Kansas City Chapter Competes Series of Lean Workshops

In response to member requests, the PIA-Kansas City Chapter maintains a continuing focus on "lean processes." Recently, a series of four workshops were held in cooperation of the Metropolitan Community Colleges/Business & Technology Campus. Workshop topics included: CEO Update, Lean 101, Lean: the Industry and Lean: The Plan.

These sessions were very popular and due to the high response, three of the four sessions exceeded capacity. They were lead by "subject matter experts" including Day Boswell and Rick Glover of MCC/BTC as well as Ken Rizzo of PIA/GATF. We expect to offer these and other new workshops in 2008.

A continuing core activity of this initiative will be bi-monthly roundtables which include presenters, plant tours and group discussion. The next roundtable will be November 8 at INX International.

The chapter has formed a steering committee under Chairman Ken Fite of Henry Wurst Inc. to plan future roundtable meetings and workshops. For more information, contact Jim Oldebeken at 816/421-7678 or jimo@piamidam.org. For information on training and consulting resources available from MCC/BTC contact John Ream at (816) 482-5229 or John.Ream@mcckc.edu. Ken Rizzo can be reached at

Class activities & problem solving

Day Boswell instructs class

Gary Sage, MCC-BTC; Ken Rizzo, PIA-GATF; Joe Cichon, INX

Ken Rizzo, PIA/GATF Senior Consultant

Lean workshop attendees

Lean workshop attendees

Day Boswell, performance consultant with MCC/BTC

Marco Seabra of GEMACO works on class project

Rick Glover, senior performance consultant presents at final session