TMAC at UHCL Course Descriptions

Time and quality are the two most important measures in improving any company's production and profit performance. Lean Six Sigma explains how to impact your company's performance in each, by combining the strength of today's two most important initiatives – Lean Production and Six Sigma – into one integrated program. The first course to provide a step-by-step roadmap for profiting from the best elements of Lean and Six Sigma, this breakthrough training will show how to:

1. Achieve major cost and lead time reductions in less than a year
2. Compress order-to-delivery cycle times
3. Reduce process variation and waste throughout your organization

Unlike its predecessors, Lean Six Sigma keeps improvement tied to business strategy. You will learn how to determine which projects will have the biggest and quickest impact on your strategic and financial priorities. You will learn the secret to eliminating the time traps that add delays and hinder speed in both service and manufacturing processes. Lean Six Sigma can show you how to permanently eliminate sources of unnecessary cost while reaching Six Sigma levels of quality, and dramatically improving shareholder value. Green Belt training is a two-week course in which attendees learn basic problem-solving tools. Black Belt training is a more rigorous four-week course covering both basic and advanced tools. The courses use materials developed and offered in partnership with Accenture.

This Supervisor Certification Program provides a comprehensive curriculum to enhance the skills of current and future first-line supervisors. Upon completion of this course, certificate candidates will obtain a strong understanding of continuous improvement vs. continual improvement, problem solving skills to improve a work process as well as employee relations, job instruction targeted at standardization, effective communication, and safety in the workplace. These skills will be immediately used during the course to empower each attendee to effectively communicate their unique process for improvement.

This Safety Blackbelt Certification Program provides a comprehensive curriculum to enhance the knowledge, regulations, skills, and practice of safety at work. The course will include work-based safety, behavior-based safety, safety culture and risk assessment & risk management. It has four modules for 40 hours.

Shop floor personnel, engineering and quality staff and anyone unfamiliar with SPC and wanting to learn more will learn in this introductory course the principles and practices including terminology, SPC Steps, X Bar & R Charts, process capability, attributes charts and control charts. There are two parts – basic and advanced SPC.

The advanced course explains the principles and practices of SPC for engineering and quality staff needing to know when and where to apply SPC. Basic course is a prerequisite. Participants will learn interpretation of control charts, attributes charts, and process capabilities, measurement system analysis (gauge R&R), delving deeper into the topics covered in the basic course.

We provide a wide range of ISO related courses, which include ISO 9000 (a series of quality management standards including ISO 9001) and ISO 14000 (a series of standards related to environmental management including ISO 14001).

The Basic HACCP workshop is a two-day course (16-hours), designed to review the philosophy and principles of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) System and to discuss how to implement HACCP. The training curriculum is based on the information presented in the March 20, 1992, National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods HACCP document and subsequent revisions as approved. The HAACP training program is consistent with the intent and scope of the USDA, FSIS HACCP regulation. Up to 30% of the HACCP plan is finished in the class. Classes available include Basic HACCP, Advanced HACCP, and Recall Management.

Innovation Engineering Management System (IEMS) is an approach that institutionalizes innovation from a random event into a reliable system that delivers increased innovation with decreased risk. It provides expertise, resources, and tools to create and commercialize ideas into business through opportunity. The result is a business that is positioned for profitable growth.

Poor layout can result in excess handling and inventory, reduced process speed, increased expediting, and poor communication. This workshop details the steps of analyzing, designing, and implementing an improved facility layout to achieve maximum velocity of product moving through the system to produce income while minimizing the resources required.  Participants learn a proven methodology to make the most efficient use of the existing facility or designing improvements for an anticipated plant expansion or relocation.

The course consists of four independent modules, each of which can work as an independent course: Job Method, Job Instruction, Job Relations; and Job Safety.

Although Lean is increasingly recognized worldwide as the most productive manufacturing approach, most companies do not realize that Lean is a blend of old and new concepts. Henry Ford knew in 1926 that he could keep the prices of his products low by shortening the production cycle and standardization, and he proceeded to build his manufacturing empire on these concepts. Set up by the Roosevelt administration after the fall of France in 1940, TWI was charged to rapidly boost industrial production, productivity, and quality to sustain the war effort and was adopted by Toyota forming a cornerstone of eliminating waste, standardizing work, and creating a culture of improvement. There are three elements to the TWI training:

TWI - Job Methods Improvement
The aim of the Job Methods Training program is to help produce greater quantities of quality products in less time by making the best use of the people, machines, and materials now available. Supervisors are taught how to break down jobs into their constituent operations. They question details and develop new methods by eliminating, combining, and rearranging these details.

