SGTC hosts Manufacturing Growth Series event for Georgia Tech

South Georgia Technical College’s Crisp County Center was the recent host of a workshop that was called How to Run a Successful Kaizen Event. The workshop was part of Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Growth Series for the West Region. The event was organized by Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute’s Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP). GaMEP coordinated with SGTC’s Economic Development services to plan the workshop. How to Run a Successful Kaizen Event is a two-hour lunch and learn workshop that focuses on the process of finding and solving problems by creating a team of individuals to work intensively on a problem over a short period of time. GaMEP’s Sam Darwin, Project Manager, was the featured speaker for the program, and he spoke to dozens of attendees about the basic steps of a Kaizen (continuous improvement) event, participating or observing a hands-on demonstration of a Kaizen event in action, discovering how to use Kaizen events to reduce waste and solve problems, and learning how to encourage employees from different departments to work together for improved efficiency and morale. The event included networking, lunch, the presentation from Darwin, a trivia event, a question and answer session, and a drawing for a door prize. Darwin, along with Sarah Boim and Derek Woodham of GaMEP, coordinated with the following stakeholders to ensure the success of the workshop: South Georgia Technical College’s Wally Summers, Michelle McGowan, Tami Blount, Dianne Trueblood, Su Ann Bird, and Dr. John Watford; and Monica Simmons, Grant Buckley, and Christy Bozeman of the Crisp-Cordele Industrial Development Council.