Announcing Savvy Consortium's

New Product Development & Engineering Conference XXIX:  

Innovation Engineering Leads the Economic Recovery

What is expected of product design engineering in the uncertainty of 2020?  Product development engineering has driven product growth since 2005 and continued to drive growth through the 2008 recession. 

What about the economic recovery of 2020?  The Savvy Consortium Conference XXIX features engineering managers who are navigating this recovery today.  These speakers are leading product design, development, and innovation engineering for their firms. They are building the bridge to economic success “from both ends”.   What is engineering being asked to do over the next 12-24 months?

  • Execute on roadmaps
  • Maintain productivity levels in WFH environment
  • Add capacity to production to meet schedules (for essential businesses)
  • Pivot budgets: up or down, depending on market conditions
  • Support corporate plans
  • Shift project prioritization/focus
  • Engage with customers in new ways (with loss of trade shows/expos/in person visits)
  • Develop domestic supply chain

This Savvy Conference XXIX is about applying the right tools with the right mindset to successfully impact the economic recovery of 2020.

REGISTER TODAY!

Wednesday, September 30

2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Pre-Conference Workshop: Develop a Learning Organization to Drive Innovation Engineering
  • Steve Heinecke
  • Corporate Scientist (ret)
  • 3M
Steve Heinecke will demonstrate how to accelerate productivity and customer-focused results through building a learning organization based on authentic mentorship. He will share his tools and methods, knowledge and experiences from his 42+year career at 3M. Steve successfully drove innovation forward at 3M, despite many challenges and obstacles. He continues to mentor others and is frequently called upon to provide his expertise to aspiring scientists and engineers. This knowledge rich workshop will equip you to lead the economic recovery in your organization.

Thursday, October 1

7:30 a.m.
Intro to Savvy Consortium of Product Development and Innovation Engineering Managers
  • Jim Jacobs, Co-Founder
  • Savvy Consortium
  • Beth Lasseter, Director of NPD Management Services
  • Savvy Consortium/Optima Associates
8:00 a.m.
Welcome and Introduction to Conference Theme: Leading the Economic Recovery
  • King Banaian, Dean of the School of Public Affairs
  • Professor of Economics
  • St Cloud State University
8:30 a.m.
Keynote Presentation: Rising to the Challenge: Integrating Engineering and Manufacturing to Meet New Demand
  • Tom Kennedy
  • President and CEO
  • TSI, Incorporated
9:45 a.m.
Employee Relationships in Today’s World of Work
  • Alex Cirillo, Jr
  • Vice President (ret)
  • 3M
In our “Covid-19 world”, organizations are facing challenges maintaining their company culture as well as the productivity and camaraderie of their employees. Work/life balance, employee development, career trajectory and many other traditional organizational issues have been upended as we careen from day to day. In the midst of all this, Savvy members are asking: 1. How to build relationships with new employees. 2. How to build relationships with coworkers. 3. How to be visible to their larger organization. These questions are timeless, but the answers are very much dependent upon the context of today’s world of work. How can we use the constraints of today’s changing workplace to improve and strengthen our employee relationships? We’ll take a look.
10:45 a.m.
Journey to Excellence: What Matters Most
  • Ellis Jones, Vice President
  • EHS&S and Business Continuity
  • Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
Team health is the basis for performance excellence. At a time when team health and safety is more critical than ever, Ellis Jones will show the strategy Goodyear deployed to achieve organizational excellence, which is essential for the economic recovery of today. After Goodyear suffered four deaths in one year at one plant, Ellis led his team to create an action plan focused on governance, compliance, and leadership training. He used visual management of monthly operations to review team performance. He and his team learned that environment shapes culture, culture shapes performance and performance drives results. Ellis will share his key learnings and insights to enable you to manage your processes, build team health and execute on your strategies.
11:45 a.m.
Lunch
12:45 p.m.
Customer Requirements: Opportunity for Simple, Smart Design ‘Engine’ that Drives Customized Machinery Operations
  • Kevin Weiss
  • Vice President of Operations
  • Delkor Systems, Inc.
Customer requirements at high demand levels created many opportunities for Delkor to simplify its manufacturing operations. Kevin Weiss presents his ‘Delkor Core Products Program”. Delkor has evolved operations comprised of simply ‘machines on hand’ to several, redundant layers of machine and component availability which produces increasing product volume. The impacts are many: the value to customers by having machines readily available is a considerable benefit. Kevin will demonstrate how and why the operating efficiencies reduce waste and simultaneously gain output from building in subassemblies. In addition, the purchase costs resulting from buying in volume generate better product margins. Simultaneously, Kevin is implementing a CPQ (configure-price-quote) system that integrates seamlessly Delkor’s operations. This system increases product volume, reduces customization and increases quoting automation. Additionally, CPQ impacts a variety of work tasks: it reduces lead times and the number of revisions, it minimizes quoting errors and stops the duplication of work while better qualifying sales opportunities. Improving ways to better address customer requirements with reduced time to produce at lower cost and shortened time to shipment generates work and takes time. Kevin will demonstrate this system and the maturity level (80%) of this ’transformational engine’ which generates Delkor’s profitable flow through this pipeline of standard products.
1:45 p.m.
People, Process & Priority Changes: Leading Through Uncertainty
  • Rick Bauer
  • Director of New Media Qualification
  • Donaldson Company
3:00 p.m.
Panel Presentation: Engineering Operations Pivots, Innovative Customer Interaction, Engineering Expectations to Drive Business Development
  • Gary Kassen, Director of Engineering, CNH Industrial
  • Tim Matuseski, Director of Engineering, Cobham
  • Dave Huebner, Director of R&D, Loram
  • John Heckel, Director of Engineering, Toro
  • Mark Jennen, Director of Engineering, Graco