TWI - Job Instruction for Standardized Work
The objective of Job Instruction is to help supervisors develop a well-trained workforce resulting in less scrap and rework, fewer accidents, and less tool and equipment damage. Supervisors are taught how to effectively break down a job for instruction. The method emphasizes preparing the operator to learn, giving a proper demonstration, identifying the key points in the job, observing the operator perform trial runs, and tapering off coaching while continuing to follow-up.

TWI - Job Relations
This training deals with human behavior and relationships. JR emphasizes that people must be treated as individuals. Supervisors are given foundations for developing and maintaining good relations to prevent problems from arising. Principles include providing constructive feedback, giving credit when due, telling people in advance about changes that will affect them, making the best use of each person's ability, and earning the employee's loyalty and cooperation. When problems do arise, it teaches supervisors how to get the facts, weigh them, make the decision, take action, and check results. Problems come in two basic forms – those dealing with products and processes, and those dealing 

TWI - Job Safety
Based on the TWI instructional model, Job Safety (JS) is a complementary program focused on environmental health and safety. JS provides a framework for supervisors to engage employees in identifying potential hazards and eliminating them with their training and knowledge in OSHA and EPA regulations. JS was developed in Japan and, although it was not part of the original TWI program, it plays a critical role in industry today. This program teaches supervisors a method to analyze the chain of events leading to accidents and hazardous situations.  Root causes are identified and remediated to "break the chain". JS stresses that the relationship of the supervisor and employees plays a pivotal role in a safe and environmentally responsible workplace.

Shingo criteria and assessment measures the organization's culture and uses the critical need to align every business, management, and work system with the principles of operational excellence. When organizations are properly aligned with principles, they strategically influence people's behavior toward the ideal. You can learn the criteria and assessment methodologies originally developed by Dr. Shingo.

Lean is often viewed as a set of process improvement tools and techniques with little emphasis on the supporting systems that allows the tools to work effectively to maximize and sustain gains. The Lean Leadership workshop is a one-day, simulation-based workshop that orients the management team on the holistic view of lean, how to structure the deployment of a Strategic Lean Initiative, and the changes in roles and responsibilities that effects the management levels in the organization. After this basic course, there are several advanced lean courses such as Lan Performance Measures, Lean Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri);

Principles of Lean Manufacturing (with live simulation) is an overview class that provides a foundation for all other classes in the series. Participants begin by manufacturing various assemblies in a traditional manufacturing setting.  The results of the first simulation round will provide the setting for continuous improvement by applying the lean manufacturing principles.  Participants will have the knowledge of understanding the 8 wastes in manufacturing. A mixture of lecture and hands-on simulations will teach lessons in standardized work, workplace organization, visual controls, set-up reduction, batch size reduction, point of use storage, quality at the source, workforce practices, and pull systems. Each is designed to eliminate waste in the manufacturing processes.

The full-day Lean Office training workshop involves a mix of classroom style learning with an interactive live simulation where class participants take on the roles of managers and workers within a company. During the class time participants learn lean definitions and techniques. Then, the participants work in a traditional office environment with forms, calculators, and procedures. Throughout the day, they explore the application of lean techniques in the simulated office. To apply the lean techniques, the office is transformed in three "stages" or "days" with the improvements implemented at the end of each "stage" or "day". Through the implementation of lean techniques, office work is transformed from a confused and slow process to a much more efficient, effective, and predictable one.

Kata is a Japanese term  translating to "mold" or "shape" and is used as a training method in martial arts where trainees practice and perfect routines and movements. The idea is to internalize behavior so they can be used and adapted for different purposes with less effort. Toyota developed this approach to build and strengthen the organization's problem-solving capabilities. Toyota Kata is not a problem-solving tool, but it is a methodology to become a learning organization. The Toyota Kata helps the organization to become more agile, innovative and to solve problems. It works with the mindset to increase the speed of learning. Toyota Kata is divided into two main categories: Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata.

A Rapid Improvement (KAIZEN) Event is a team activity aimed at rapid implementation of Lean methods to eliminate production waste in particular areas of the plant. This workshop covers the three phases of conducting an improvement event including: 1) Planning and Preparation; 2) Implementation... The Event Itself; and 3) Presentation, Celebration, and Follow-Up.

