Tuesday and Wednesday, December 8, 2009
8:00 am Morning Refreshments

8:30 am Opening Remarks and Agenda Overview
Milliken & Company, Craig Long, Vice President—Quality and Six Sigma and Milliken Performance Solutions

9:15 am Global Operational Excellence From a CEOs Perspective
Milliken & Company, Joe Salley, Ph.D., President and CEO

Begin your outstanding conference with an informed message from Milliken &
Company’s leadership. Operational excellence is not another initiative or project. Dr. Joe
Salley will explore Milliken’s journey as it pertains to its organizational alignment. Gain
from a CEO’s overview of a tried-and-true system of measurements, goals, and targets. You
will also discover how:
■ Milliken utilizes an investment vs. cost mentality to gain traction in the execution of
major process changes.
■ Calculates expected returns on investment.
■ Capitalizes on its workforce talent and human resource development.
■ All while expanding its existing operating system.

9:30 am "Faces and Places"

Introduce yourself and join your colleagues for an opportunity to get to know each other and improve the quality of your networking during the conference.

9:45 am Milliken & Company's Safety Process Overview Part 1
Milliken & Company, Wayne Punch, Director, Safety/Security Managing Director, MPS-Safety

Exploring Milliken & Company's Safety and Health engagement journey will take companies into the future by protecting their associates, employees and workers. The process includes developing a floor-driven safety and health process through a detailed twenty-step process. This process is designed to involve and empower your associates to the ownership of the safety process which is personal to every human being. The process path runs in stages.The twenty-step process develops each stage as your associates learn more about how to own a process through being educated/ trained, having the right process and having the tools to do the job. Over a 12 month cycle your company will begin to develop safety as a foundation for operational excellence. This foundation supports the quality, cost, environmental and customer service aspect of doing business. At the end of the twenty steps, learn how your operation can then circle back to continue to support the safety foundation.

10:45 am Refreshment/ Stretch Break

11:00 am
Milliken Performance System Overview
Milliken & Company, Craig Long, Vice President—
Quality, Six Sigma and Milliken Performance Solutions

The Milliken Performance System is a systematic approach to establishing a Culture of
Continuous Improvement that is sustainable. Today many companies try to change and
sustain change through Lean and Six Sigma efforts. These are just tools and, by themselves
are not effective in changing the culture of an organization. Often organizations who use
tools but fail to change the culture cannot move through plateaus. David will lead a discussion
about the Milliken Performance System and how it provides a systematic approach
utilizing natural work teams to make the existing quality, waste control and safety initiatives
more effective and efficient. The Milliken Performance System drastically reduces
variation, raw materials, machinery, methodologies and training of human resources.

12:00 pm Networking Luncheon
Enjoy networking with fellow participants and speakers during a networking luncheon sponsored by Milliken & Company and hosted in Roger Milliken Center’s Carolina Room.

12:45 pm Milliken Product Gallery Tour

Your tour will include Milliken and Company’s Customer Service Center, Product
Gallery, Plastics Labs, and Milliken & Company’s onsite Milliken University. Milliken
& Company’s rich history of technological innovation has resulted in more than 2,000
patents and the development of the largest textile research center in the world. You will see
examples of Milliken’s more than 19,000 different textile and chemical products encompassing
the following areas: carpeting; chemicals for performance additives, colorants, and
specialty chemicals, textiles for the automotive, apparel, and interior furnishing industries,
specialty, technical, and industrial textiles, as well as dust control products.

1:30 pm Practical Best Practices Your Company Can Use While Implementing a Performance Improvement Strategy Across Enterprise Manufacturing
ConAgra Foods Inc.,
David Kaissling, Vice President Continuous Improvement

Companies are faced with increasing global competition. In order to survive and win in the marketplace they have to develop a culture of sustaining performance improvement where no waste is tolerated and true root cause is the norm. ConAgra Foods has learned several best practices while focusing on removing 15%-20% of their manufacturing expense. Explore the critical aspects of implementing an enterprise-level strategy. Learn from practical, real-life experiences the critical aspects that are proven keys to success and items that are “death nails” to achieving true sustainable performance. Leading a culture change that sticks and drives to zero loss based on proven industry best practices will be the focus of this discussion. Discover how to:
■Create alignment to performance improvement strategy
■ Lead through change leadership
■ Reapply the best practices of the best -- companies like Milliken
■ Organize for success
■ Measure performance improvement
■ Celebrate success
■ Apply the necessary steps to sustain your progress

2:30 pm Stretch Break

3:00 pm The Kahiki Performance System: The Journey from Crisis Mode to Operational Excellence in Three Years
Kahiki Foods, Alan Hoover, COO

Unexpectedly, the company’s charismatic founder and driving force passes away. The new plant he built is unreliable and bleeding red ink after only 10 weeks of operations. Cash flow is non-existent. Change has to occur quickly or the organization will not survive! Would your company be prepared to move through crisis mode easily, arriving to the other side with a much better balance sheet? Join CEO of Kahiki Foods, and explore the evolution of the Kahiki Performance System. You will discover how radical culture changes can occur in short spans of time. Alan will uncover the various Lean Six Sigma tools his company needed to achieve operational excellence and recognition as one of the food industry’s top frozen food manufacturing plants. The lessons learned in this session will inspire you… even if you are starting from scratch and just ramping up to implement Lean, Six Sigma, and other methodologies. Many breakthrough achievements can appear on your company’s balance sheet in 2009.