WHO ATTENDS SAVVY LEARNING EVENTS?

Design engineering managers, department heads, chief engineers, functional department engineers, product engineers/marketers, directors of product engineering, change management pilot leaders, product test engineering managers, process improvement managers, product engineering development team members and leaders, and all who are responsible for improving product innovation, product development and process improvement in their product engineering operations. The conference is not open to academics, consultants, authors or gurus.

Over 1000 people have participated in Savvy conferences and learning events. They are design engineers, systems engineers, technical and scientific people; product development teams leaders, knowledge specialists, engineering departments heads, engineering support group leaders, continuous improvement managers, process excellence managers, talent build managers, knowledge system managers, and others whose mission is people development, process improvement and productivity increase.

Partial List of Firms attending Savvy Sponsored Product Development Events:

Toro, Eaton, Timken, Dana, Sauder, Medtronic, McDonalds, General Mills, TSI, Goodyear, Cooper, Amano Pioneer, Diebold, John Deere, Pella, Genie, Pella, Schram, Cabot, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Boston Scientific, Nexen, Masonite, Steris/US Endoscopy, Inovonics, UTAS Aerospace, Wil-burt, Cabot Electronics, Cooper, CNH, GE Medical, Crown, Keithley, Knowles, Parker, Actuant, Deluxe, Tennant, Henny Penny, 3M, Shram, Diamond, Emerson, Terex, Ditch Witch, Waterous, HGST, RT technologies, Altec, Toyota, Saris, Andersen, Wet Design, Sub Zero, Harley Davidson, Autobag, CA Companies, Beckman Coulter, Donaldson, Seagate and participants from many other manufacturers that are implementing continuous improvement in their product design engineering organizations.

Announcing Savvy Consortium's

New Product Development & Engineering 

Virtual Training Series

The Savvy Consortium brings eight engineering manager speakers to you, beginning on Friday, April 3rd at Noon CST.

Savvy members and conference participants access the previously scheduled conference speakers virtually in a LIVE ZOOM interactive format every Friday at Noon CST.

Participants will:

  • Benchmark other firms' tools, methods & processes to meet their schedules and serve their customers in the current COVID-19 environment
  • Interact LIVE with speakers and other participants who are managing similar challenges and seeking new opportunities to serve customers and engage teams virtually
  • Learn from trusted peers as they manage and lead their teams through uncertain and volatile conditions.