A proven and highly efficient way to apply the power of value stream mapping to the product development process. This two-day "process kaizen" event allows your team to focus on a specific aspect of your development process for dramatic improvement. Once completed, participants can transfer this approach to any aspect of product development. The Value Stream Mapping for Lean Product Development Workshop requires no initial training; basic value stream mapping techniques are described at the beginning of the course. This initial tutorial is followed by a series of real-time exercises in which the attendees create a current state value stream map, analyze it for potential improvement using a set of proprietary techniques, and finally generate a future state map to guide your team's improvement efforts. This hands-on workshop covers all aspects of the subject, including a step-by-step process for using VSM techniques to systematically drive out waste from initial concept development to successful product launch.

This course teaches the fundamental principles of set-up reduction. The instructor will clearly define set-up and discuss reasons and barriers to reducing set-up time. Participants learn the standard methodology in applying Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) to any type of set-up or industry.

This course teaches shop floor workers the basics of five S's - the cleaning and straightening activities that are the foundation for all workplace improvements. It is particularly valuable for operators in manufacturing environments, pilot teams and implementers of Lean Manufacturing. This is the foundation for creating a Lean environment.

This course's goal is to help top management develop a methodology for deploying agreed upon strategic goals to achieve organizational wide alignment. Peter Drucker's "Management by Objectives" methodology is used as a foundation for the application of several Total Quality Management tools. Japanese modifications include both vertical and horizontal catch-ball instead of MBO negotiation. Formulation of A3’s for catch-ball execution and x-matrices are also introduced.

This class helps leadership understand and explain how traditional performance measurements conflict with lean performance, understand barriers to adopting performance measurements and how to begin to overcome them. In addition, it helps leaders understand and implement the starter set of performance measurements at the corporate level, the Value Stream level, and in Production Cell to motivate lean behaviors. Finally, leaders develop a clear linkage from a company’s business strategy to performance measurements used in the value stream and in production cells.

The course consists of three independent modules: Introduction, Deep Dive and 3P. The introduction modules provide basic mechanics necessary for an understanding of how a product development team can accelerate the product development cycle by first understanding the traditional methods used in typical product development environments. The prioritization of customer requirements, cost management, and a basic overview of the tools used for rapid project execution are discussed.

Deep Dive module presents a set of leading-edge, practical tools for slashing waste and increasing speed and efficiency. The "lean methods" described in this course enable dramatic reductions in time-to-market while freeing up valuable resources for additional project work. Firms that have embraced these practical, waste-eliminating tools have reported up to fifty-percent reduction in launch schedules, significant improvements in gross margin, and enhanced customer satisfaction. This hands-on workshop covers all aspects of the subject, including a step-by-step process for customizing your own lean process that will enable rapid, high-value product development.

The 3p Module describes a comprehensive set of practical, easily applied techniques for reducing the manufacturing cost of any product. Students will learn how to apply these powerful tools to real products, in real time, with high efficiency. The product development process represents the most complex, challenging, and, sad to say, poorly understood activity in business. However, reducing manufacturing costs is the fastest and surest way to achieve a measurable increase in profits. The practical lean cost reduction tools presented in this workshop can be applied to both new product opportunities and existing successful products, require minimal organizational change, and can yield immediate bottom-line results. Slashing costs is a great place to begin your journey toward lean product design excellence. The tools and methods discussed in this workshop are organized into an "itinerary" that follows the timeline of a typical product development project, from initial idea generation to product qualification and launch. Examples, exercises, and guidelines are provided for each tool to help the student decide whether that solution would be applicable to their situation. In this way, attendees can quickly craft an integrated cost-reduction strategy that is optimal for their products and markets and gain enough understanding and confidence to get immediate results.

Students will learn how to control shop floor inventory and production schedules by implementing pull systems. This course teaches how to design and implement a visually driven, employee-controlled material replenishment system. Participants also learn how to implement repetitive and non-repetitive pull systems, to set up point-of-use material storage, to interface with planning systems, and to balance lot sizes with capacity, not economic order quantity.

This course offers the student a method to proactively maintain machines and equipment at their peak productivity. Participants go away with an understanding of TPM and the five major roles in effective deployment. Each student should understand how TPM increases overall equipment effectiveness and how it can help avoid interruptions to production to achieve reduced batch sizes and increased equipment performance.  The course provides a deep understanding of the 8 pillars of TPM.

This hands-on course teaches how to link and balance manufacturing operations to reduce lead times, minimize work in process, optimize floor space usage, and improve productivity. The instructor will lead the class through the 5-step process for designing and implementing work cells. This process applies to both assembly and fabrication applications.