Leadership in QRM: Fast, flexible and productive in dynamic markets

Ulrike Reiche
QRM Institut GmbH – Associate Partner

In a VUCA and BANI world, flexibility is not a luxury, but essential for survival. How can you enable your company not only to respond to market changes, but to proactively shape them? This presentation explores how the Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) transformation strategy can be your key to increased dynamism, speed and productivity. Discover the crucial role that leadership plays in QRM:

• Strategy development in the face of high product variability (WHY)
• Implementation of a time-oriented work organisation (HOW)
• Operational excellence across the entire organisation (WHAT)

As a leader, what specific levers do you have at your disposal to drive your company’s transformation forward with vigour and make your organisation fit for the future? This presentation provides you with answers and practical insights.

Wednesday, 11 November, 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm

“Successful leadership requires an understanding of the system” – Using interconnected thinking to move from local problems to systemic solutions

Dieter Hahn
Managing Partner, QRM Institut GmbH

Many change initiatives fail not because of a lack of technical knowledge, but because of a narrow focus on individual problems. Those who reduce leadership to the elimination of isolated or local disruptions often create new side effects elsewhere. Sustainable transformation therefore requires more than measures, tools and targets: it requires networked thinking.

This talk explores why successful leadership must focus on the entire system – on interactions, interdependencies and, above all, on the self-regulating mechanisms of organisations. The key concept here is cybernetics. These mechanisms are complex and do not function linearly. They react, learn, block, compensate and reinforce. Anyone who wishes to lead systems must understand how they regulate themselves.

Leadership thus becomes the ability to reveal interconnections within complex systems, to provide direction and to shape the framework in such a way that change is effectively enabled.

Thursday, 12 November, 2.00 pm – 3.00 pm

Visibility as a leadership infrastructure: The path to greater trust and personal responsibility

Sandra Meister
Trainer, coach and consultant specialising in transformation, leadership and collaboration

Trust and personal responsibility arise from structures that make them possible in the first place.
We therefore explore a spectrum ranging from the cognitive limits of human attention, through the question of how leadership can establish a shared sense of direction amidst complexity, to a broader understanding of visual management as the infrastructure for collective orientation.

This gives rise to an understanding of leadership that focuses on empowerment. When teams can recognise connections for themselves, prioritise tasks independently and make decisions closer to the source of value creation, leaders gain the space to focus on their core task: shaping the framework within which orientation and decision-making capacity can flourish.

This talk offers initial insights into how the path to greater orientation can be shaped, and how visual systems can be developed so that they begin to have an impact in day-to-day working life.