Allison Grealis is founder and president of Women in Manufacturing (WiM), a national trade association focused on supporting, promoting and inspiring women in the manufacturing sector. She is also the vice president of membership and association services of the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA), a full-service trade association representing the metalforming industry. Since joining PMA in 2001, Grealis has held a variety of positions that included district, committee and division management; affinity partner relations; sponsorship sales; new product and service development; and member services. Grealis earned her Bachelor of Arts in English with a certificate in Women’s Studies from Ohio University and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Akron. Presently, Grealis serves as the president of the Greater Cleveland Society of Association Executives and as a board member of Our Lady of the Elms High School. We are thrilled to have Allison join us at the American Manufacturing Summit. She will be Chair of our People & Workforce Management Stream, as well as hosting a Lunch and Learn on “Succession Planning: Support, Promote, and Inspire Women in Manufacturing”, and participating in a panel on avoiding the skills shortage in the next 10 years. We sat down with Allison in advance of the event to ask her some questions about where manufacturing is going and how to support women in the industry.
Read More →Sustaining a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Implementing lean initiatives can be a challenge, but sustaining them is even harder. As Mark Reich, COO of the Lean Enterprise Institute, told the crowd at the American Manufacturing Summit, “to be sustainable, it has to be more than a program. As long as it’s a program, it’s not going to be sustainable. Because as soon as whoever’s program it is leaves, it’s not going to sustain. So it has to be built into the company’s fundamental way of doing business.” In other words, it needs to become part of the culture. Once you have made the case for change and built the concept of continuous improvement into the culture of your organization, it is leadership’s responsibility to continue to nurture this culture. In his presentation, “Culture: The Definitive Piece in your CI Journey,” at the American Manufacturing Summit, Mark Gooch, GVP, Operations & Lean Enterprise at Pentair, gave the following tips to the audience on sustaining a culture of continuous improvement.
Read More →Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement: The Case for Change
A lot has been written about how to truly implement continuous improvement processes and lean initiatives, you need to embed it in the culture of the organization. “Every company in manufacturing has to develop an operating philosophy, a standard methodology, and a language that creates a culture that focuses on continuous improvement,” Byron Greene, former VP & Head of Vehicle Assembly at FCA, explains. But how does an organization go about doing this? Michele Calbi, former VP, Lean Transformation at Navistar, told the audience at the 2016 American Manufacturing Summit, “You have to create a case for change. It is extremely powerful. If you can drive that passion into the employees, you will see amazing things.” She shared a few stories of companies that have pulled themselves out of dire situations by creating a powerful case for change.
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