials, process variation and machine reliability.

Dr. Miller said, “We recognized that by not addressing reliability issues, many companies were failing in their attempts to implement Lean. Subsequently, they abandon Lean and become even more vulnerable to offshore competition.”

Lean Reliability is designed for plant managers, maintenance managers, business unit managers, directors of operations and vice presidents of operations who are interested in transforming their business through the principles of Lean manufacturing by first optimizing manufacturing assets and processes.

The first class is scheduled for Oct. 12-17 in an intensive, one-week residency period at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus. For more information on Establishing Reliability Excellence for Lean Implementation, call (865) 974-5001 or e-mail TheCenter@utk.edu. Click here for course literature.