Damon De La Peña, BDM Managing Director, attended the APICS Southwest District Conference on February 6th and 7th, 2009 in Torrance, California.  The conference was attended by members from Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and Northern Mexico.  Keynote addresses were provided by Abe Eshkenazi, APICS CEO; Executives from the DJO Corporation; Commander Jim Goudreau for the USN Fleet Readiness Center in San Diego California.

Key takeaways from Mr. Eshkenazi presentation were the opportunity for BDM to complete the new "Global Sourcing" workshop created by APICS and then complete the instructor certification track to teach the course.  De La Pena met with Mr. Eshkenazi and shared with him about the experience that both BDM directors have had in international supplier sourcing.  APICS is willing to provide the instructor materials for free in an effort to proliferate the number of trainers for this new course.  The other takeaway was for BDM to incorporate into its practices some of the new "Operations Management Body of Knowledge" (OMBOK) materials that were just updated and released to APICS members.  BDM has ordered copies of these materials for its Directors.

The DJO Executives Jerry Wright, VP Lean Transformation, and Luke Faulstick, Chief Operating Officer, gave an outstanding presentation on "Lean" initiatives implemented in their company.  They provided a variety of tips and personal examples of applying "Value Stream Mapping" and "Kaizen" initiatives with their empowered employees.  They also shared many of their key learnings in applying lean methodologies to their company's Mergers and Acquisitions.  This included how to apply the Lean approach during the due diligence process as well as managing through the cultural impacts that a merger creates.  DJO will be sponsoring an upcoming CEO conference on Lean initiatives in San Diego and BDM will try to attend.