Master Class Workshops at iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards

Executive Six Sigma Boot Camp: The First 90 Days

The term "boot camp" has been used ubiquitously in recent years usually referring to getting into some kind of shape real fast. Boot camps in the military are based on two things: (1) Rapid and concentrated delivery of the basic skills required by a new role and (2) Indoctrinating the inductee into the ideology of a new organization.

In a sense, that's what we'll be doing of the course of the day. The target audience for this boot camp is those who are interested in deploying Six Sigma into their companies, but know little about the many dimensions of Six Sigma itself. Based largely on my book, Six Sigma: The First 90 Days. This Boot Camp will move the "Inductees" through three phases while addressing specific concepts within each phase:

1. Phase I: Pre-Launch Activities
   1. Prepare for the complexities of launching a new change initiative
   2. Specify Six Sigma's business model
   3. Components and expectations of a well-planned deployment
   4. Experience the use of Six Sigma tools within the process improvement roadmap
   5. How (and why) to select a consulting company for deployment support
   
   
2. Phase II: The First 90 Days
   1. Outlining the deployment milestones and defining breakthrough for your Six Sigma program
   2. Use and customize most of the deployment tools to create their own deployment plan
   
   
3. Phase III: Post-Launch
   1. What it takes to lead Six Sigma for the long term
   2. When to Refocus and Reinvigorating your Six Sigma program

This Boot Camp will start with general overview of a Six Sigma deployment to include exercises designed to give the participant a strong feeling of the Six Sigma roadmap, the common Six Sigma tools used and the requirements necessary for breakthrough success. The Boot Camp will also allow the participant to go quickly through the initial stages of launching a successful Six Sigma program. Participants will leave with a clear awareness of the steps necessary for launching a successful change initiative, and a rudimentary knowledge of the most-powerful and proven set of process improvement tools available: Six Sigma. Finally, participants will develop a dynamic Six Sigma launch proposal for presentation to their organization.

Objectives of this session:

• Participants will be able to provide their organization a draft defining the first 90 days of their Six Sigma deployment plan that rings true to their culture. They will be ready to specify the milestones, and estimate the potential business impact of the proposed Six Sigma program.
• Participants will produce a quantitative business case to justify Six Sigma deployment activities within their company.
• Given a successful program launch, participants will define and describe the leadership requirements to sustain their successful Six Sigma program.
• Participants will be able to clearly delineate the required infrastructure changes to insure a long-term Six Sigma program and provide a timely plan in which those changes will be made.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Dr. Stephen Zinkgraf

CEO and Founder
Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc.

Dr. Stephen A. Zinkgraf is CEO of Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc. (SBTI), a firm he founded in 1997 to drive business process excellence around the world.

Dr. Zinkgraf spent three years at AlliedSignal as director of operational excellence and leading the deployment of Operational Excellence (Six Sigma) in the firm's $4B Engineered Materials Sector, driving over $350M in improvements. Steve held multiple roles at Motorola, including engineering group leader, production manager and plant quality manager, and statistical quality engineering group leader.

At Asea, Brown, Bovari Ltd. (ABB), he led an internal consulting group focused on implementing Six Sigma in combination with Lean Manufacturing Systems. He also served as staff statistician for Compaq Computer Company.

He holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Texas A&M University.

The Secrets to Surviving and Thriving in a Down-Turn Economy

A leading question in today's marketplace is what's the best investment a company can make?

This workshop will introduce the participant to a methodology that can be used to systematically generate breakthrough improvement and deliver double-digit return on investment. If your Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) or operational excellence initiative has fallen short of the value you were expecting and needs a shot in the arm to rejuvenate it, or if you are a newcomer to LSS or Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), this workshop is for you.

This session will provide you with an overview of the necessary methodologies, infrastructure, and approach that have proven to be valuable breakthrough performance generators for a variety of companies. Companies no longer can afford to depend on the epiphanies of a select creative few to achieve innovative breakthroughs. Although there are no magic formulas or silver bullets, this session will give you the basics of reliable, predictable, and repeatable breakthroughs by providing you a systematic approach to gaining order-of-magnitude return on investment.