Series deliverables:

  • access to presentation materials
  • access to recordings

Registration Options: Series of 8 sessions $700 (April 3rd free) or a la carte ($150 each)

Savvy Members: From Free (Members) to Half Price (Colleagues) for Series

REGISTER TODAY!

Friday, April 3

12:00 p.m. CST
Personas, Collaboration & Productivity in Crisis Mode
  • Beth Lasseter
  • Director of NPD Management Services
  • Savvy Consortium/Optima
High performance teams enhance organizational collaboration to accelerate the speed at which they learn, communicate and deliver results. Beth Lasseter will present a method that is used globally to understand what drives behavior and decision making in cross-functional organizations. She will demonstrate how to apply the method to innovation personas, customer personas, and team dynamics. Participants will engage in a problem-solving exercise that can be adapted to fit their own organizations to improve collaboration, team learning and productivity.

Friday, April 17

12:00 p.m.
Supplier Crisis Management
  • Rick Bauer: Director, Media Qualification, Corporate Technology Services
  • Janelle Hampton: Engineering Manager
  • Donaldson Company
What happens when a key vendor experiences production problems? Rick Bauer and Janelle Hampton from Donaldson will discuss the crisis of a single source supplier suddenly and permanently shutting down its production plant. Rick and Janelle had to quickly involve cross-functional colleagues to successfully identify unknowns, risks, and glitches created by the supply loss. Their practical experiences are a valuable lesson in the current climate of unforeseen operational disruptions.

Friday, April 24

12:00 p.m. CST
Leadership Virtues in Challenging Times
  • Paul LeMay
  • Division Engineering Manager
  • Parker Hannifin Quick Coupling Division
During the past few years, Parker Quick Coupling Division engineering teams learned how to improve their new product development work and build reliable collaboration with each other and their customers. Paul LeMay will present his experiences and outcomes of Parker’s company-wide implementation of a virtue-based work culture, and how the virtues of trust, courage, and wisdom have shaped the integrity of their operations, especially in the current volatile conditions.

Friday, May 1

12:00 p.m. CST
Innovation for Future Needs
  • Sam Landers
  • Senior Fellow R&D, retired
  • Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Called by former Goodyear colleague and author Norbert Majerus “a true ‘serial innovator’”, Sam is the “best in the field of innovation…and how to make lean and innovation coexist” (Lean Driven Innovation, 2016, xviii). Sam will discuss his extensive experience working with design teams and customers to bring new products to market with speed and success. His Lean journey focuses on value creation and maximizing process flow rather than waste reduction. Sam’s insights will generate energy, motivate engineers and encourage new thinking and tools.

Friday, May 8

12:00 p.m. CST
NPD Cross-Functional Team Integration
  • Terry O'Brien
  • Director of New Product Development
  • Bruno, Inc.
According to Ron Mascitelli, “new product development is the most intensely cross-functional and collaborative process in any business” (Mastering Lean Product Development, 2011, X). Problems in NPD cross-functional teams often stem from poor planning, processes, and communication. Terry O’Brien will share Bruno’s cross-functional team training, philosophy which establishes a common language amongst the various ‘Knowledge Workers’ engaged in the NPD process. Additionally, he will share the tools, methods, and visuals Bruno uses to manage cross-functional decision making at each stage of Bruno’s Stage Gate process.

Friday, May 22

12:00 p.m. CST
Adapting New Technology In Future NPD Projects
  • Jude Currier
  • Business and Market Strategist
  • Boston Scientific, former
Jude Currier has developed new tech acquisition plans for Boston Scientific for nearly 20 years. He will share his process for collecting and analyzing critical customer insights to understand • Customer needs and value • Current product lines that address the need and value interests • Understanding growth opportunities He will outline his business outcomes approach, customer value expectation tool, technology landscape assessment tool and mapping tool. Additionally, Jude will present visual process steps that lead to market and product technology integration and deployment.

