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History |
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The Beginnings: Highlights From AME's History Leading to Its Founding in 1985 | NOV 1977 | Nick Edwards' presentation at the APICS Annual Conference stirs discontent with job shop MRP.
| | NOV 1978 | More papers about flow manufacturing at the APICS annual conference provoke malcontents to organize their own meeting.
| | APR 1979 | This group's first meeting at Briggs & Stratton discussed repetitive P&IC.
| | SEP 1979 | Second meeting at Champion Spark Plug: Studied cumulative system used in automotive companies and other high volume manufacturers.
| | APR 1980 | While meeting at Bendix, members who had seen Japanese manufacturing questioned production control topics. The automotive Big 3 were hurting; Xerox couldn't buy parts for copiers at the price Japanese competitors were selling equivalent machines.
| | OCT 1980 | Under the Detroit APICS chapter, several AME founders organized the first known North American conference on the TOYOTA SYSTEM in Ford World Headquarters. About 500 people left confused. Featured speaker: Fujio Cho, now president of Toyota.
| | FEB 1981 | AME workshop format began to gel at Schlage Lock. Topic: Bills of material structured by order entry, a forerunner of configurator systems.
| | JUN 1981 | The Kawasaki USA workshop was a seminal event. Founders who had never been to Japan saw "JIT" techniques in action. Soon after, the 50 or so attendees began to proselytize about them, among them Doc Hall and Richard Schonberger, who began to write about them.
| | MAR 1982 | Workshops held in Portland at Tektronix and Omark Industries. Omark was implementing company-wide LEAN.
| | DEC 1982 | Automotive Industry Action Group formed. As a sister group, AIAG co-sponsored several events with AME and produced first video on what is now called LEAN, featuring Ken Wantuck and Len Ricard. Many auto executives were introduced to new manufacturing strategies.
| | SEP 1983 | Ernie Huge issued the first Just-in-Time Technical Development Newsletter. Mimeographed issues were circulated for free. Two years later, the newsletter evolved into AME's publication, Target.
| | OCT 1983 | A workshop at Hewlett-Packard in Greeley, CO drew a big crowd. This site had produced a video sometimes called the Styrofoam Box JIT simulation (still shown on occasion).
| | APR 1984 | Several of AME's founders barnstormed for the APICS Zero Inventory Crusade, collectively making hundreds of presentations on what is now called LEAN MANUFACTURING.
| | SEP 1984 | APICS called for the resignation of the steering committee for violating APICS special interest group rules. The committee decided to go out on its own.
| | OCT 1984 | With a bank balance of just $3,700, the steering committee met in St. Louis and formed a 501(c)(3) organization, the "Association for Manufacturing Excellence Through Just-in-Time." The shortened name was quickly adopted.
| | JAN 1985 | Legalities nearly complete, Lee Sage, AME's first president, invited the remnant group to sign on as AME members. About 300 paid annual dues of $100 and became founding members.
| | SEP 1985 | First annual AME conference at the Drawbridge in Covington, KY drew 186 people. Presentations were given by: NUMMI, Harley-Davidson, Black & Decker, IBM, GE Appliance, and Omark Industries. Using the proceeds, AME set up the Wheeling headquarters (near Chicago) to serve AME's membership.
| Over time, the members of the organizing committee became designated as its FOUNDERS. However, all advocates in the pre-AME movement deserve recognition for developing the Association. Members who participated in the organizational meeting, with their then current company affiliations include: | Lee Sage, Cadillac Gage
Don Geis, Hoover Worldwide
Robert "Doc" Hall, Indiana University
Larry Higgason, Ford Motor Company
"Mac" McCulloch, Briggs & Stratton | Len Ricard, General Motors
Jim Schwai, Briggs & Stratton
Ken Stork, Motorola
Nick Edwards, Coopers & Lybrand
Bill Wheeler, Coopers & Lybrand | The Now and Future Vision: Association for Manufacturing Excellence When the Association for Manufacturing Excellence was founded, LEAN MANUFACTURING was a curiosity. As individuals, AME members could discuss it without representing their companies. That era is passed; we need more commitment to enterprise excellence by SCORES OF PEOPLE. Operating excellence is now a prerequisite for survival, but it is not without challenges: - Global competition from low-cost regions.
- Greater product variety.
- More complex technology.
- Pressure to innovate, cut time-to-market, and be more attuned to customers.
- Short product life cycles.
- Possible long-term energy and materials shortages.
- Environmental strictures.
- Competition between supply chains rather than individual companies.
It's hard to grasp this mix of challenges, much less factor them into a broad, integrative journey to excellence. And no breakthrough has found a short cut. Understanding new techniques is easy; applying them harder; and new working attitudes, the change within, the hardest. To address these challenges, we recently adopted a new mission statement and supporting initiatives: AME's Mission: To inspire commitment to enterprise excellence through shared learning and access to best practices, so members can personally succeed and help drive their company’s success.
AME is actively implementing critical, new initiatives: - Encourage members to personally commit to enterprise operational excellence.
- Stimulate leadership to establish and sustain a working culture of enterprise operating excellence.
- Motivate more local area and regional-level networking and activity.
- Review and compare the significance of certifications in lean, quality, and other strategies at the core of enterprise excellence.
- Extend operating excellence to the entire enterprise and to service organizations.
- Produce regional events that "push the edge" of enterprise excellence.
- Host an annual conference to globally showcase best practices and best attitudes.
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Seminars & Workshops
August September - Networking Round Table - CT
September 02, 2010
- Lean Product Design for 3P Implementation
September 13, 2010 - September 14, 2010
- Lean Certification Review & Exam-Appleton, WI
September 15, 2010 - September 16, 2010
- Out of Another @#%&! Crisis...A Presentation by Dr. Deming (impersonated)
September 15, 2010
- Lean: Principles 1st, Culture & Practices 2nd, Tools 3rd
September 16, 2010
- AME NE Region Golf Classic and Learning Opportunity
September 16, 2010
- Shingo Benchmark Event
September 21, 2010
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