4:00 pm A Marriage Made For Accounting’s Record Books: TPM and Lean Under One Roof
Milliken & Company, Chris Glover, Milliken Performance Solutions Practitioner

All industries have a need for both TPM and Lean activities, however many companies choose one approach over the other. Leading this discussion, Chris will show how these two can be combined to maximize the benefits of both and how both approaches can make the claim that they ‘married for money.’ You will discover how the foundation requirements of stable materials, machines, methods and manpower gained through a solid TPM approach can improve the returns of a lean implementation by allowing the lean tools to be highly specific whereby they optimize the velocity of the material and information. Chris will share how his division created consistent schedules and business rules, provided much needed focus to the operation, and in turn improved the effectiveness and efficiency of TPM tools.

5:00 pm Agenda Review
Milliken & Company, Craig Long, Vice President— Quality, Six Sigma and Milliken Performance Solutions

5:30 pm Networking Social
Enjoy networking with fellow participants and speakers during a networking
social sponsored by Milliken & Company.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Convene at the Roger Milliken Center, Kingsley Theatre in Spartanburg, SC

8:00 am Morning Refreshments

8:30 am Milliken & Company's Safety Process Overview
Milliken & Company, Wayne Punch, Director, Safety/Security Managing Director, MPS-Safety

9:00 am Benchmarking the Best Practices of Milliken’s Gilliland Plant
Milliken & Company, Carly Tebbetts – Gilliland Plant, Plant Leader

Learn the best practices of a model plant! Chosen as Milliken Plant of the Year in 2003 and Fabric Formation Plant of the Year in 2004 and 2005, Gilliland Plant has won the TPM Prize and was the first manufacturing location in South Carolina to be VPP certified. Gilliland is also certified in ISO 9000, TS 16949, and ISO 14001 and has won many excellence awards in quality, delivery, and safety within its division. The plant is driven by self-directed work teams that, in the last 2 years, have completed more than twenty-eight R3’s (Residual Risk Reduction,) thirty focused improvement projects, and one hundred kaizens.

9:30 am Benchmarking the Best Practices of Milliken’s Judson Plant
Milliken & Company, Stephanie Wildrick – Judson Plant, Advanced Production Manager

Stephanie’s presentation will focus on an overview of the MPS structure and functions of the pillars at Milliken’s Judson plant. Almost 100 years old, Milliken’s Judson plant remains a major jewel in Milliken’s crown. Discover the variety of outstanding practices that have led to this 850,000 square foot plant to its award-winning status in the world of manufacturing. Since its original ISO 9002 certification in 1993, the plant has gone through rigorous re-certifications every 6 months. Stephanie will share how Milliken’s Judson plant became a Malcolm Baldrige Award winner and won JIPM’s Excellence Award and JIPM’s Consistency Award despite having to provide a continuous improvement model within an aging facility. Explore how this VPP certified plant has more than 10 million safe work hours and the many practices you can put to work in your plant.

10:00 am Stretch Break

10:30 am The Return on Investment (ROI) of Milliken’s Operation System Implementation
Milliken & Company, Phil McIntyre, Market Manager, Milliken Performance Solutions

During this session, Phil will highlight both the primary and secondary benefits of a sustained, culturally changed safety journey. Phil will share in detail Milliken’s results: less incidents, improved morale, associate empowerment, and teamwork. To round out the session, he will discuss the many financial benefits of operating a safer manufacturing facility

11:00 am Panel Discussion
Get your most pressing concerns and questions answered by this expert panel
of speakers.

12:00 noon Networking Luncheon
Enjoy networking with fellow participants and speakers during a networking luncheon sponsored by Milliken & Company and hosted in Roger Milliken Center’s Carolina Room.

1:00 pm Board Buses for Milliken Plant Tour

2:00 pm
Milliken Plant Tour
During your tour of this outstanding Milliken plant, you will gain traction on your own plants’ initiatives, take advantage of first-hand exposure while gaining a one-of-a-kind opportunity to witness Milliken & Company’s processes which have led to global operational excellence. Reviewing one of Milliken’s many TPM Award winning locations allows you to see what you might only otherwise read about and takes your learning to an entirely new level. You can take special note of Milliken’s engaged, empowered associates engaged in teamwork, the abundance of visual controls and standard work, associate education, and Milliken’s unique certification process. Your plant scorecard will also include a total operating system to drive and sustain your own plant performance, including the following:
■ Standard work and procedures to drive and sustain improvement.
■ Safety practices and procedures.
■ Planned, proactive machinery maintenance system.
■ Milliken’s quality management process.
■ Early Equipment planning and start-up process.
■ Work station/plant site orderliness and organization.
■ Associate morale and pride due to involvement, ownership and responsibility.
■ Recognition and feedback systems.
■ Measurement systems–lagging and leading indicators.

3:30 pm Depart Milliken Plant and return to Roger Milliken Center

4:30 pm Questions and Answers - Offered by a Speaker Panel

5:00 pm Conference Adjournment