Friday, May 29

12:00 p.m. CST
Voice of the Customer Tools in a Virtual Setting
  • Margot Beesley
  • Marketing & New Product Development
  • HC Companies
The primary unknown on the fuzzy front end of product development is understanding what customers want: • The outcomes they desire • The problems they’re trying to solve • The work they’re trying to do Effective interaction to learn customer practices and expectations is critical to successful project startups and learning cycles throughout the NPD process. Margot Beesley will detail how to engage true listening and probing skills and let the customer identify critical features/attributes. This knowledge can be used throughout customer interaction touch points and the development process to prevent scope creep. Margot will lead an exercise that will improve customer visits, enable productive engineering, and focus on value to the customer.

Friday, June 5

12:00 p.m. CST
Rapid Development & Learning Cycles
  • Damon Jurkiewicz: Senior Industrial Designer, Surgical Solutions
  • Nicole Hollopeter: Director of Human Factors
  • Dana Debelak: Industrial Designer (UI/UX Specialist)
  • Ken Bonenberger: Senior Program Manager
  • Steris Corporation
STERIS Surgical Solutions demonstrates the benefits of user experience based design coupled with rapid, high volume design iteration. The STERIS team highlights the roles of Industrial Design, Human Factors Engineering, and UI/UX Design operating within a cross-functional, stage-gate process.   After first understanding the product lifecycle from end to end, the team then creates a product experience that adds value for all customers and stakeholders within the lifecycle.  The team heavily relies upon tools such as customer co-design and user simulation. This approach generates valuable insights, resulting in meaningful product differentiation and innovation while accelerating new product development. 

WHO ATTENDS SAVVY LEARNING EVENTS?

Design engineering managers, department heads, chief engineers, functional department engineers, product engineers/marketers, directors of product engineering, change management pilot leaders, product test engineering managers, process improvement managers, product engineering development team members and leaders, and all who are responsible for improving product innovation, product development and process improvement in their product engineering operations. The conference is not open to academics, consultants, authors or gurus.

Over 1000 people have participated in Savvy conferences and learning events. They are design engineers, systems engineers, technical and scientific people; product development teams leaders, knowledge specialists, engineering departments heads, engineering support group leaders, continuous improvement managers, process excellence managers, talent build managers, knowledge system managers, and others whose mission is people development, process improvement and productivity increase.

Partial List of Firms attending Savvy Sponsored Product Development Events:

Toro, Eaton, Timken, Dana, Sauder, Medtronic, McDonalds, General Mills, TSI, Goodyear, Cooper, Amano Pioneer, Diebold, John Deere, Pella, Genie, Pella, Schram, Cabot, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Boston Scientific, Nexen, Masonite, Steris/US Endoscopy, Inovonics, UTAS Aerospace, Wil-burt, Cabot Electronics, Cooper, CNH, GE Medical, Crown, Keithley, Knowles, Parker, Actuant, Deluxe, Tennant, Henny Penny, 3M, Shram, Diamond, Emerson, Terex, Ditch Witch, Waterous, HGST, RT technologies, Altec, Toyota, Saris, Andersen, Wet Design, Sub Zero, Harley Davidson, Autobag, CA Companies, Beckman Coulter, Donaldson, Seagate and participants from many other manufacturers that are implementing continuous improvement in their product design engineering organizations.

The Savvy Consortium Presents

New Product Development and Innovation Engineering Conference XXX

People Collaborate to Achieve Innovation and Speed

May 20-21, 2021

Minneapolis and Virtual

Economic growth in 2021 energizes high performance product development and innovation engineering managers to address current situation challenges, find emerging technologies, try new initiatives, and apply proven methods that serve customers with greater energy on shorter timelines.

Savvy Conference XXX features eight presentations by product development and innovation engineering leaders. They present their challenges. They describe the emerging technologies and new knowledge they develop. They show how they applied their knowledge to various initiatives to improve people, processes and methods. Their successes will help you to break out into a product-driven economic growth pattern.

REGISTER today to “continuously advance science and technology for the betterment of your customers, colleagues and communities” (Savvy motto).

REGISTER TODAY!