Objectives of this session:

• Given an underlying motivation for improvement, attendees will learn the difference between continuous improvement and breakthrough improvement.
• Provided the attendee has an inherent interest in achieving breakthrough improvement, the practitioner will learn what the methods, infrastructure, and approach are to repeatedly, reliably, and predictably produce breakthrough performance.
• Given a list of design parameters that may impact performance, the attendee will learn how to link those parameters to performance and then how to optimize that performance in the presence of noise variables (i.e., variation that cannot be controlled).
• Given the need to deploy these methods and approach throughout one's organization, the attendee will learn the best practices involved in achieving systematic breakthroughs on a continuing basis.

Bonus! Book Signing!
Every attendee of this Master Class Workshop will receive an autographed copy of Design for Six Sigma: The Tool Guide for Practitioners by Lisa A. Reagan and Mark J. Kiemele of Air Academy Associates.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Dr. Mark Kiemele

President and Co-founder
Air Academy Associates

Dr. Mark Kiemele has more than 30 years of teaching, consulting, and coaching experience. Having mentored more than 30,000 leaders, scientists, engineers, managers, trainers, practitioners, and college students from more than 20 countries, he is world-renowned for engaging practitioners with his Knowledge Based KISS (Keep It Simple Statistically) approach. His support has been requested by an impressive list of global clients, including many Fortune 100 companies.

Mark earned a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from North Dakota State University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. During his time in the U.S. Air Force, Mark supported the design, development and testing of various weapon systems, including the Maverick and Cruise Missile systems, and was a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Since then, he has supported more than 60 organizations in their quest for breakthrough improvement.

In addition to many published technical papers and articles, he has contributed to or co-authored the books Basic Statistics: Tools for Continuous Improvement; Understanding Industrial Designed Experiments; Knowledge Based Management; Applied Modeling and Simulation; Network Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis; Lean Six Sigma: A Tools Guide; and Design for Six Sigma Toolbook.

Lean Six Sigma Program Benchmarking Workshop

Break Through to Six Sigma Institutionalization and Culture Transformation Using the Six Sigma Maturity Model as Your Guide

After the euphoria of successfully replicating early project successes across different parts of the organization, operational excellence journeys often stumble or at worst come to a grinding halt. This workshop explores the issues that lead some organizations to fall into a chasm and become disillusioned with their continuous improvement programs. And, it identifies the keys to successfully breaking on through to other side and sidestepping the common pitfalls that stand in the way of OpEx institutionalization and culture transformation. The Six Sigma Maturity Model which describes the commonly experienced levels of OpEx journey maturity – including Launch, Early Success, Scale Replication, Institutionalization, and Culture Transformation -- provides the framework and vocabulary for the discussion and benchmarking exercise.

So, attend a "real" workshop where you will be put to work on the task of completing a benchmarking exercise for your operational excellence program using our automated Maturity calculator that you will download to your laptop. You will walk out of the door with a gap analysis by the Six Sigma which identifies where you are behind, on par, or ahead of industry norms along the axis of maturity described Maturity Model (SSMM) such as leadership, training, financial impact, reporting, strategy alignment and culture change.

Please join Instantis CEO and founder Prasad Raje as he leads this workshop designed to help you to:

• Benchmark your journey's progress against industry norms;
• Identify deployment strengths and performance gaps that may need attention; and
• Anticipate common adoption pitfalls that lay ahead.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Dr. Prasad Raje

Founder, President and CEO
Instantis

Dr. Prasad Raje founded Instantis in 1999 and has raised $30M in venture capital on route to establishing Instantis as the premier solution provider of project portfolio management software for process excellence initiatives. Prior to Instantis, Prasad was VP of Engineering at Castelle and founder of Internet Information Systems, a pioneering web-development and hosting company. Previously, at Hewlett Packard Laboratories he led seminal R&D efforts on VLIW micro architectures. He is an inventor on 8 US Patents. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he received the President of India Gold Medal in 1986.

How to Complete a Six Sigma Project With Little or No Data

In an ideal world, you can collect and analyze all the data you need to make sound data-driven decisions. Experienced practitioners know that many Six Sigma projects, particularly transactional projects, fall short of this ideal due to long cycle times, incomplete or incorrect data, expensive measurements, poor accuracy, or new products or processes with no precedent data. At worst, these circumstances can lead to the termination or shelving of projects. How does your company handle key projects with known limitations on data?

