Education and Training Courses 2008

To support best practice Product Management including New Product Introduction; Product, Computer Programme Documentation, or Process Change, Management; Quality Planning & Control.

Our Training Philosophy and Approach

The following 4 training courses are available. They can be readily tailored to suit individual requirements for in-house workshops. To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us.

More Best Practice and Training Links below

D01 New Product Introduction (NPI) (2 Days) (Course Schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for all levels of management, designers and staff in design and development, this course aims to provide the key tasks, tools and techniques in order to generate & manage the implementation of a stream of market led, technically and commercially viable new products to support the business plan, with minimum risk, time to market and where products & processes are legal, healthy, safe & environmentally friendly, by showing you:

• A detailed roadmap for the introduction of a New Product Introduction process.

• A detailed roadmap to implement an integrated product development approach.

• Tips on how you can identify weaknesses in your own development processes.

• An insight into 23 simple tools & techniques to employ at various stages in the development.

This will enable you to answer the following questions and many more:

• What is lean product development?
• What is an agile product?
• How do you manage the product development process?
• What is a gated development process?
• What are the key stages and criteria for assessing the likely success of the development?
• How do you know when a product is likely to be unsuccessful?
• How do you assess the effectiveness of your process?
• How do you ensure the timely development of products to meet future needs?
• Who should be involved and what is their role?
• What is collaborative product development and how do you engage others in the process?
• What is the purpose of prototypes and how can they be used?
• How do you avoid waste in the process?
• How do you implement and operate such a process?

D02 Specification Change Management: (Managing Product, Computer Programme, Documentation, or Process changes) (1 Day) (Course Schedules), (Request course details)

Aimed at all levels of product and process planning, computer programmers, documentation management personnel and Business Process Re-engineering or ERP implementation teams working in these areas this course will enable you to answer the following questions:

• What does a detailed roadmap for the implementation of a Product or Process management process look like?
• How do you effectively coordinate the implementation of product, computer programs, documentation, or process changes?
• How do you maintain all copies in use or in circulation effectively?
• What is version control?
• What is a fix library?
• What is the difference between a fault or bug and a feature or enhancement?
• How do you minimise obsolescence or shortages, caused by changes?
• What testing of the change is required?
• How do you construct a repeatable test plan and ensure that you are testing the critical changes comprehensively?
• How do you reduce the risk of a product recall?
• What is the role and composition of a change board?
• How do you ensure that changes are implemented smoothly and risks reduced?

D03 Six Steps To Near Perfect Quality (1 Day) (Course Schedules), (Request course details)

Aimed at all levels of personnel responsible for delivering a quality product or service, this entry level course aims to provide an overview of the prerequisites and culture, structure, processes and organisation required. The course objectives are to help you to take the six steps to near perfect quality (quality control being step six) as follows:

1. Establish the real need (customer perceived value criteria).

2. Create a quality culture, where expectations are high (a superior standard) and accountability is clear.

3. Set up a collaborative, quality planning process to reduce risk & variables, increase capability, and manage change.

4. Define & agree the “best” method & learn from the best.

5. Institutionalise the best method by standard working / procedures / documentation / training / auditing.

6. Set up a quality control process which manages problems, near misses, & non conformance, focuses effort, establishes root causes and drives improvement.

D04 Advanced Quality Management (2 Days) (Course Schedules), (Request course details)

Designed as an advanced level course for recently appointed quality control personnel, team leaders in product & process design, process management / operations and servicing, this detailed course describes a complete quality management process for the whole product / service life cycle & will enable you to answer the following questions:

Quality Planning

• How can quality planning reduce the need for quality control?
• What quality planning techniques can help?
• How can you produce designs that can be made, and maintained readily?
• What are DFM, DFA and why are these incomplete by themselves?
• How is "quality function deployment" (QFD) used to build in quality?
• What are "Product FMEA" & "Process FMEA" and how can they be used to drive a process improvement or risk reduction programme?
• How do you prevent errors and mistake-proof processes?
• How do you ensure processes are capable?
• What is SPC and how does it establish quality?
• How can the principles of SPC be applied to low volume / high variety processes?
• How do you manage skill levels and drive skills development?
• What testing is required? How do you ensure that you are testing all of the variables comprehensively?
• How do you construct a repeatable test plan?

Quality Control

• How can process reliability be improved using Taguchi experiments?
• How do you implement closed loop control systems for managing quality?
• How do you manage problems effectively?
• What is the difference between six sigma and sixth sigma?
• How can non conformance be used to drive improvement?

Notes:

1. This course includes a copy of our MS Excel® SPC template to establish process capability and set control limits for monitoring quality.

There are a number of other courses that may be relevant to your product management as follows:

M03 Bill of Material & Routing Design & Data Management

S05 World Class Change Management

S08 Programme Management

S09 Project Management

I06 Software Asset Management

See "Summary Training Courses" links below:

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To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us.

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© SM Thacker & Associates (Consultancy and Training Specialists) Original February 2001 Version 9: February 2008