Thursday, May 20

8:30 a.m.
Welcome to Conference XXX: Introductions
9:00 a.m.
Injecting Knowledge into Disruptive Innovation
  • Bob Melvin
  • Vice President, Engineering
  • Teledyne Benthos
Innovations are fueling economic recovery in many industries. Some disruptive technologies are happening at “warp speed.” Bob Melvin describes his blue ocean project that injects knowledge thinking into the lobstering industry helping to protect endangered whales. Bob describes the three success factors: disruptive innovation, knowledge-based product development and the ‘one chance.” Discovering disruptive innovation requires critical thinking. Bob will describe how his highly successful knowledge-driven product innovation system works to get the design right with the customer interest in mind. He discusses the risk factors in getting to market and that ‘there is one chance to get it right.’ He shows how up-front knowledge capture of the customer and the engineering needed will allow you to nail-it the first time and avoid unnecessary “pivots.”
10:30 a.m.
Make Functional Knowledge Experts Accessible
  • David Gregor
  • Director of Security and Reliability Engineering Excellence
  • Case New Holland, Inc.
What technologies make your product designs function and perform reliably and safely? Who are the persons with the technical knowledge needed to mentor your product design, development and those subject matter experts contributing to innovation engineering teams? How are these persons and their knowledge accessible, timely, and handed on in a professional way? David Gregor presents the Standards Development Group program he initiated to enable people possessing deep functional technology knowledge to collaborate in critical knowledge arenas while remaining compliant in the country of sale: product engineering, technology development and innovation engineering couple with compliance. David demonstrates the efficient, simple tool which product design, development, testing, and engineering teams need to access their source knowledge experts and build technical talent. Hint: Spreadsheets are not the tool!
12:30 p.m.
Visual Management Essentials for High Performance Global Development Teams
  • Chad Mitchell HDD R&D Engineering Director
  • Timothy Schmalz HDD R&D Principal Engineer
  • Western Digital
Engineer lockdown and distancing has fosters team communication for persons and collaborative teams in different time zones, different countries and different cultural practices. The focus is project communication: people knowledge, project decision making, and the tasks resulting from decisions made to speed up workflow. The flow depends on making visual: the right people, the right (timely) knowledge, right decisions and integrated workflow. A robust visual management system enables collaboration so the team can see, learn and act. Chad Mitchell and Tim Schmalz will describe a few essential use cases that Western Digital Development have seamlessly allowed for in-person teams to switch to full remote. They will share the ongoing transformation of their team as well as examples of scaled-Agile. Virtual boards & software tools integration have allowed WDC to continue with the human engineering aspects without co-location. This method of interaction continues to enable personal ownership, decision enablement, and self-organizing teams whose true virtue is a highly functional team whose members can all work from home. Chad and his team along with their colleagues from Western Digital are continually improving usability and functionality that high performance teams rely on for their work.
1:45 p.m.
Assess and Align Your Cross-Functional NPD Team
  • Katie Dixon
  • Continuous Improvement Engineer
  • STERIS Corporation
Midway through Katie Dixon’s development timeline, before commercial launch she assembled everyone in the organization who touches the project to conduct an NPD self-assessment. Each functional group crafted their problem statement, conducted a root cause analysis and identified the top 8 criteria for improvement. Katie facilitated small teams to achieve quick wins in their improvement goals. A first win was to enable the teams to interact with the product development people. The unexpected but critical benefits of the exercise were to: • create new knowledge of the product development process. • visualize the work of cross functional product development. • foster new appreciation, trust and respect for the persons who get the work done. Make sure you have this critical problem-solving savvy, motivation and person-to-person interaction that integrates the work of your product development operations to meet your 2021 deadlines.
3:00 p.m.
Adapt Visual Tools to Accelerate Collaboration, Resource Utilization and Completion of NPD Projects
  • Wendell Short
  • Director of Product Development
  • Sauder Corporation
What drives your system for utilizing your resources? Do you have a system? Wendell Short designed the Sauder system to serve customers with impossibly short deadlines for big box customer concept approval, concept development, experimentation, assembly verification, product launch and shipment. Wendell presents his experiences and insights for using tools, methods and thought processes to adapt to markets that involve end users who were not served until recently.

