Sewickley, PA January 31, 2006—The ability of lean manufacturing concepts to make dramatic improvements in the performance of printing companies will be examined at the 2006 PIA/GATF Continuous Improvement Network (CIN) Annual Conference, April 9–12 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Lean manufacturing, a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste, was popularized by Toyota Motor Company and is now gaining attention in the printing industry. It is about doing more with less—less time, inventory, space, human resources, and money. The heart of this event is a series of case studies. Seven printing companies will discuss their successful implementation of lean concepts, such as 5S, quick response makeready, value-stream mapping, cellular manufacturing, and visual systems. Two featured sessions will examine the culture of top performing companies and its relationship to rapid improvement. The keynote speaker, Marcus Nicolls of Partners in Leadership, will draw from the company’s best selling book, The Oz Principle, to reveal the steps necessary to help employees become more accountable for their actions and results. A panel of printers, each recognized for their high-performance culture, will follow. Other sessions in 2006 will help printing companies improve their ability to launch and lead significant change, use Six Sigma to combat pressroom waste, improve supervisory performance, and use the metric of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to monitor manufacturing improvement. The CIN Conference is presented in partnership with the Flexographic Technical Association, the nation’s leading technical society devoted exclusively to the flexographic printing industry. Two of the case studies in this year’s event feature flexographic printers that have bolstered profits and efficiency through lean production techniques. Now in its 16th year, the CIN Conference is the industry’s best place to seek practical advice to boost efficiency by reducing cycle time and driving waste out of processes. This conference is ideal for presidents, plant managers, vice presidents of operations, and quality managers—anybody playing a vital role in their company’s quality efforts. Managers interested in learning more about how successful printers integrate quality into everything they do should read the article 5 Things You Should Know About Quality available from PIA/GATF. Information on the conference and the above article is available at www.gain.net, Search: (CIN) or by contacting Ned Herrick at PIA/GATF at (800) 910-4283 (x712).