Contrary to the Six Sigma mantra that data is everything, a project can still be successfully completed with limited or no data. Mature Six Sigma implementations have expanded their toolset to include virtual techniques such as Monte Carlo simulation and optimization that can adjust for the lack of data. Driven by advances in user-friendly desktop software, these rigorous techniques can now be applied by almost any engineer or Six Sigma practitioner.

Through a series of Lean Six Sigma and DFSS practical application examples, attendees will understand how to:

• Utilize the advantages of simulation and optimization within product or process improvement projects;
• Quantify probabilistic measures of project success or financial benefit;
• Make project selection decisions while accounting for uncertainty in costs, profits, resource constraints, and time constraints;
• Compensate for sparse data when defining input-to-CTQ response relationships;
• Estimate probable ranges for CTQ quality measures based on regression and data sample sizes; and
• Identify cost impacts for measurement error (manufacturer and consumer risk).

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Karl Luce

Solutions Specialist
Oracle Crystal Ball

Karl Luce is a Solutions Specialist for Oracle's Crystal Ball Global Business Unit. His primary duty is to demonstrate Monte Carlo analysis functionality using Crystal Ball across multiple industry applications. Recent roles include Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Master Black Belt and Six Sigma Transactional Black Belt. Prior to joining the Crystal Ball GBU in 2005, Karl held analytical and managerial positions within Fortune 500 corporations in the defense aerospace and automotive industries. His background includes mechanical engineering using finite element analysis, product engineering for automotive components, and managerial positions in the United States and in Sweden. His most recent experiences improved engineering transactions and implemented robust engineering and predictive analysis within the product development cycle. He graduated from M.I.T in 1985 with a B.S. in Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering.

It's 2009: Minitab Has Your New Year's (Re)Solutions

Do your goals for 2009 include getting your Six Sigma program in shape and on track? If so, you need to join the Minitab team for this Master Class Workshop as they share real world lessons and offer guidance on how to avoid or overcome the common data analysis and project organization challenges you may be facing on a daily basis.

The workshop will be fast-paced, high-energy and result in nice surprise for one lucky participant. Here's what you can expect:

• Whether you're a Minitab 15 power user or just thinking about downloading the free 30-day trial, we will share the most common and dangerous statistical mistakes that Minitab Trainers and Mentors often see in practice and, most importantly, how you can avoid them. We will also highlight some of our favorite features to help you make the most of Minitab 15.
• If your Six Sigma projects are too often labeled "failures", you're not alone. Based on our popular web event, the Top 8 Reasons Six Sigma Projects Fail, we'll have an interactive discussion on the challenges you're facing and how you can find success with your projects.
• Standards are great – that's why there are so many of them! In all seriousness, standards are an important factor in delivering consistent quality improvement projects. However, applying them to your projects can be a challenge when you and your team members are using different tools in different ways across multiple projects. We'll talk about how you can establish and execute your own standards and how you can leverage Quality Companion's built-in and customizable tools to deliver with consistency.
• What's next? Minitab has its own New Year's (Re)Solutions and we have some pretty exciting plans for our products and services. Before this workshop is over, you'll know more about what you can expect in 2009 and beyond. Be sure to join this informative Workshop and see for yourself why the world continues to trust Minitab for quality.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Jim Colton

Technical Training Specialist
Minitab

As an undergraduate statistics major at The Rochester Institute of Technology, Jim spent summers developing his industrial statistics skills at Xerox, IBM, and ITT Hartford Insurance. "Seeing real world applications of statistics while taking coursework allowed me to put the statistical theory in proper context," he says.

After receiving his BS in statistics in 1992, Jim spent the next year finishing his MS in statistics at R.I.T's Center for Quality and Applied Statistics. He spent the next three years doing Ph.D. work in statistics at The University of Washington and The Ohio State University where he specialized in experimental design, reliability, and generalized linear models. While at Ohio State, Jim further developed his industrial skills at Kellogg's, where he designed and analyzed sensory experiments.

Jim spent the next two years in South Florida working as an Engineering Statistician at Pratt & Whitney where he specialized in simulation, reliability, and teaching experimental design to engineers. "Working daily with product developers at Kellogg's and engineers at Pratt & Whitney," Jim says, "forced me to learn how to explain statistics in practical terms."