Friday, May 21

8:30 a.m.
Overcome Innovation Inertia: Develop Life-Changing Improvements for Customers and End Users
  • Mike Hess
  • Vice President, Corporate Technology & Innovation
  • Medtronic
In 2005, Mike Hess led a team of innovators at Medtronic to identify a medical device modification they believed would result in better outcomes for patients. A key customer pushed to try the modification, and after it was completed, patented and integrated, the results for patient improvement prove to be outstanding to this day. Mike and his team received Medtronic’s Patent of Distinction in 2020 for their contribution to patient well-being. Now, as Medtronic innovators look to “overcome inertia” in current product designs, they face similar challenges with the addition of new technologies, regulations and risk tolerances. Mike will show how he and his team push through the inertia and prevent valuable innovations from getting “squashed” on their way to fruition.
9:45 a.m.
Design a ‘Single Source of Truth’ for Critical Knowledge Transfer
  • Dean Testa
  • Director, Knowledge Management Office
  • The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Who are the technical experts and what about their critical knowledge ‘retiring’ soon? How do you capture their functional knowledge? How do you transfer knowledge? What are visual and software tools making critical knowledge searchable and accessible? Where is the “single source of truth” in your product design and innovation engineering operations? Dean Testa shows Goodyear’s remarkable system for knowledge management and transfer. He describes how to start a knowledge management program and shows Goodyear’s best practices/resources that you can use now, whether you are just getting started with knowledge management, or you need to take your current system to the next level.
11:00 a.m.
Electrification Technologies Drive Transportation Economics
  • David Augustine
  • VP of Product Management and Engineering
  • QM Power, Inc
How will electric motor technology impact your product design and business development? Whether or not your products depend on internal combustion engine power, there are electric motor technologies now emerging. Dave Augustine presents and demonstrates an emerging technology and functional motor and the impact it has on a variety of transportation sectors. Dave shows a visual of the technology innovation process and how it drives product design engineering.

WHO ATTENDS SAVVY LEARNING EVENTS?

Design engineering managers, department heads, chief engineers, functional department engineers, product engineers/marketers, directors of product engineering, change management pilot leaders, product test engineering managers, process improvement managers, product engineering development team members and leaders, and all who are responsible for improving product innovation, product development and process improvement in their product engineering operations. The conference is not open to academics, consultants, authors or gurus.

Over 1000 people have participated in Savvy conferences and learning events. They are design engineers, systems engineers, technical and scientific people; product development teams leaders, knowledge specialists, engineering departments heads, engineering support group leaders, continuous improvement managers, process excellence managers, talent build managers, knowledge system managers, and others whose mission is people development, process improvement and productivity increase.

Partial List of Firms attending Savvy Sponsored Product Development Events:

Toro, Eaton, Timken, Dana, Sauder, Medtronic, McDonalds, General Mills, TSI, Goodyear, Cooper, Amano Pioneer, Diebold, John Deere, Pella, Genie, Pella, Schram, Cabot, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Boston Scientific, Nexen, Masonite, Steris/US Endoscopy, Inovonics, UTAS Aerospace, Wil-burt, Cabot Electronics, Cooper, CNH, GE Medical, Crown, Keithley, Knowles, Parker, Actuant, Deluxe, Tennant, Henny Penny, 3M, Shram, Diamond, Emerson, Terex, Ditch Witch, Waterous, HGST, RT technologies, Altec, Toyota, Saris, Andersen, Wet Design, Sub Zero, Harley Davidson, Autobag, CA Companies, Beckman Coulter, Donaldson, Seagate and participants from many other manufacturers that are implementing continuous improvement in their product design engineering organizations.

The Savvy Consortium Presents

Leadership Conference XXXII

Innovative Leadership: Critical Knowledge for Personal & Organizational Transformation

Thursday, April 28th, 2022

Host: Parker Hannifin Quick Coupling Division, Golden Valley, MN

Savvy Conference XXXII features speakers with a broad and diverse range of experience beginning in various technical roles before leading successful organizations in multiple industries. These speakers provide you with a vision for how to ascend the mountain of productive, meaningful & engaged work. This conference enables you to improve collaboration between the people and improve the processes that contribute to greater business excellence.

REGISTER TODAY!

