Teaching innovations from the SDA Bocconi

Now you can learn the ins and outs of lean production directly from the Japanese, touring the top-drawer factories and discussing matters with the plant managers. This is what prompted the SDA Bocconi to set up the first Study tour in Japan. Learning from the masters of lean thinking, now being held on the Bocconi campus (1-8 December).
"The issue is not only one of lean production, but of lean thinking,"
explains the seminar coordinator Francesco Gallmann from Production & Technology Unit of the SDA Bocconi. "Given its success in the automobile industry, this outlook is rapidly spreading in apparently distant areas of application, such as logistics, banking, insurance, and the health sector." Proof of the idea's foothold is this first edition of the SDA programme. "Lean thinking is based on the principles of simplicity, continuous improvement, and the involvement of all those concerned with discipline and method," says Gallmann.
The programme envisages guided tours, followed by discussion sessions with the managers in factories considered to be in the vanguard of lean thinking methods; those include Honda, Toyota, Denso, and Daikin. A closing debriefing session will enable those who have participated in fully assessing their experience in Japan.