MLG specialises in client-specific courses which are customised from more generic material. We are in the business of assisting our clients become more operationally effective so training courses are driven by establishing specific requirements of staff, then developing appropriate learning outcomes and finally putting together modules to meet the requirements.

This is sometimes provided as part of a wider consultancy project but we do undertake assignments where we provide only training. Either way there is usually a workshop element in the course where delegates consider what they have learnt and how they could apply this within the organisation. MLG hopes that the client’s objective for the course would be for it to contribute to an improvement process rather than to simply enable participants to ‘tick off’ a box for having completed training on a particular topic. The workshop element gives the opportunity for people to discuss and clarify what they will do differently (if anything) as a result of the course before they return to the busy schedule of work. We will follow this up with the individuals subsequently where clients feel this appropriate.

(Please note that while strictly speaking much of the work we do in this area is ‘education’ – i.e. teaching the principles of the subject – we use the word ‘training’ as it is common parlance to do this amongst our clients and also implies the linkage to actually applying the principles learnt which we are keen to facilitate).

MLG has run courses on almost all areas of Lean, Supply Chain and Business Processes. To give an insight into the sorts of courses we run here is a sample:

• Supply Chain Management
• Sales & Operations Planning
• Lean Principles
• Business Process Management

Other courses recently run include:

• 5S
• Basic Planning & Control
• Master Planning
• Material and Capacity Requirements Planning
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII)
• Supply Chain Principles and Mechanics
• System Selection & Implementation
• Project Management of Business Improvement
• Business Process Innovation
• Business Process Improvement (BPI)

Training is a key aspect of so many MLG projects as there is usually an important skill transfer element during the project phases which should improve the capability of an organisation’s management and key staff. Much of this transfer is informal but here we are considering the formal training we undertake to improve specific skills.