Thursday, April 28

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Integrity--A Growth Market: Innovative Cultures Start with Innovative Virtues
  • Dr. Peter Rea
  • Vice President of Integrity and Ethics
  • Parker Hannifin Corporation
  • Cleveland, OH
Does your culture eat strategy, engagement, productivity and everything else for breakfast? How do you take the abstract concept of culture and translate it into real, actionable, common parlance in your organization? Moreover, how do you create the environment for innovation to flourish? According to Dr. Peter Rea’s decades of research and practice, virtue is the answer. What are the virtues, and how do they link to economic value? Can the virtues boost individual and team engagement, and ultimately, performance under pressure? Can they make or break a culture of innovation? Dr. Peter Rea will show you tools and practices to adopt the virtues as the common language that acts as a ‘performance multiplier’ in both individuals and teams. These tools and practices foster a culture of hard-to-beat teams who consistently outperform their peers under the worst of circumstances. They are the backbone of a thriving organizational culture which embraces innovation at all levels. Participate in this critical conversation to enable the right transformation of yourself, your work, and your organization’s contribution to the advancement of science and technology for the betterment of all.
A Leader’s Cri de Coeur: Critical Attributes for Personal & Organizational Excellence
  • Bill Lentsch
  • Chief Operating Officer
  • Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis, MN
  • Former Chief Customer Experience Officer
  • Former Executive Vice President
  • Delta Air Lines
  • Atlanta, GA
Bill Lentsch will share his compelling story about working through the ranks at Delta Air Lines, beginning with various engineering, operations and finance roles. After 30+ years of service, Bill took on the role of CCEO, responsible for leading all customer facing functions including Airport Customer Service, Inflight Services, Reservations, Customer Care, and related support organizations. His group spanned more than 60,000 of Delta’s 85,000 employees. Bill will address the following questions: What are the critical leadership attributes that drive performance excellence among large people organizations? How do you cultivate those attributes and keep both your internal and external customers engaged and well served? Bill will detail what it takes so that you have a clear blueprint to improve your effectiveness as a leader, which is the first step to achieving outstanding results with your team.
Change Leadership vs. Change Management: Preparing for the Great Retention
  • Dr. Alex Cirillo, Jr.
  • Vice President (ret.)
  • 3M
  • St. Paul, MN
In the face of immense change, leaders at all levels are tasked with identifying solutions to problems they’ve never faced. Solutions are no longer obvious but are instead emerging; and often slowly. Leaders in all industries face the prospect of losing talent with alarming frequency. How will you lead through the changes? What should be your focus? The old models of ‘command and control’ management no longer apply; what is needed today, especially to retain talent? Skilled leaders today are constantly learning about and assessing the traits that distinguish the next generation of leaders. Looking at your own path, what talents made you stand out from your peers and opened up a world of opportunity and increased responsibility for you? Beyond technical and people skills, what did it take to ‘level up’ in your organization? What does it take to lead both up and down the ‘chain of command’? Alex Cirillo led 3M during times of chaos and uncertainty; his story provides a compelling vision for what a leader might be asked to do, what a leader might be asked to leave behind, when a leader should push back, and when a leader MUST ‘say yes.’ Alex’s story will enrich your understanding of how to lead in three dimensions, a critical skill for a thriving career.
Cultural Transformation through Human-Centered Innovation: Deploy Design Thinking at all Levels
  • Chris Von Dohlen
  • Director, Design Transformation
  • Marvin Windows & Doors
  • Eagan, MN
Is your organization “too busy” to innovate? Are your processes overcomplicated? Are your products over-engineered? Do you lack reliable VOC and/or good user studies? Are your product developers and technical people siloed and unused to looking outside the organization for ideas, perhaps for new technologies? Are your teams frequently deploying the tactic of ‘ready-fire-aim’? Chris Von Dohlen addresses these and many other related constraints to performance excellence. Surely, most organizations have great products and great people, and most want to restart the ‘innovation engine’ to move into the 21st Century; however, the constraints are often hidden, and the company leadership doesn’t want to or can’t afford to waste time on initiatives that don’t engage people in the right ‘innovation mindset.’ Chris presents his experiences discovering the opportunities for work excellence and applying his toolkit that enables high energy and collaborative learning teams at Marvin Windows. The purpose is to encourage curiosity but balance it with execution. The toolkit enables all employees to access processes and team activities that • foster the infusion of the company’s values into product designs, • improve manufacturing experiences, • overcome the tendency to jump to solutions immediately, • align product design scope with customer and end user wants/needs/problems & practices. The goal of the initiative is to align the organization with its leadership, to create a common language across disciplines with less complexity, and, most importantly, to empower people to solve problems…for people!
Innovation Center Speeds Time-to-Market in Critical Industries
  • Karthik Viswanathan
  • Vice President of Product Development
  • Minnesota Rubber & Plastics
  • Plymouth, MN
As the pandemic response has taught us, speeding time-to-market of new products is critically important. Developing products the right way quickly can even safe lives. One place OEMs in critical industries can speed time-to-market is through the component design process. Karthik Viswanathan, the VP, Product Development at Minnesota Rubber & Plastics will explain how his organization has responded quickly to the needs of its OEM partners to help them create production-intent prototypes, from a full spectrum of materials, at unparalleled speed in its innovation center.

