9 Keynote Speakers

The 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy

Robyn Benincasa accepts full blame for inspiring people to do insane things like climb Mount Kilimanjaro, run their first triathlon, start their own adventure racing teams, or start their own businesses. This is, after all, who she is and what she does: Robyn inspires people to do amazing things.

Robyn has made an art form of extreme performance by competing and winning at the highest levels of sport and business. Revered as one of “California‟s Fittest Women,” she spent her youth competing at the state and national level in gymnastics, diving, cross country, and judo, in which she became a national champion.

Adventure Racing is one of the only sports in which you actually have to have your teammates with you, side-by-side, tackling a series of problems, against incredible odds, in changing conditions, and striving for a seemingly impossible goal of getting everyone across the finish line TOGETHER. Adventure Racing is just as much an interpersonal journey as a physical one, and a perfect analogy for teambuilding in the business world. According to a Harvard Business Review Study, the "corporate climate" is responsible for at least one third of bottom line profitability in a company. In the races the team Robyn was on that won, they were not the strongest or the fastest, but they were able to create a “human synergy” — an ephemeral quality or “magic” that made the TEAM stronger than the collective training and experience of the individual members. Robyn is coming to Dallas to speak about The 8 Essential Elements of Human Synergy your organizations corporate climate needs to succeed.

T) Total Commitment
Does your team have the 4 P’s of Commitment?

E) Empathy and Awareness of Teammates
Do you and your teammates care for one another as much as you care about yourself?

A) Adversity Management
How does your team deal with things that are not going smoothly?

M) Mutual Respect
Does your team have the level of trust, respect, and loyalty required to build a successful team?

W)“We” versus “I” thinking
Do you have “We” think—thinking?

O) Ownership of the Project
Have you chosen teammates that have the heart and soul to wrap themselves around the goals of the team?

R) Relinquishment of Ego
Do you have teammates that are willing to accept help, ask to help, and ask for help?

K) Kinetic Leadership
A great team allows different leaders to emerge, based on their particular strengths. A leader comes forward when their strength and experience is the most useful to the team. Does your team have kinetic leadership?

Enjoy Robyn's unforgettable presentation about how to build a world-class team and the followership skills necessary for dynamic role shifting and true teamwork.

Hooked at the Roots

Charles "Gus" Whalen likes to look at the larger picture of corporate transformation. He knows that helping companies innovate, invest in their people and adapt to change can make a big difference. He also knows that the future of organizations is largely determined by their DNA - who they are, not just what they've always done. With the right DNA, companies can adopt the changes they need to make to improve and move forward.

Gus is Chairman of The Warren Featherbone Company of Gainesville, Georgia, and directs the efforts of The Warren Featherbone Foundation. In its remarkable 127-year history, Warren's companies have been active in manufacturing, banking, agriculture, publishing and philanthropy. In fact, Warren has been profiled twice by The Wall Street Journal and most recently was described as 'representative of that huge mass of often overlooked businesses that give breadth and stability to the U.S. economy."

Gus is particularly interested in manufacturing, philanthropy and education, which he believes have worked together to help strengthen communities across America. Gus is the author of four books: The Featherbone Principle, The Featherbone Spirit, The Gift of Renewal and Hooked at the Roots-The Evolution of Featherbone Communiversity.

The World Needs All Kinds of Minds

Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and livestock equipment designer who has done extensive work on the design of cattle handling facilities. Temple says that when people with different ways of thinking work together, they can accomplish great things. She will talk about three kinds of specialized minds: photo realistic visual thinkers, pattern thinkers and word thinkers. In her speech she will highlight how her way of thinking in photo realistic pictures and her gifted challenge of having autism has not only helped her revolutionize the design of livestock process handling facilities around the world, but more importantly, the culture that manages them.

Besides designing livestock equipment, Temple also develops animal welfare guidelines for the meat industry and consults on animal welfare with McDonald’s, Wendy's International, Burger King and other companies. And Temple does all this despite having started out as an autistic child who had no speech and all the signs of severe autism.

Temple is currently a professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University, her book, Animals in Translation, was a New York Times bestseller, and her 2007 book, Livestock Handling and Transport, is now in its third edition. Other popular books authored by Temple include, Thinking in Pictures; Emergence Labeled Autistic; Animals Make Us Human; Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach; and The Way I See It.

Temple’s work has been recognized by humane groups, and articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, People and Time, and broadcast on National Public Radio, 20/20, The View and the BBC. Temple was also honored in Time magazine's 2010 “The 100 Most Influential People in the World,” and HBO recently premiered a movie about Temple's early life and career with the livestock industry. Temple has received many honors and awards, including Distinguished Alumni at Franklin Pierce College; honorary doctorates from McGill University, University of Illinois and Duke University; the Richard L. Knowlton Award; the Industry Advancement Award; and the Lifetime Achievement awards.

