Relationships make a critical difference in times of crisis. The AME Consortia model helps companies build solid, long-term relationships with other leaders on a common journey towards excellence.
Overview
This panel of executive and frontline leaders from across industries will share real-life examples of companies tapping into the AME Consortia network to navigate daily change and build for a prosperous tomorrow. Come discover how companies are sharing, learning and growing together as members of this dynamic community.
Company
The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) is the premier not-for-profit organization dedicated to the journey of continuous improvement and enterprise excellence. AME’s membership is composed of a trusted network of volunteers who are committed to leveraging the practitioner-to-practitioner and company-to- company shared-learning experience. Through engaging workshops, plant tours, webinars, summits and industry-leading conferences, AME members are continually discovering and implementing new continuous improvement strategies and best practices. AME offers its members a multitude of valuable resources to help them stay abreast of current industry developments and improve the skills, competitiveness and overall success of their organizations. www.ame.org
Panelists: Marc Braun / Dale Gehring / Anne Musitano / Enrique Perez / Rick Sunamoto / Seth Voelker
Marc Braun is the president of Cambridge Air Solutions. He joined the Cambridge family in April 2008 as the vice president of operations and later served as the executive vice president of sales and marketing. He was promoted to president in January 2017. Through his leadership, Cambridge has set a strategy that works on the internal and external growth of the organization. Braun believes organizational health is everything. His goal is to double the organization's sales in five years through healthy and sustainable growth by holding employees to the highest of expectations and loving them unconditionally. 
Dale Gehring recently retired as the director of continuous improvement and sustainability for ESCO Corporation. He has more than 40 years of manufacturing experience with ESCO Corporation, a leading global provider of highly engineered consumable products for the resource, infrastructure, power generation and transportation markets. During his time with ESCO, Gehring was a founding consortia member, which today has 50 members in the Portland, Oregon area. He has served on the boards of Clackamas Academy of Industrial Science, a STEM charter school, and AME, on which he served as chair.
Anne Musitano is the operational excellence administrative director for Akron Children’s Hospital. She has worked with the executive leadership team and the front line to implement and improve the daily management and strategy deployment systems throughout the enterprise. In 2019, the operational excellence team improved the quality of care and patient experience through the reduction of days to wait for care by 143,000 and the reduction of wait time of patients at appointments by 51,000 hours. The direct and indirect financial impact for lean improvement projects has also resulted in over $15.9 million. The operational excellence team has also been integrally involved in the lean design, construction, and operations of Akron Children’s Hospital buildings, saving $80.8 million. Musitano holds a bachelor's degree in pharmacy, a doctorate in pharmacy, a master's degree in business operational excellence, and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Ohio State University.
Enrique Perez is the vice president of global supply chain and operations at Chef Works. He has worked in the apparel business for more than 20 years and has become known internationally for his application of lean into this industry. He has lead teams across many countries that have brought results with quicker lead times and lower costs. Perez is a practitioner of people-centric leadership and drives everything back to what makes a company great: its people. He was a founding member of the AME San Diego Consortium and continues to help with AME conferences each year.
Rick Sunamoto is the vice president of lean strategies and operational excellence for HME. He has a diverse background spanning forty years in manufacturing, materials, program management and industrial engineering. The AME San Diego Consortium and like organizations were his inspiration and greatest source of lean learnings and real-life laboratories to bring lean concepts and practices to life. His lean journey began 18 years ago at HME and culminated in HME receiving the AME Manufacturing Excellence Award in 2019. Previously, Sunamoto was the vice president of manufacturing at HME.
Seth Voelker is the continuous improvement manager for Essex Industries. Essex has been an AME Consortia member since January 2020. In the last 10 months, Essex’s continuous improvement team has been able to share, learn and grow from several relationships that were made in the consortium. The goal at Essex is to root the culture of continuous improvement into all levels of the company. Voelker has 20 years of experience in manufacturing and retail operations and holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, an MBA, and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
An AME Consortium is a group of local companies (20 +/-) that collaborate for broad, deep, accelerated lean-CI progress better, faster, and easier than they can do it alone. These dynamic practitioner-to-practitioner networks are designed to support you in accelerating your company’s journey toward excellence. AME currently has consortia in and around Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Toronto, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco. Learn more.