November Dinner Meeting

Communicating effectively is important at all times in business, but perhaps never more so than during issue resolution. When quality problems intensify, the customer applies pressure, management gets upset, and emotions run high. This talk is aimed at quality and business leaders who want to solve problems faster and greatly improve their customer’s experience.

Commonly used in industry, structured problem-solving methods (e.g., 8D, DMAIC, PDCA, etc.) provide structure to drive activity during issue resolution, but the traditional toolkits have a glaring gap – they fail to facilitate clear and timely communication of the critical information needed to maintain customer confidence throughout a crisis.

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CAEDENCE has developed a novel improvement to overcome the communication-based shortfalls in existing methods. Using real-world examples and interactive scenarios based on the 8D paradigm (but applicable to all structured problem-solving approaches), they will introduce you to their toolkit and the principles behind it. Visual 8D™ enables teams to execute the familiar problem-solving steps (with no additional effort), while capturing plans and progress in easy-to-follow diagrams. Visual 8D™ puts teams in the position of providing answers to management and customer questions before being asked, resulting in improved control of the situation and minimizing time wasted on extraneous actions.

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Eric Reidemeister is a co-founder and Managing Director of CӔDENCE, where he specializes in transforming teams and organizations to achieve excellence. Having been a long-standing member of ASQ, Eric has published in ASQ’s Quality Progress magazine. Before co-founding CӔDENCE, Eric ran several successful multi-million-dollar businesses, routinely meeting and exceeding quality and financial targets. While in charge of global Quality at Texas Instruments and Sensata, Eric transformed the organizations to achieve world-class quality performance with laser-focused customer engagements, deployment of robust systems, and infusing engineering depth into the Quality function. Eric led several talent development initiatives leading to enhanced learning management systems and deployment of workshops with over 5000 professionals trained. Eric has 7 patents and is a certified Six Sigma DMAIC and DFSS Black Belt.

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Andy Willner is a co-founder and Managing Director of CÆDENCE. He specializes in resolving clients’ most urgent and challenging quality, cost, and product development problems, as well as coaching leaders and engineers. Prior to co-founding CÆDENCE, Andy held various engineering and leadership roles at Sensata Technologies, Texas Instruments, and Pratt & Whitney where he led many successful electro-mechanical new product development, quality improvement, and cost reduction projects. Throughout his career, Andy has amplified his positive influence on organizations, creating a wide range of novel technical & business skills workshops and mentoring engineering & leadership talent. He holds 8 patents and is a Massachusetts registered Professional Engineer. Andy is a regular speaker at university and professional society events. He lives in Norton MA.