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 Winston P. Ledet, of Ledet Enterprises, Inc. co-developer and owner of The Manufacturing Game, Operations Excellence Game, and OilPro Game workshops will be the keynote speaker at the RCM/EAM Conference held March 17–20, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mr. Ledet’s speech “The ABC’s of Failure – Getting Rid of the Noise in Your System” is a surprisingly different explanation of the causes of failure in manufacturing, where to find them and how to eliminate the defects that cause these failures.
Winston P. Ledet received a football scholarship to attend USL in Lafayette, LA (now University of Louisiana in Lafayette). He graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. He then moved from his native Louisiana to Austin, Texas where he attended graduate school at the University of Texas and received his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1968.
His career with DuPont Chemicals lasted 27 years. He began in Research, moved to Operations, worked on a Joint Venture Project and also spent time working in Works Engineering, Maintenance and Human Resources. His last 5 years at DuPont, he was the regional maintenance coordinator, working with 11 plants along the gulf coast. In this position, Winston was able to participate in a worldwide benchmark study of 140 different plants (some DuPont facilities and an equal number of outside facilities) to learn about best practices in maintaining manufacturing facilities. Based on what was learned from these other sites, the team at DuPont was able to make significant improvements and greatly reduce maintenance costs. Part of the improvement effort involved a very complicated computer model to analyze the benchmark data to determine the key leverage points. The team learned a lot from developing the computer model, but when they tried to share their ideas with others, they found that their presentations were painfully boring for the average person and as a result, extremely ineffective. At this point they came up with a very creative idea – turning their computer model into a board game. While learning System Dynamics computer programming methodology, they had participated in a board game called The Beer Game at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They found this to be an interesting, effective way to learn some very complicated concepts. So the team decided that they needed to convert their boring computer model into an interesting, engaging, interactive board game and with this idea The Manufacturing Game® was born.
After developing The Manufacturing Game® and using it with significant success within DuPont, Winston was presented with a great opportunity. DuPont was beginning to downsize. Winston was able to include as part of his retirement package, the right to use The Manufacturing Game® outside of DuPont. So in 1993, Winston started working as a sole proprietor. He, along with another DuPont retiree began offering The Manufacturing Game® and associated consulting services to a variety of manufacturing clients.
Over 30,000 people have participated in Manufacturing Game, Operations Excellence Game, and OilPro Game workshops over the past 14 years. Workshops have been conducted at over 800 sites with 168 different companies representing 13 industries including Chemicals, Refining, Mining, Pharmaceuticals, Automotive, White Goods and some Government Agencies in 26 countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, China, Vietnam, South Africa, Pakistan, Algeria, Mexico, Chile and Azerbaijan.
To register or for more information on the RCM/EAM Conference held March 17–20, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada call (888) 575-1245 or visit www.MaintenanceConference.com. A free public workshop of The Manufacturing Game® will be held during the conference (with conference admission), but space is limited so do sign up early.
For more information on The Manufacturing Game® or Winston Ledet go to www.ManufacturingGame.com or call (281) 812-4148.
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