Announcing our 20th Annual Event

The Northeast Lean Conference was created by GBMP to provide information and inspiration to Lean practitioners - from those just starting out to seasoned Lean leaders from the manufacturing, healthcare, service and other vital industry sectors. ​The practical learning format features exceptional keynote and breakout presentations, interdepartmental panels, peer-to-peer discussions, hands-on simulations, interactive learning and sharing, and unlimited networking opportunities. Meet more than 500 passionate Lean, Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement professionals just like you. Subscribe for email updates to get all the event news as it breaks here! Learn about this year's conference theme below.

About this year's theme: "Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times"

Fifty years ago, an economic crisis triggered by an oil embargo quadrupled oil prices almost overnight and sent global economies into a tailspin. Hindsight says “We should have seen this coming,” but as a twenty-something newbie to the workforce, I found myself suddenly sitting in two-hour gas lines waiting for a rationed amount of fuel – barely enough to get back and forth to work. More concerning than the outrageous price per gallon, was the uncertainty of what tomorrow would bring.

If there is a silver lining to that time, it’s that it eventually led to cars with better fuel economy and cleaner fuel emissions – and for that matter, better cars. For Taiichi Ohno, VP of Manufacturing at Toyota and often credited as the ‘father of TPS’, the events of 1973 brought clarity to a philosophy that had been developing at Toyota for many years, built on a most important renewable energy source: human creativity. His landmark book, Toyota Production System, begins with this title: “The Oil Crisis Opened Our Eyes. “

Crisis spawned opportunity. And here we are, five decades later, once again facing precarious times: the specter of inflation, a scarcity of materials and people, a workforce with a new ethic – and a workforce increasingly populated by robots and guided by AI. What better motivation to leverage the philosophy and methods of Lean that catapulted Toyota through uncertainty to pre-eminence? What we now call “Lean” has transformed the best organizations, but still eluded too many others.

We believe today as in 1973, that the elements of uncertainty create both motivation and opportunities to thrive. That is the theme for our 2024 Northeast L.E.A.N. Conference: "Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times". Please mark your calendars for November 7-8, 2024. Hope to see you in Providence, Rhode Island.

-Bruce Hamilton, November 13, 2023, Sharon MA