Professional Development Courses

Cut lead times, and cost, quality, and responsiveness follow. If you run high-mix, low-volume, or custom manufacturing, this fast-paced introduction to Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) covers Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT), the metric that reveals where time and money are actually being lost in your operation. QRM was founded by Rajan Suri and is taught through UW-Madison's Center for Quick Response Manufacturing. You'll also get an overview of QRM cell design and POLCA, an alternative to traditional Kanban material control.

Understand and manage biological processes and improve wastewater treatment projects and facilities. Understand wastewater microbiology and microorganisms.

Most operational excellence efforts optimize the metrics inside the plant, utilization, efficiency, cost, and lose sight of the customer along the way. This course goes beyond basic Lean and Six Sigma tools to help you build an integrated framework that aligns people, process, and technology across functions, sites, and value streams. Taught by Jeff Wilkerson, a former TI Automotive plant manager, current Caterpillar senior leader, and certified Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner, you'll learn leader standard work, system resilience, and design thinking. You'll leave with real tools for building the trust and accountability that make improvement stick, not just plan it.

Learn about the operating characteristics and design criteria of blower systems in water, wastewater, or industrial systems.

Managing global technical teams requires more than just time zone coordination—it demands cultural fluency, virtual leadership, and the right tools. This course equips engineers and project leaders with the skills to lead diverse, distributed teams with confidence and clarity.

Technical teams present many challenges for engineering managers. Team leaders must often give up some of their technical authority to focus on strategic management, operational planning and human resource management. They also need solid communications skills and know how to represent the team across the organization and at a high level. In this hands-on course, you will learn strategic and operational planning tools to set goals, establish objectives and build defensible budgets from an instructor who has actually “walked the talk” of this course with his own experiences.

Take this course to learn fundamental electrical concepts and electrical power distribution design for industrial and commercial systems—1,000 volts and below. This course is intended for those with no formal training in electrical engineering.

Master the art of influencing those at your level or higher to become a more effective leader. Learn how to make yourself heard and change others' behavior to ensure reliable partnerships in your programs and projects.

Work more efficiently and stay on top of the latest innovations by learning about the expanding industry of power electric drives. You'll learn the latest technologies through hands-on examples you can apply immediately on the job.

If you run high-mix, low-volume, or custom manufacturing, long lead times don't just slow you down, they compound, adding cost and pushing your business into what QRM calls the response time spiral. This three-day workshop, led by UW-Madison's Center for Quick Response Manufacturing and founded by QRM originator Rajan Suri, teaches you to break that spiral using Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT) mapping, QRM cell design, and POLCA material control. You'll also learn to build the business case for QRM using factory accounting and change management. You'll leave ready to lead implementation, not just explain the theory.