Jim has more than 9 years experience conducting Minitab training sessions and has provided mentoring services to individual customers for over 3 years. Recent clients include FP&L, Motorola and Dell.

Generation 3 Blended Training: Creating Capable, Confident Belts

"They were rushing down that freeway, messed around and got lost." Life in the Fast Lane – The Eagles

• Is your deployment headed toward mess or success?
• Are you satisfied with your project completion rate?
• Do your belts have the critical thinking skills necessary to lead successful projects?

It's common to dive head long into a Lean Six Sigma deployment, only to realize that your training efforts are not producing confident Belts with enough experience to complete projects fast. How about applying process improvement to your process improvement training?

Attend this workshop and leave with an action plan that advances your existing training model and speeds projects to completion. We'll focus on Generation 3 (G3) Blended Learning, a cutting-edge instructional model designed to take advantage of the latest educational technologies. Innovative project simulations, collaborative activities, self-paced online study, and MBB coaching are all integrated in G3 to develop technically capable Lean Six Sigma professionals who excel in critical thinking and project execution.

G3 uses best-in-class adult learning methods, frees the experienced belts to focus on live coaching and mentoring, and prioritizes project completion – all the while cutting your training budget in half!

Takeaways from this session:

• Learn about the benefits of G3 Blended Learning, including data from on-going client case studies.
• Identify the components required to develop a successful blended learning program.
• Discuss strategies for avoiding the common failure modes companies can encounter in moving from instructor led training to a G3 training model.
• Understand the importance of using project simulations to develop critical thinking skills.

Join MoreSteam.com founder and CEO Bill Hathaway as he leads this Generation 3 Blended Learning workshop. Learn about the advances in this model and why Blended Learning has become a strategic must for top companies looking to increase the effectiveness of their Lean Six Sigma deployment.

NOTE: This workshop is itself an exercise in blended learning! Each workshop participant will be enrolled in demonstration facilities in advance of the iSixSigma Live conference and will need to bring a laptop to the workshop.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Bill Hathaway

President and Founder
MoreSteam.com

Bill Hathaway is President and founder of MoreSteam.com, which was launched in Feb. of 2000 as a internet-based process improvement learning portal. Prior to creating MoreSteam, Bill was a commercial lender for several years, then spent 13 years in manufacturing, quality, and operations management. Bill spent 10 years of his career at Ford Motor Co., then held executive level operations positions with Raytheon at Amana Home Appliances, and with Mansfield Plumbing Products. Bill earned an undergraduate finance degree from the University of Notre Dame, and graduate degree in business finance and operations from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Bill has been an ASQ member since 1986.

MoreSteam.com offers a full suite of online Lean Six Sigma learning products, including the first web-based Black Belt, Green Belt, and Yellow Belt courses, as well as Engine Room® data analysis software, TRACtion® online project tracking, CrucibleTM online testing, and SigmaSim® simulation products.. MoreSteam online courses are offered through the ASQ e-Learning center, The Ohio State University, and the University of Notre Dame, and have been used by over 20% of the Fortune 500 companies to train over 150,000 people around the globe.

Value Chain Transformation

True understanding of the issues and opportunities across an end-to-end Value Chain requires a methodology that enables companies to step back, look at the big picture, and drill down to project-level opportunities. Team that are Identifying, prioritizing, and executing business improvement opportunities across the full Value Chain (i.e., Supply Chain) is an effort which holds high strategic and financial rewards.

In this workshop, your instructors Bill Stokman and Steven Bonacorsi will present:

Phase 1: Framing and Scoping
Designed to define the vision, goals, and scope of the effort, and build the team structure, roles, and governance for the Analysis and Design phase.

Phase 2: Analysis and Design
Rapidly engages the organization to develop detailed understanding of the current value chain and the improvement opportunities that exist. Conceptual to-be processes and operating modules are developed and supported by a process simplification roadmap, deployment plan, and business case. A time-phased implementation program is then developed summarizing the work streams required to most aggressively transform the value chain.

