Topic(s)
- Operations improvement
Learn best practices to continue your AME conference experience in your local community by connecting with or starting an AME Consortia. Most of the tour sites at this St. Louis conference are consortia members and have been part of monthly benchmarking tours over the last six years. Consortia membership provides employees, including line workers, managers, engineers and executives, with the opportunity to go and see other AME company member facilities in their local market without the added expense and time of travel.
This panel of executive and frontline workers from across industries will share real-life examples of how their companies are tapping into the AME Consortia network to grow personally and move their businesses forward.
AME Consortia is a collaborative set of dynamic regional communities sharing knowledge and best practices. They are member-led and supported by a facilitator acting as a trusted advisor, connecting members and experts to knowledge in the AME community and beyond. Restrictions on travel, site visits and training have not stopped their ability to share, learn and grow.
In this session, discover how companies are moving forward and building connections as members of this dynamic community. AME’s Consortia companies continue to attract and retain top talent due to their people-centric culture, commitment to developing their employees and ability to provide meaningful work.
Companies
Crown Equipment Corporation is a leader in the evolution of the material handling industry, earning more than 100 global design awards and launching new technologies to increase uptime and lower total cost of ownership. https://shop.crown.com/crown/en/
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 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
Moderator
Melissa Kaufman is the operational excellence director for Crown Equipment Corporation and is responsible for the global deployment of lean throughout Crown manufacturing and business systems. She has more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing operations and has held various positions in engineering, lean, six sigma, value stream and business unit management.
Kaufman is a director on the AME Great Lakes Regional board, a member of the AME Consortia Steering team and serves as a board member for the OSU Center for Operational Excellence. She graduated from Wright State University with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering.
Panelists
Jonathan Jones is a firm believer in the St. Louis region as a great place to build a business and raise a family, and he believes that in order to enhance our region, we must develop leaders at all levels. He works with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence as a facilitator for a collaborative consortium of twenty organizations in the St. Louis region, where they share, learn and grow together, strengthening our manufacturing community.
Jones is also an executive coach with Vistage, where he facilitates four private peer advisory groups for CEOs and key executives. He conducts over thirty one-on-one coaching sessions each month with CEOs and provides assistance to an additional forty-plus executives and the employees they serve.
Over the last three decades as a leadership and organization development professional, Jones has built a reputation for assisting businesses of all sizes in increasing their performance and profitability while navigating the inherent challenges of growth that come with purposeful strategy and deliberate execution. 
Other panelists TBD
