..1. LTT (cont.)

…

Saturday -bright and sunny- we started off the Mezcalero entering the “Yello Tram” of the DVB (http://www.dvb.de) that brought us straight to the HTW. We were a bit overdue as Prof. Eberle and Christoph had arrived just on time and were preparing the seminar room.

After everybody had arrived and a short glance in the lots of interesting books could be made the group settled down.

So what’s next? Program?

As it was difficult to really fix a program before hand we had a short introduction of everyone and his intentions to come to the meeting (even over quite some distance;-)). The reasons ranged from curious to see other people active in lean thinking, seeing Dresden, discussing interesting questions and last -but not least- improve the skills that are necessary to bring LEAN THINKING forward in established organizations.

…then -to my own surprise- everybody agreed on starting with the BEERGAME (http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/MFS/beerMFS.html) first to settle down for the essential questions of supply chain management.

I think everybody of us didn’t think at 9:30am that we would still play and discuss around the Beergame still at around 6p. It was an excellent experience and we brought questions to light that are inherent of similar supply/production systems.

Holger took the initiative to moderate the deeper insight session in “How can we solve the experienced shortcomings (lack of trust, sticking to the numbers, oscillation, lack of communication, etc.) of the initial rounds of the Beergame?”. In smaller groups of three we learned about installing supermarkets between the different steps of the supply chain. It was a challenging discussion time and we all were deep in the learning process gathering new insights.

….to be continued

Impressions of 1. LTT in Dresden

Hello everybody,

it’s been three weeks now since the 1. LTT took place at the HTW Dresden (FH) (in English: University of Applied Sciences) right in the middle of the wonderful city of Dresden beside the railroad tracks. The university used to be the national university for railroad engineers during the GDR-times and the closeness to Dresden Main Station can be explained.

Out of a number of about 700 participants -I don’t know about the activity of the people in the group- a small -but nevertheless ruthless- group of eleven people joined the 2-day sessions on the 15. and 16. of September. They came from all around Germany, either by plane, train or car and starting points of their journey were Lippstadt, Hannover, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Leipzig, Berlin, dem Odenwald and -not to forget- Dresden. To make it real lean knowledge expanding experience a hotel for all us was looked for with a special flair. At first there was the idea of staying on a boat (http://www.diekoje.de) in a small harbor in Dresden on the river Elbe. Because this was sold out we moved the location to the Mezcalero, a backpacker hostel close to the Königsbrücker Straße right in the heart of Dresden-Neustadt (the most vidid suburb of Dresden). After everybody had arrived that Friday night we strolled in the Neustadt to take something to eat and chat about what was coming the next two days. At around 1 am we left the place and moved back to Mezcalero (http://www.mezcalero.de) , we agreed on breakfast at 7:30am the next morning and starting from there down to the HTW.

LTT – begins in two days!

Hello, the LTT (Lean Thinkers Treffen; a German expression for Lean Thinkers Meeting) is taking place on Saturday, 15.09.2007 and Sunday, 16.09.2007 in the beautiful city of Dresden. The goal of the meeting is to bring together people with different background but all with the same vision of Lean Thinking in order to increase common knowledge and understanding of the underlying causes that enable or  disable the implementation of LEAN in organizations -in general.There will be live reports directly from the event -as everything works out fine;-))Looking forward to getting responses and ideas on that event and a follow-up next yearRalf 

…just the beginning of the journey;-)

As all beginning is not easy that will be just the start of the LEAN discussion journey.

Cheers,

Ralf