Phase 3: Pilot & Implementation
The implementation process is typically a time-phased effort involving multiple streams of work, multiple teams, and many project activities that require Lean, DFSS, Six Sigma, Innovation, and Supply Chain skill sets. Detailed solutions are planned, piloted, and implemented. The required policy, process, people, and technology changes are executed, measured for success, and made sustainable with proper controls so that improvement benefits are permanent.

We will present examples used at Masonite and other major corporations that have used the Value Chain Transformations structured methodology, and a variety of tools, to derive this big picture level of understanding. Value Chain Transformation is a hands-on, highly interactive, and designed not only to create an understanding of the prioritized opportunity portfolio across the Value Chain, but also to create the "bias for action" necessary for the organization to take the proper steps in the implementation phase. The combination of clearly defined project priorities, together with an organization motivated to drive change, is a proven equation for success.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Bill Stokman

Principal and Master Black Belt
The AIT Group

Bill has been strongly involved in Continuous Process Improvement, Lean and Six Sigma since 1995 across several industries including Energy, Semiconductors, Aerospace, Automotive, and Pharmaceuticals. He was certified as a Black Belt in 1998 by Honeywell International and as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt by the AIT Group, Inc. in 2000. He has led several large multi-year deployments with very successful results. He is expert at taking the big-picture cross-functional view of an organization allowing his teams to directly impact the bottom line and growth of an organization. Bill has trained, mentored and certified over 120 Black Belts and over 250 Green Belts in many diverse project areas. He has certified several Master Black Belts.

Bill has over fourteen years of professional experience in Lean Six Sigma Deployment, Project Management, Manufacturing Operations, Process Improvement, Supply Chain Management, and Cost Reduction. With many years in manufacturing environments, he has championed a number of process improvement events and worked to more closely integrate design and operations. He has a strong Lean, Kaizen, and Design-for-Manufacturability background. Bill was lucky enough to spend almost two years leading Kaizen events, during this time he was trained directly by Toyota experts from Japan. He has a strong Project Management background, and was responsible for several large improvement and cost reduction projects at Honeywell and other leading organizations. Bill is a certified Project Management Professional. He has spent several years on Transactional Business Process Improvement projects and realizes the importance of taking a cross-functional approach. Bill has been repeatedly cited as an excellent instructor, coach and facilitator. He has strived to continually improve his content delivery of Lean Six Sigma to candidates. He has accomplished this by developing many innovative teaching and coaching methodologies which increase involvement and participation. Bill has an MS in Engineering from Purdue and an MBA from ASU.

Remove Politics from Project Selection to Improve Six Sigma Portfolio Value by 30%

Attend this session and find out how you can democratize project identification, solicit ideas from your constituents, eliminate earmark projects and deliver a better return from your deployment.

If you're like Six Sigma practitioners at most companies, you're likely inundated with new project ideas. But how do you make sure that you are tackling the right projects that solve the most important problems, represent the highest value and incorporate the voice of your customers? And, once you've selected the best projects, how do you ensure that they generate the projected results and how do you empower Belts to complete those projects efficiently?

We'll show you how by covering these practical topics in a lively, engaging and memorable manner:

• Democratize the process and let everyone cast a vote
• Encourage productive debate of project ideas
• Evaluate projects objectively using a consistent methodology
• Identify candidates for replication
• Decrease bureaucracy and increase productivity
• Foster collaboration, community and communication
• Incorporate continuous feedback loops
• Ensure ongoing benefits realization
• Eliminate waste

Special Bonus: Bring your project list and we'll help you rank, score and prioritize it!

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Randy Clark

Black Belt and Director of Six Sigma
PowerSteering Software

Randy Clark's distinguished career features over 18 years of experience in Continuous Improvement. As the Director of Quality and Productivity at Pitney Bowes, he implemented the first Six Sigma initiative, and in less than seven months trained 40 Black Belts responsible for generating over $13 million in first year project benefits. Prior to that, he was the Director of Global Quality at Whirlpool where he oversaw a Baldrige-based improvement effort and instituted numerous approaches to measure and improve performance. Under his leadership, Whirlpool was recognized as a best practice company by the American Productivity and Quality Center and the State of Michigan received a Baldrige Quality award.

He is a member of the American Society of Quality and a 3-year examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Randy is the son of an NFL player and Head Coach, and currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and two sons.

