The Association for Manufacturing Excellence

people who are sponsored by a company tend to come every few years. “We offer various memberships including individual and two levels of corporate memberships. The individual membership includes discounts to all AME events, access to our members-only online networking portal, and many opportunities to share, learn and grow with other lean practitioners. Our corporate membership includes all that plus one free regional workshop each year, five memberships, and all employees at that site enjoy the member discount to AME events. “We also have memberships to our Consortia groups – companies who form a local learning network, practitioner-to-practitioner. AME provides a facilitator and generally these groups range up to 25 companies and meet 10-12 times per year. “Meanwhile, more senior leaders and those who want to go deeper in operational excellence discussions join AME as Champions Club members. The Champions Club has three events per year at host sites with a topical theme. We have visited companies such as Barry-Wehmiller, Savage Arms, Northrop-Grumman, Costco, and the military academies –West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy. Champions Club membership also includes free entry into most regional events and a full international conference registration.” BVM: How do you communicate with the membership? Humphrey: “Our most successful member communications happen when we host practitioner-to-practitioner events, summits and conferences. We facilitate these conversations between members and thought leaders and open doors so they can see lean in action and make connections. Our members and attendees find great value in our events and content, and often become ambassadors for AME. We are proud that word-of-mouth advocacy is the number one way that people learn of AME’s value. Beyond these elements, we communicate with our members through our weekly digital publication, Target Online, our website and other email newsletters.” BVM: What qualities do the most successful manufacturers require today, and how will this evolve in the future? Humphrey: “The requirements have not changed much over the years as manufacturers still focus on quality, cost, and speed. However, the speed aspect is accelerating at such a fast pace that it