Useful Links

AME (The Association for Manufacturing Excellence)
The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), founded in 1985, is a not- for-profit organization dedicated to cultivating understanding, analysis and exchange of productivity methods and their successful application in the pursuit of excellence. We are practitioner-based, and our events and workshops focus on hands-on learning. AME publishes the award-winning Target magazine and puts on several regional and national events each year.

ASQ (The American Society for Quality)
The American Society for Quality (ASQ), headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, is the world’s leading authority on quality since 1946. The 104,000-member professional association creates better workplaces and communities worldwide by advancing learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange to improve business results. By making quality a global priority, an organizational imperative, and a personal ethic, ASQ becomes the community for everyone who seeks technology, concepts, or tools to improve themselves and their world.

Institute of Industrial Engineers
IIE is the world’s largest professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession and individuals involved with improving quality and productivity. Founded in 1948, IIE is an international, non-profit association that provides leadership for the application, education, training, research, and development of industrial engineering.

Society of Manufacturing Engineers
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) is the world's leading resource Where Manufacturing Comes Together - both people and information - to advance manufacturing knowledge.

TBM LeanSigma® Institute
The TBM LeanSigma Institute offers a range of interactive workshops that will give your business teams the necessary tools to launch your own Lean initiative – or invigorate and accelerate one already in motion. Your instructors are senior TBM consultants who have spent a minimum of ten years implementing Lean improvement, rooted in the fundamentals of the Toyota Production System.

Industry Week Magazine
IW connects decision-makers within manufacturing enterprises to share ideas and tools that inspire action. Its award-winning presentation of trends, news, analysis, research and peer-to-peer conversation motivates manufacturing leaders to achieve their goals. In print, online and in person, the Industry Week community is the leading resource for manufacturing operations knowledge.

Lean Enterprise Institute
LEI offers Lean Community members a wide and growing range of resources for sharing knowledge and applying lean principles in traditional and nontraditional environments.

Shingo Prize
The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence is named for Japanese industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo who distinguished himself as one of the world’s leading experts in improving manufacturing processes. Dr. Shingo has been described as an “engineering genius” who helped create and write about many aspects of the revolutionary manufacturing practices which comprise the renowned Toyota Production System.

Supply and Demand Chain Executive
Supply & Demand Chain Executive is the executive's user manual for successful supply chain transformation, utilizing hard-hitting analysis, viewpoints and unbiased case studies to steer executives and supply management professionals through the complicated, yet critical, world of supply and demand chain enablement to gain competitive advantage.

Fit Function, Inc.
Fit Function, Inc. is a design company, based in Raleigh, NC, specializing in training and sales kits, meeting and events, and corporate marketing. We focus on packaging, custom marketing products, and corporate communications. At Fit Function, we are inspired by the function of products and driven by how well the products fit our client's marketing goals and reinforce their brand. For our global client base – their business is our business – and we work to provide effective quality solutions, on time, while optimizing value.

Products – Fit driven. Function inspired.

Goldner Associates
Founded in 1951, Goldner Associates, Inc. is Your Partner for Creative Promotional Products! We're dedicated to providing great service, quality and creative solutions customized to your branding and marketing needs, including: promoting events and meetings, driving web traffic, motivating staff, thanking customers, recognition and awards, promoting eco friendly living, and more. Let Goldner Associates help maximize your return on investment with measurable results. Certified women-owned.

Intermedium Group
As companies make investments in training, new capital, new technologies, and/or new facilities, the IM Group helps clients to lower costs by obtaining government financial benefits. These benefits include both statutory and negotiated benefits such as training grants, loans (low-interest and forgivable), credits and other incentives. Minimally, clients should expect profit impacts of $350 per employee. Principal client contact is with operating management at the corporate, divisional and in-state business unit levels. The IM Group also works closely with managers in Corporate Learning, Human Resources, Legal, Tax and Government Relations.

Lean Innovations
LEAN Innovations specializes in high quality standard and custom toolboard designs, as well as other “Point of Use” tool storage systems.

Lean Supermarket
Companies implementing Lean manufacturing techniques often waste valuable time, money, and resources searching for materials and tools to assist with their implementations. We found that to be our experience through 10 years of implementing Lean. Hence the idea for the Lean Supermarket was created. The Lean Supermarket offers a variety of products that support Lean manufacturing implementations all in one place and at a low cost.

Lockwood Greene
Lockwood Greene is America's oldest professional services firm in continuous operation for industrial and power engineering and construction. With headquarters in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Lockwood Greene serves U.S.-based Fortune 500 and international companies around the globe, including North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Lockwood Greene serves the manufacturing, process, power and institutional markets.

BeFound
BeFound is an agency specializing in online marketing and web development. They create and implement effective internet strategies to build brand awareness, generate leads, and increase revenue - with a measurable ROI structure. Their managed marketing solution provides a results driven structure to drive B2B and B2C leads to websites and convert them into customers. They offer solutions for medium sized businesses as well as enterprise customers.

Minitab
MINITAB Statistical Software is the ideal package for Six Sigma and other quality improvement projects. From Statistical Process Control to Design of Experiments, it offers you the methods you need to implement every phase of your quality project, along with features like StatGuide™ and ReportPad™ that help you understand and communicate your results. No package is more accurate, reliable, or easy to use.

Padilla Speer Beardsley New York (PSB) Public Relations
PSB is a national, award-winning public relations firm that provides comprehensive marketing communications programs for a wide array of enterprises. An extension of PSB’s national headquarters in Minneapolis, PSB New York is driven by specific industry experience in manufacturing, financial and professional services, B2B and consumer products. PSB has a significant learning curve about the lean business culture working with TBM and TBM partners worldwide over 10 years to expand LeanSigma awareness. PSB has generated significant market visibility for companies involved with lean manufacturing and the global supply chain. Our integrated publicity programs focus on creating thought leadership platforms for clients that reach major media and industry influentials through highly innovative, proactive, value adding campaigns. As a founding member of TheWorldcom Public Relations Group, our reach for our clients extends worldwide.

Stiles Associates
Stiles Associates is the leader in executive search for the Lean Enterprise. For more than a decade they have helped the world's most progressive companies build exceptional Lean management teams. With offices in New London, N.H. and New York, Stiles Associates researches, recruits and selects qualified candidates in the United States and abroad.