Meeting/Event Information

Quick Response Manufacturing 

Please join us on September 10, 2013 for a joint meeting with the ISM association for a fun evening of networking, dinner and a presentation on QRM with Bill Ritchie.  Bill will be giving an introduction to the rapidly growing concept of Quick Response Manufacturing.  Bill will also be giving a one day workshop on QRM on September 19. 2013 so this will be a great opportunity to learn more about the concept of Quick Response Manufacturing.

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is a companywide strategy to cut lead times in all phases of manufacturing and office operations. It can bring your products to the market more quickly and help you compete in a rapidly changing manufacturing arena. It will increase profitability by reducing cost, enhance delivery performance and improve quality. 

QRM's overarching focus on time as the guiding management strategy is ideally suited for companies offering high-mix, low-volume, custom-engineered products, or any process that is non-repetitive. Such companies often have success using QRM to enhance existing Lean, Six Sigma, and other improvement efforts.  

A key to QRM is its use of Manufacturing Critical-Path Time (MCT) as a single, unifying metric. Reduction of MCT reflects increased throughput, resulting in improvement of traditional operations and financial parameters. The MCT metric can be easily understood by the people who are measured by it and minimizes confusion that comes from numerous conflicting metrics. 

QRM was developed by Dr. Rajan Suri who founded the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing at the University of Wisconsin in 1993. He wrote his first book on QRM in 1998 and wrote his followup book, It's About Time in 2010. QRM has been adopted by many companies in the U.S. and it is now growing around the world. 

Bill Ritchie Bio

Bill Ritchie started Customer Chain Consulting LLC in 2007 to help manufacturing companies benefit from Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM). Since that time he has worked with companies of all sizes to understand the need for an operations strategy and launch lead time reduction programs with QRM. Bill is a certified trainer in Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) and is actively involved with the Center for QRM at the University of Wisconsin. 

Prior to becoming a consultant, Bill was a General Manager, Vice President of Operations, and Plant Manager for several industrial businesses including Boston Gear, Cone Drive Textron, and Union Pump Textron, where he was named Six Sigma Champion of the Year for the Industrial Group. 

He founded Tempus Institute in 2012 to provide training in Quick Response Manufacturing throughout the country. He has spoken to groups throughout the U.S. and in Europe and is known as an enthusiastic and effective speaker who draws on his extensive experiences to illustrate his message.  He holds an MBA and a BA and MS in economics and has completed executive programs at Wharton, the University of Chicago, and with the Harvard Business School faculty. In addition, Bill was trained in Quality Transformations by Edwards Deming and Constraint Theory by Eli Goldratt, author of The Goal.