Lean Six Sigma Training Innovation – Benchmark Others, Optimize Your Model and Maximize Your Training ROI

During a recent address, Dave Wickersham, President of Seagate, described e-Learning as a "key enabler of our Business Excellence program success." Why do some organizations tout e-Learning as a "key enabler" when others consider e-Learning as little more than a boring, ineffective, low cost training alternative?

The Quality Group (TQG) has recently completed a study of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training practices with specific focus on e-Learning, blended learning and instructor-led training. The majority of survey respondents were deployment leaders. Questions probed gaps in Lean Six Sigma knowledge across various organizational levels, drivers pushing organizations to consider e-Learning, training budgets for 2009, satisfaction with various learning technologies, techniques for teaching different generations of workers, comprehension measures, retention levels, and best Lean Six Sigma training practices. During the Workshop, we will review the data, assess the findings and consider the implications to your particular organization. A free white paper report of results will be provided to each participant.

TQG co-founder and CEO Rob Stewart will bring his nearly 20 years of e-Learning experience to bear as he facilitates a highly interactive discussion so workshop participants learn how to:

• Apply the knowledge gained and practices shared
• Identify the essential components of a successful blended learning initiative
• Migrate from a 100% instructor-led program to blended learning
• Efficiently combine off-the-shelf, tailored, customized, and custom-developed content across multiple technologies for maximum impact
• Transform valuable in-house knowledge into effective and scalable e-Learning
• Reduce dependence on outside resources and also increase internal proficiency
• Continuously improve the learning process without compromising standards, flexibility and consistency.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Rob Stewart

Co-Founder, President and CEO
The Quality Group

Rob Stewart co-founded The Quality Group in 1992 and ever since, he has been the driving force behind the TQG's proven leadership at delivering innovative and compelling e-Learning solutions for business, organizations and communities. Rob is a particularly strong advocate for blended learning. He firmly believes that "if the e-Learning does not set-up better human interaction, don't do it!"

Prior to The Quality Group, Rob advanced through numerous sales, marketing and management positions at IBM, and held senior leadership positions at a bank software start-up and a multimedia training company. Rob volunteers with a range of youth programs and as an avid athlete, he has finished the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon-twice. Rob is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Emory University with a BA in Economics and is active in AeA, ASTD and ISSSP.

Live TRIZ and iSixSigma Live!

If you've always wondered about TRIZ and wanted to learn from an expert, in real-time with real examples, this is the Master Class Workshop for you to attend.

"TRIZ" means "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving." It is the analytical, "left-brain" creativity method that works exceedingly well in the analytical world of Six Sigma and other methods of quality improvement. TRIZ helps everyone be creative using data and analysis, not intuition.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to apply 4 of the basic skills of TRIZ and will get hands-on experience applying these skills to the problems that they encounter in their own work.

Class examples will include:

• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Finance
• Education
• Software
• Service industries.

Whether you're a Champion, Master Black Belt, Black Belt, Green Belt, or operations leader this workshop will provide the tools and methodology for revolutionizing your problem solving.

About Your Master Class Workshop Leader

Dr. Ellen Domb

Founding Editor
The TRIZ Journal

Ellen Domb is the founder of the PQR Group and founding editor of The TRIZ Journal. TRIZ is Dr. Domb's 6th career: she has been a physics professor, an aerospace engineer, an engineering manager, a product line general manager, and a strategic planning/quality improvement consultant. In 2005, she was named by Quality Digest Magazine as a leading voice for the future, citing the integration of TRIZ for innovation in quality improvement and quality planning systems.

Ellen's client work, books, and articles are aimed at making it easy for people to learn TRIZ and to incorporate new thinking methods into their organizations. Clients include the Global 500 – Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, 3M and others – and entrepreneurial companies with 3-50 employees.

What's Going On:
Executive Boot Camp:
     Jan 13, 9am-4pm
Master Class Workshops:
     Jan 13, 9am-4pm
Conference: Jan 14-15, 7am-6pm
Master Class Workshops:
     Jan 16, 9am-12pm

Solutions Pavilion:
Jan 14, 7am-5pm
Jan 15, 7am-3pm
Solution Providers Attending