Upcoming Events
August 19 | 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. | In-Person Tour
Hit the road with the Center for Operational Excellence and experience operations in action at Copeland and Midmark during a special full-day tour opportunity!
Copeland is a global leader in sustainable heating, cooling and refrigeration compression technologies and controls solutions for commercial, industrial, cold chain and residential end markets. In the morning, participants will tour Copeland’s multifunctional campus in Sidney that houses offices, labs, and manufacturing plants for building compressors and assembling condensing units. Participants will learn about the Copeland Business System and how the facility optimizes their processes and scheduling in a high-mix, low-volume environment.
In the afternoon, participants will head to Midmark’s largest manufacturing facility and headquarters in Versailles. Midmark Corporation designs seamless clinical care experiences that millions of medical, dental and veterinary visits depend on every day. They manufacture a comprehensive ecosystem of products and solutions, including exam tables, dental chairs, cabinetry, and diagnostic stations. Participants will see metal fabrication, paint lines, and assembly areas, while learning about the Midmark Production System that supports efficient workflows in their high-mix, low-volume setting.
This tour will be led by on-site hosts at each facility. Lunch will be provided. Selected participants will be responsible for their own transportation and should be prepared for extensive walking inside the facilities. Keep in mind that travel time from Columbus to the first location is roughly 1.5 hours.
This is a limited-capacity, in-person only event. Please submit your interest using the form below. Participants will be selected from interest form submissions in coordination with COE board representatives from each member company. If you have been selected, you’ll receive an email with additional instructions by July 30.
August 26 | 12 – 1 p.m. | Zoom Webinar
Lean Into AI Series
Agentic automation is quickly becoming the next frontier of enterprise AI, yet organizations are rushing to deploy ‘agents’ without first establishing a common definition of what agentic actually means or designing the organizational systems required to support it. The challenge isn’t selecting the right technology—it’s redesigning the enterprise to govern, integrate, and continuously improve a digital workforce alongside human teams. This is a challenge Lean and operational excellence leaders are uniquely positioned to solve.
To continue Lean Into AI series, transformation leader Sandeep Chennikara will join Steve Pereira for a conversation on agentic automation as an enterprise design challenge. They’ll discuss why every AI-enabled solution shouldn’t be considered an agent and where the real competitive advantage lies. The conversation will highlight how Lean capabilities such as systems thinking, operating model design, governance, and continuous improvement can evolve from optimizing human work to orchestrating human and digital work together.
Webinar attendees will gain:
- A practical approach for evaluating agentic automation beyond vendor claims and technology hype.
- A new perspective on how operational excellence, transformation, and Lean leaders can extend their expertise from process improvement to enterprise design.
- Actionable ideas for building the structures, governance, and operating capabilities needed to scale agentic automation responsibly.
Speakers
Sandeep Chennikara is a transformation leader with more than 15 years of experience driving measurable outcomes across large financial services organizations, with a focus on operating at the intersection of process and technology. He currently serves as Director of RPA and Automation at HUB International, one of the largest and fastest-growing insurance brokerages in the United States, where he is part of the AI & Automation organization focused on scaling automation and advancing AI-driven capabilities across the business.
At Discover Financial Services, Sandeep built and led a Finance Transformation Office and established an intelligent automation capability by evolving an RPA program into a broader automation function. He also led large-scale technology initiatives within the digital payments organization, working closely with product teams and implementing Agile operating models. Earlier in his career, he led Lean transformation initiatives at Liberty Mutual Insurance focused on improving operational performance at scale.
Sandeep holds an MBA from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a bachelor’s degree in business management from Purdue University.
Steve Pereira, emcee, is obsessed with making tech human and leveraging it to deliver continuous value. Steve has spent over two decades improving the flow of work across organizations. He’s worked through tech support, IT management, build and release engineering, and as a founding CTO for enterprise SaaS.
He serves as lead consultant for Visible Value Stream Consulting, as a board advisor to the Value Stream Management Consortium, Chair of the OASIS Value Stream Management Interoperability technical committee, and co-founder of the Flow Collective to bring flow-focused professionals together. Since 2017, he has been developing and facilitating Flow Engineering to make flow improvement in large organizations accessible, collaborative, and actionable.
Host Organizations
This series is part of the collaborative work of leading OpEx consortia under the shared initiative Future of People at Work:
- Catalysis
- Central Coast Lean
- Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP)
- Imagining Excellence / Eyes to See
- Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI)
- Ohio State’s Center for Operational Excellence (COE)
- Shingo Institute
- Toyota Supplier Support Center (TSSC)
- The University of Kentucky Lean Systems Program
This initiative represents an unprecedented collaboration among leading improvement-focused organizations dedicated to building better ways of working together. Together, these networks are reimagining work and continuous improvement for a new era of technological change.
Save the Date
October 7, 11 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. | A3 Workshop with Whitney Mantonya and Jill Treece, Fisher College of Business (In-Person; Limited Capacity)
December 4, 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. | 4th Annual AI Insights from Academia to Industry Event (Hybrid - In-Person at the Fawcett Center or via Zoom)
April 6 - 8, 2027 | COE Summit 2027