Well, after a few of what is seasonally our busiest months and the busiest first half of the (fiscal) year we have ever had it's time for us to catch our breath a bit at Blommer. The first half of the calendar year is typically a slower period for us and one we usually put to good use by tackling a lot of our training objectives and that is exactly what is happening here as we begin the process of re-introducing Lean to our operation. No doubt some of you will recall our Lean transformation as World's Finest Chocolate. Our transition from WFC to Blommer over the past 3 years essentially pushed our Lean efforts (which had become fairly advanced) to the back burner in an effort to simply assimilate into a new(ish) industry and the culture of a new Company. We've simply been running to catch-up as our business has grown almost three-fold in the interim. During that period we didn't stop doing doing continuous improvement work as we continued to focus on cultural issues not only here in Campbellford but also at our 3 U.S. plants. We will be continuing the culture work we've been doing in parallel to the Lean work.

As we begin to focus on this work again I thought it might be a good time to revisit my blog and see how "we" can better use it to the advantage of the EMC membership. It occurred to me that it might be more productive if we made it somewhat interactive. Now I realize that's really more of a "forum" than a blog (ok, I really don't know what I'm talking about here but work with me). That and the fact that I am running out of ideas to write about, rapidly losing my ability to remember things and generally becoming lazier in my advancing years leaves me thinking about a "Dear Abby" (no jokes please) concept whereby we create ongoing dialogue about topics of a (work) cultural nature. These could be connected to previous blogs I've written or completely unrelated issues. Think leadership, team-building, etc. It seems to me that people must be confronting these issues every day and not always having the answers, knowing where to go to get answers/ advice or getting the support they need to deal with the tough (people) stuff. MNH does a great job providing answers to EMC members on many fronts but dealing with people-related issues is a bit trickier and might well benefit from a more "in-depth" dialogue. I don't pretend to have all the answers but my guess is that collectively we can discuss these areas of interest and come up with some reasonably good responses as a result of our collective support systems.

If there is interest in this then I think it might be best if people comment on my blog about an issue they are having or an area of interest. I can collect/ edit responses, add commentary (as I hope/ pray will others) and generally moderate events.  I'll put things into an updated blog and we can continue in this vein until we have "put the issue to bed". If there is enough interest we might have several discussion threads going at the same time. If we find out there is a better medium (I refuse to Twitter) then we can always move on to that with the help of our good folks at EMC. For now, this is what I'm reasonably proficient (read comfortable) with. Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts/ comments.

Also, if you're coming to the conference in May I'll be speaking with my partner in crime, Jim Morris, on Tuesday morning and Jim will be speaking on his own Tuesday afternoon. See the soon to be published program for details.