Lean Green Belt program helps business leaders nurture growth

The Macomb-Oakland University INCubator is offering a professional certificate program for business managers looking to tackle targeted concerns within a company's value stream or operations, to apply lean principles in focused areas, and to recommend ideas for culture change.

Scheduled for May 1 through June 28, the Lean Green Belt Certificate program will help participants understand and apply Lean principles that enable organizations to diversify their product and service offerings. Streamlining processes, maximizing success, developing employees, impacting financial measures and improving customer satisfaction and value are among topics to be covered.

Macomb, Wayne and Oakland county professionals specializing in the defense, homeland security, aerospace and manufacturing-related industries are strongly encouraged to pursue this career development opportunity, as are leaders of companies heavily reliant on a specific industry or select products and wishing to explore diversification options. Representatives of targeted companies can apply for fully grant-subsidized registration.

The Green Belt Certificate Program would, of course, be an asset to any business manager seeking to use the Lean philosophy to develop excellence, nurture innovation, efficiently allocate resources and eliminate waste.

This course, part of the OU Lean Diversification Program, will be run by industry professionals including Debra Setman, founder and lead adviser of Arbed Solutions and co-founder of Michigan Lean Consortium; and Ravi Lote, global operations manager for Production Modeling Corporation and Mike Taubitz, principal consultant of Lean Journey, LLC, and senior adviser for FDR Safety.

The 42 hours of classroom and online instruction time includes an average of one day per week in the classroom, a one-day benchmarking visit for a Lean assessment, and four weeks allotted for independent completion of individualized projects. Regularly scheduled sessions will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Tuition for this certificate program is $600. For more information on the program, grant opportunities and registration, visit oakland.edu/diversify or contact the Pawley Institute at (586) 884-9328 or lean@oakland.edu.