Temple is a past member of the board of directors of the Autism Society of America, and lectures to parents and teachers throughout the U.S. on her experiences with autism.

World Class Management System

Sarah Patterson has been a member of the leadership team at Virginia Mason Medical Center for more than 27 years and currently serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Sarah is responsible for the Kaizen Promotion Office, Human Resources, Quality and Compliance, Facilities and Pharmaceutical Services, and all operations at the Virginia Mason Medical Center's clinic and hospital.

Over the past five years, Sarah has received extensive training in the Virginia Mason Production System (VMPS), a management method based on manufacturing principles that seek to continually improve how work is done. This training included four study missions to Japan. As part of the executive leadership team, Sarah now has responsibility for leading the implementation of the Virginia Mason Production System throughout the Virginia Mason system. Besides her training in VMPS, Sarah is also certified in Lean methodology.

Sarah received her Master's in Health Administration (MHA) from the University of Washington. In 2010, Sarah was elected board chair of the Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA), which represents all Washington hospitals and health-related organizations. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Horizon House Retirement Community. Sarah and her husband, Chuck Kinsey, have two daughters, Chloe (19 years old) and Maya (17 years old). Sarah enjoys skiing (cross country and down-hill), cycling and spending time with her family.

About Virginia Mason Medical Center

Virginia Mason Medical Center, founded in 1920, is a not for profit comprehensive regional health care system in the Puget Sound area that combines a primary and specialty care group practice of more than 450 physicians with a 336-bed acute-care hospital. Virginia Mason operates a network of clinics throughout the Puget Sound area, and Bailey-Boushay House, a skilled-nursing facility and chronic care management program for people with HIV/AIDS. The medical center is affiliated with Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, internationally recognized in autoimmune disease research. Virginia Mason is known for applying manufacturing principles to health care to improve quality and patient safety.

For more information, visit VirginiaMason.org or Facebook/VMcares or follow @VirginiaMason on Twitter.

Success in All Times

Gregory Hall is Senior Vice President of Technical Operations for Memphis-based FedEx Express, a company consistently ranked among the world's most admired and trusted employers. FedEx inspires its more than 285,000 team members to remain "absolutely, positively" focused on safety, the highest ethical and professional standards, and the needs of their customers and communities. What FedEx has been doing has obviously made a difference, and Greg will speak about how they do what they do. FedEx Express is five years along in its strategy to imbed continual improvement principles and practices into every facet of its Air Operations. Learn how the company’s aircraft maintenance department managed to thrive during the recession, staying focused on laying the groundwork for future growth and success. Hear about their best practices from that journey and the next steps in integrating continual improvement across the organization to cement the leadership position of FedEx in the global express transportation market.

Greg has been with FedEx Express for five years, and is presently responsible for technical operations. This includes line, base and propulsion maintenance; engineering; and materiel management. The safety and efficiency of the company's aircraft depend on Greg and his employees.

Prior to FedEx, Greg was Senior Vice President of Maintenance and Engineering at United Airlines, where he was responsible for implementing continual improvement or Lean manufacturing changes to increase revenue, lower costs and further enhance safety and reliability. Prior to United Airlines, Greg served in several management capacities at American Airlines, including as Vice President of Line Maintenance and Vice President of Tulsa Heavy Maintenance Base.

Greg holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics/Aircraft Maintenance degree from Parks College of St. Louis University and an FAA Airframe and Powerplant License.

Gemba Walks

James P. Womack, PhD , is a management expert and founder of and senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. (LEI). The Lean Enterprise Institute is a nonprofit research, education, publishing and conference company that James began in August, 1997, to advance Lean thinking around the world.

The intellectual basis for this Cambridge, MA-based institute is described in a series of books and articles co-authored by James Womack and Daniel T. Jones over the past 20 years. The most widely known books are The Machine That Changed the World (with Daniel Roos, Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990), Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster, 1996, 2003), Seeing The Whole: mapping the extended value stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2002) and Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Gemba Walks (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011) is a collection of Womack's essays on Lean Management, based on 10 years of walking Value Streams at a variety of companies.

Articles by Womack and Jones include "From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise" (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1994), "Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection" (Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996) and "Lean Consumption" (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2005).

James received a BA in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970, a master's degree in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975 and a PhD in political science from MIT in 1982 (for a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany and Japan). During the period 1975-1991, James was a full-time research scientist at MIT, directing a series of comparative studies of world manufacturing practices. As research director of MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program, James led the research team that coined the term "Lean Production" to describe the Toyota Production System. James stepped down as LEI's chairman and CEO in September 2010, but remains active with LEI and the Lean Community.

