Improving Productivity with Today's Uncertainty

With tariffs and continued economic uncertainty, many businesses and organizations have frozen budgets and are again focused on increasing productivity, improving efficiency, and reducing waste.

The Performance Excellence Network — in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence and the Iowa Quality Center and in cooperation with the Greater Rochester NY Quality Council — is pleased to host an online webinar discussion on Thursday, July 24 “Improving Productivity with Today’s Uncertainty.”  The discussion will feature four improvement experts from four large manufacturers, each sharing their approach and best practices to improving productivity and reducing waste:

• Ted Ellefson, Seagate: Using an extensive Lean Six Sigma training program, including brown belt, black belt, and master black belt certifications.

• Dr. Arshad Alfoqaha, IBM: Using a “hybrid Six Sigma” approach, combining design thinking with Lean Six Sigma and deploying champions, external training services and software. Deploying Hybrid Six Sigma (HSS) across five dimensions—Hardware, Software/Firmware, AI, Suppliers, and Clients—to enhance efficiency, reduce development costs and waste, improve quality and reliability, and accelerate time-to-market.

• Dan Maus, General Mills: Using a continuous improvement approach based heavily on Lean and inclusive of the Six Sigma DMAIC approach.

• Jeff Livingston, Medtronic: Deploying an operational excellence team that designs curriculum and trains throughout manufacturing and non-manufacturing areas.

Each speaker will have about 10 minutes to share their situation, tools used, and insights gained in improving productivity.  They’ll share how they’ve addressed common challenges, such as maintaining momentum, succession planning for experienced trainers, and gaining and keeping leadership support.

Whether you’re in manufacturing, healthcare, education, public, or another sector, this discussion will provide actionable insights to help you improve productivity of your business/organization or team the rest of 2025!

Can’t make it live but interested in the content? Register anyway: all registered attendees get a link to the recording after the session!

JOIN US FOR THIS FREE PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE NETWORK (PEN) WEBINAR

Date: Thursday, July 24

Time:  9:00 - 10:00 am (EDT)

Location:  On-line, via Zoom

Cost:  Free to GRQC members and non-members

Registration:  Click below to register.  Note:  Registration may not work with Internet Explorer; please use a currently supported browser.

Can’t make it live but interested in the content?  Register anyway: all registered attendees get a link to the recording after the session!

Please direct any questions to events@grqc.org.