WHO ATTENDS SAVVY LEARNING EVENTS?

Design engineering managers, department heads, chief engineers, functional department engineers, product engineers/marketers, directors of product engineering, change management pilot leaders, product test engineering managers, process improvement managers, product engineering development team members and leaders, and all who are responsible for improving product innovation, product development and process improvement in their product engineering operations. 

Over 1000 people have participated in Savvy conferences and learning events. They are design engineers, systems engineers, technical and scientific people; product development teams leaders, knowledge specialists, engineering departments heads, engineering support group leaders, continuous improvement managers, process excellence managers, talent build managers, knowledge system managers, and others whose mission is people development, process improvement and productivity increase.

Partial List of Firms attending Savvy Sponsored Product Development Events:

Toro, Eaton, Timken, Dana, Sauder, Medtronic, McDonalds, General Mills, TSI, Goodyear, Cooper, Amano Pioneer, Diebold, John Deere, Pella, Genie, Pella, Schram, Cabot, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Boston Scientific, Nexen, Masonite, Steris/US Endoscopy, Inovonics, UTAS Aerospace, Wil-burt, Cabot Electronics, Cooper, CNH, GE Medical, Crown, Keithley, Knowles, Parker, Actuant, Deluxe, Tennant, Henny Penny, 3M, Shram, Diamond, Emerson, Terex, Ditch Witch, Waterous, HGST, RT technologies, Altec, Toyota, Saris, Andersen, Wet Design, Sub Zero, Harley Davidson, Autobag, CA Companies, Beckman Coulter, Donaldson, Seagate and participants from many other manufacturers that are implementing continuous improvement in their product design engineering organizations.

Announcing Savvy Consortium's

Pre-Conference Workshop

Wednesday, September 30

2:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

REGISTER TODAY!
Develop a Learning Organization to Drive Innovation Engineering
  • Steve Heinecke
  • 3M Corporate Scientist (ret)
Steve Heinecke will demonstrate how to accelerate productivity and customer-focused results through building a learning organization based on authentic mentorship. He will share his tools and methods, knowledge and experiences from his 42+year career at 3M. Steve successfully drove innovation forward at 3M, despite many challenges and obstacles. He continues to mentor others and is frequently called upon to provide his expertise to aspiring scientists and engineers. This knowledge rich workshop will equip you to lead the economic recovery in your organization.
Workshop Presenter
Steve Heinecke served as a Corporate Scientist at 3M for over 42 years with various engineering and business responsibilities. Steve is the inventor of Tegaderm* transparent dressings – the largest brand in 3M Health Care. He led the development of Tegaderm to the number one transparent dressing globally in over 140 countries. Steve remains a technical leader with focused efforts in developed and developing markets. With much effort, he facilitated numerous patents in the area of wound and IV dressing products, which have been granted to 3M. Currently, Steve conducts independent research on the future of vascular access and distribution. He actively pursues lecturing and teaching opportunities to mentor young scientists to foster creativity and innovation.