7:30 am-Sr  Managers: Custom Foam Systems (CFS) President Bob Germann provided an overview of the CFS business model and how Hoshin planning plays a central role in the deployment of their strategic plans that include their lean systems as well as product development and supply chain management. Members enjoyed a tour of their facility and provided some value feedback for Bob and his team with opportunities for improvements, albeit mixed in with many Kudos for the accomplishments they have made at CFS. Other items of discussion, sharing, and benchmarking included SOP management, production planning, culture, work cell design, accountability tracking, employee communication, product development, APQP,, and job classification strategies where there is a need to develop a flexible workforce.

10:00 am-Continuous Improvement: The focus for the CI group was on the 5S program at CFS. While CFS has many well established lean systems in place, 5S remains an area where they would like to improve. Following a tour, the group of CI professionals broke out into groups to brainstorm some solutions and ideas to improve their 5S system. Numerous ideas were generated by the break-out groups and reported back to the host. This was an opportunity for visiting members to reflect on their own challenges, opportunities, and accomplishments with 5S. This session continues to be a powerful forum for members: both hosts and participants alike.

12:00 noon-Heath & Safety: Health and Safety professionals benchmarked and shared best practices in how to move forward the WSIB process with workplace injuries. Very lively discussion centered on many themes that included the new WSIB delivery model and everyone's experiences so far. Members also focused on the relationships and experiences with WSIB adjudicators and shared policies and procedures that need to be in place with workers in order to comply with WSIB procedures and also expedite the process of quickly getting workers back to work. Ideas were generated for topics for the next session planned for June 10, where we hope to have a representative from WSIB attend. Stay tuned!

2:00 pm- Human Resources: Many thanks to EMC FSA Laura Gibson for running this event for Mike Baker who had to run off to his son's science fair! The HR group discussed accommodation strategies for return to work for older workers. Some of the strategies seemed to overlap and all showed a lot of creativity!

A few of the valuable suggestions that were generated:

 -        Cross training employees during slow time makes it easier to be flexible during good times

-        Have an employee do ½ their regular job and then have a modified/accommodated job during their shift (then at least you

         are getting some productivity in their actual job)

-        Be creative! Consider all options (i.e. do you currently pay an outside vendor/company to do a service/job that you could bring in-house?)

-        Ask the employee which jobs they think they can do, but don't create a job for them, just involve them in the process

-        Create a master list of modified jobs for company and have them matched with potential areas of injury

For more details of these events, please contact Mike Baker of EMC: mbaker@emccanada.org