Capitalizing on Lean Production Systems to Win New Business

Dr. Chris Harris is an associate professor of supply chain management in the University of Indianapolis School of Business. Dr. Harris holds an MBA and a DBA with a major in management from Anderson University in Indiana as well as a master's of science degree in youth development leadership from Clemson University. Dr. Harris is the author of numerous articles and several books on Lean production, including Lean Supplier Development, Lean Connections-Making Information Flow Efficiently and Effectively, and Developing a Lean Workforce, all published by Productivity Press, and Making Materials Flow, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute, which won the Shingo Research Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research in 2005.

Dr. Harris has worked in a number of professional positions, including as a corporate buyer, an account representative at Toyota Tsusho, a production supervisor, and a team member on the assembly line at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK). His research and teaching interests focus on Lean supply chain production systems. Dr. Harris has taught seminars on Lean production principles and assists companies in implementing Lean production systems throughout the world.

Rick Harris has been helping companies become Lean for the past 15 years. He has had great success helping large and small companies, union and nonunion, to implement their own Lean manufacturing system. HLS, Incorporated, has been instrumental in assisting companies worldwide with major financial improvements (a plant in New York $42 million in 4 years, a plant in Indiana $32 million in 3 years). He helps to educate executives, plant managers, and plant staff in the principles of Lean manufacturing. Rick helps with the actual implementation on the shop floor and the education of the workforce. He has pioneered the reverse-flow process to achieve an increase in efficiency of 25 percent.

Rick has extensive experience developing new manufacturing layouts that facilitate one-piece flow, operator flexibility, operator engagement, first time through quality, optimum uptime, and reduced capital investment. Rick has also coauthored two Shingo Prize Award-winning books Creating Continuous Flow and Making Materials Flow, published by James Womack and the Lean Enterprise Institute. Rick has also coauthored three other books: Developing a Lean Workforce, Lean Connections Making Information Flow, and Lean Supplier Development, published by Productivity Press. Rick is one of the featured speakers at the Lean Enterprise Institute's monthly Lean conference. Rick has been a speaker at the University of Michigan Lean Manufacturing Conference for the past 7 years, the Lean Enterprise Institute Summit for the past 3 years, the European Lean Enterprise Institute Summit, the Maynard Forum, the PERA Conference, the Mississippi State Annual Lean Conference the past 2 years, European AME Conference, the AME Conference in Chicago in 2002, the University of Kentucky Lean Leadership Forum the past 3 years, and the Lean Summit Brazil in 2004.