New Honors College Lean class offered for fall semester

The Oakland University Pawley Lean Institute is offering a special Honors College class, HC 207: Lean Thinking, for the fall 2010 semester with Mark Doman, special instructor for Human Resource Development.

Taking place Tuesday nights from 6:30-9:50 p.m., this course satisfies the general education requirement for formal reasoning and is offered elusively to Honors College students.

HC 207 introduces the principles and practices of Lean, which is a unique system of reasoning, decision making, process improvement and organization change. These principles can be applied to a wide range of industries.

The course will teach Lean theory, rules, principles, concepts and tools as well as key supporting HRD policies and practices. The course also includes expert guest lecturers, case studies and simulations.

Students will take part in a kaizen (process improvement) team Lean workout of a dysfunctional process. They will define the problems, determine the current condition, analyze the causal relationships, design the target condition and formulate an implementation plan to achieve the target condition.

Through this class, students will develop the skills and techniques necessary to effectively implement Lean and deploy those skills in a real-world setting. For more information, visit the Pawley Institute website.