2009 Nashville Blended Learning Mini-conference

On May 6, 2009, Bridgestone Americas and MoreSteam.com will co-present a Nashville Blended Learning Mini-conference for the Lean Six Sigma community. This free event will be held from 8:30AM-1:00PM (includes breakfast and lunch) at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, TN, and will be followed by an optional afternoon demo of MoreSteam's SigmaBrew DMAIC Lean Six Sigma simulation.

What is a Blended Learning Mini-conference?

The goal of this mini-conference is to provide Lean Six Sigma practitioners with an opportunity to learn more about the Blended Learning training model. The schedule combines expert speakers with an open forum format to give attendees an active opportunity to ask questions, interact with peers, share knowledge and learn about the best practices for Blended Learning. Bridgestone Americas would like to explore the interest in building a local community to regularly meet and discuss blended training and other Lean Six Sigma topics.

Attendees will receive a draft copy of MoreSteam's Lean Six Sigma Blended Learning Playbook, a compendium of best practices, details and resources for companies who are interested or involved in Blended Learning.

What is the Afternoon Simulation Demo?

Following the morning conference, MoreSteam.com will be running a three-hour demo of the SigmaBrew DMAIC Blended Learning classroom simulation. This online multi-player game offers a rich, risk-free project experience where choices to collect data or implement improvement actions all bear a cost in terms of time and money. Multiple decision paths create variability in results, so students must apply their Lean Six Sigma knowledge to make critical, data driven decisions. SigmaBrew DMAIC can be completed in a 2-3 days and makes an ideal low-cost training solution for individuals or deployments of all sizes.

This portion of the day is optional for attendees, but we encourage your participation in this Blended Learning exercise. Teams of three will compete for best results while completing the Define phase of SigmaBrew DMAIC. The demo will end with a summary of lessons learned, and MoreSteam will award the wining team members with a few amazingly cool prizes.

Who Can Attend this Event?

This event is open to non-consultant Lean Six Sigma professionals of all levels. Space is limited to the first 50 attendees, so we suggest that you register as soon as possible to ensure a place at this event. When the event fills, we will begin a waiting list. To ensure that this event is focused on the community of business practitioners, Bridgestone and MoreSteam reserve the right to refuse the registration of specific individuals such as consultants and competitors.

As of Friday, May 17, we have reached our 50-person capacity. If you wish to register for this event, we will put you on the waiting list, and we will alert you to any openings prior to May 29. As these types of events always have cancellations, we encourage you to register for the waiting list.

Event Details

Event Speakers

"Blended Learning at Bridgestone Americas"
Nick Turk, Director of IQS & Six Sigma at Bridgestone Americas

Bridgestone Americas formed the Integrated Quality Strategy / Six Sigma division of Corporate Quality Assurance in 2004 to internally develop and implement Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt training. This division targets the application of DMAIC methods on the job by functional belts as opposed to the more commonly seen full time belt positions, and has been advantageous in the current economy. The original process utilized two Master Black Belts to provide "tag-team" training for these four- and two-week courses. In 2008, Bridgestone adopted an e-Learning blended training model to reduce in-class training hours for Master Black Belts (a 50% reduction for Black Belt training time and 70% for Green Belt training time). This presentation will discuss how the e-Learning training model has been a key enabler in Bridgestone's IQS.

Nick Turk is the Director of IQS & Six Sigma at Bridgestone Americas. His career spans 25 years of process improvement experience in the plastics, food, and tire industries. This time has been equally allocated to transactional and manufacturing process improvement. He has implemented Six Sigma, MRPII, SPC and consequence-driven maintenance processes and has trained hundreds of people in these disciplines. He spent two years in production management in a large frozen food plant launching a new production line and supervising over 500 employees. Nick earned his Master's degree in Applied Statistics in 1983.

"Building Your Blended Learning Training Model"
Bill Hathaway, Founder and CEO of MoreSteam.com

An increasing number of large and small organizations have turned to Blended Learning as a way to continue to execute a high-quality Lean Six Sigma program without sacrificing time and money. Blended Learning models incorporate a mix of e-Learning, classroom exercises, coaching and job-like applications to deliver an interactive, flexible, and cost-effective training program that produces capable Belts. Each Lean Six Sigma Blended learning model is unique, depending on the resources, culture and ambition of an organization. This presentation, based on MoreSteam’s Lean Six Sigma Blended Learning Playbook, explores the history, advantages and components of Blended Learning, and discusses the best practices of several successful blended training programs.

Bill Hathaway is President and founder of MoreSteam.com, which was launched in February of 2000 as an internet-based process improvement learning portal. Prior to creating MoreSteam, Bill was a commercial lender for several years, then spent 13 years in manufacturing, quality, and operations management. Bill spent ten years of his career at Ford Motor Co., then held executive-level operations positions with Raytheon at Amana Home Appliances, and with Mansfield Plumbing Products. Bill earned an undergraduate finance degree from the University of Notre Dame, and graduate degree in business finance and operations from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Bill has been an ASQ member since 1986.

Register for this Event today!

To attend the 2009 Nashville Blended Learning Mini-conference, please complete our online registration form.