Lean Enterprise Institute

Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. (LEI) was founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, PhD, as a nonprofit research, education, publishing and conference company with a mission to advance Lean Thinking around the world. We teach courses, hold management seminars, write and publish books and workbooks, and organize public and private conferences. We use the surplus revenues from these activities to conduct research projects and to support other Lean initiatives, such as the Lean Education Academic Network (www.teachinglean.org), the Lean Global Network (www.leanglobal.org) and the Healthcare Value Leaders Network (www.healthcarevalueleaders.org).

Alan Gross knows that Lean Thinking can make a business successful. That’s why he has spent over 30 years applying the elements of Lean Thinking to large-scale change challenges in manufacturing, as well as in R&D, sales and education. Al is now into his fifth year of applying this knowledge and experience as VP of Operations at Currier Plastics Inc., a mid-sized injection, blow molding and design company in Central New York State.

Al spent 17 years at Kodak, where he was responsible for their most significant successful Kaizen event — taking 20 machines arranged in a batch and queue mode and reorienting them for Single Piece Flow in just three days. But what ultimately made this successful was the change in culture: changing practices and behaviors and moving from discipline problems to a self-directed work team — a process that took considerably longer than three days...

After his time at Kodak, Al spent the next eight years leading the transformation at Webster Plastics and helped make it into a multi-award-winning organization with unprecedented profitability in the plastics industry.

Al has also been successful at Currier Plastics. In fact, Currier Plastics was the 2009 AME Manufacturing Excellence Award winner for the Mid-Atlantic region and was featured in two 2011 articles in AME’s Target magazine, including a cover article on Lean Accounting.

Al graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University at Buffalo, and has since taken graduate courses at the University at Buffalo, at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and at the University of Rochester. Over the past 12 years, Al has taught in the Masters of Manufacturing Leadership program at RIT, been a charter member of AME and IIE and spoken at numerous national and international conferences.

Toyota Kata Mindset

Mike Rother says our brightest prospects lie in how we collaborate and go about developing solutions - not in any particular solutions. And his research has shown him the best ways of managing people to achieve Continuous Improvement, adaptation, innovation and superior results. He describes this in his bestselling book, Toyota Kata, teaches it in university and lectures on it to companies and organizations.

In Toyota Kata, Mike has distilled the essence of successful management thinking and behavior. Toyota Kata explains how to make better use of brain power, describes optimal learning organization and shows how to make the leap from theory to daily practice. Using a powerful model, Mike lays out a means for mobilizing human potential toward adaptation, innovation and Continuous Improvement in the face of unpredictable business conditions. Mike's findings and methods are universal and applicable across the landscape of human endeavor. They are simple yet remarkably effective.

Mike is an engineer, researcher and teacher affiliated with the University of Michigan, the Industrial Technology Institute, the Fraunhofer Institute and the Technical University Dortmund. Mike's investigations have taken him to hundreds of factories around the world and cut across the fields of engineering, management and psychology. Besides Toyota Kata, Mike is also co-author of another bestseller, Learning to See, which is known around the world as the instruction manual for Value Stream Mapping.

Lean Leadership: The Toyota Way

After working for 20 years in traditional manufacturing environments at GM and Ford, Gary Convis joined New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) as General Manager of Operations. NUMMI is the Toyota-GM joint venture in California and was Toyota's first large-scale effort to establish its famous Toyota Production System (TPS) outside Japan. By applying Toyota’s Production System and management principles, Toyota and the NUMMI team were able to build a new competitive Lean Culture within the NUMMI workforce. This was quite successful. In fact, it became a testament to the power and flexibility of The Toyota Way and led to Toyota's global expansion.  After 16 years of leading the NUMMI transformation and expansion, in 2001 Gary moved to Toyota's flagship plant, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Inc. (TMMK), and became Toyota's first American president. Leading Toyota's largest plant outside Japan (over 8,000 people) further broadened Gary’s Toyota DNA and his ability to develop other people’s potential.

After retiring from Toyota in 2007, Gary joined the Dana Holding Corp. (a global auto supplier of driveline components) and became CEO/President in 2008, as Dana was emerging from chapter 11. Gary helped turn the company around by applying his Toyota manufacturing and management experience to re-build Dana's operational excellence in over 100 plants in 26 countries. In fact, it was this approach that allowed the Dana team to not just survive the global recession but continue to build its Lean "Dana Operating System" (DOS). It is a success story that can motivate others and provide them with a deeper understanding of "Lean Leadership: The Toyota Way."