Altran is an engineering consulting firm that was founded in 1982 with over 18,000 employees globally. AMI is an implementation specialist focused on project, change, and talent management for governmental and technical organizations. AMI and Altran believe informal learning occurs between people as a byproduct of working together and can be stimulated through building internal networks, coaching, learning together, and serious gaming. They provide an example case where they helped a client install improvement teams made up of operators and a coach to identify and solve daily problems through informal learning without hierarchy, with the goal of stimulating learning from those doing the work.

1. Playground for innovation

2. Summary - Agenda
1. Introduction of Altran
2. Introduction of AMI
3. Our view on informal learning
4. Our case
5. Small exercise

3. 3
■ Vision
Our mission is to bring our customers’ ideas
and projects to life and to increase their
performance, through technology and
innovation.
Our goal of the company is to be a
worldwide technology leader, able to provide
its customers with the best possible
solutions to their most complex and
sensitive problems and challenges.
Group profile
Bringing our customers’ ideas
and projects to life
Date founded: 1982
Turnover in 2008:
1,650.1 M€
Turnover outside France in 2008:
57%
Staff (December 2008):
18,522
Consultants (December 2008): 87%
500 Key accounts in more than 40countries
■ Business Unit Operational Excellence
Let’s make changes stick!
Combining Lean and Six Sigma with Project
and Change Management.
We can help you define and implement your operational
strategy and objectives on:
•Working Capital Reduction
•Efficiency
•Empowerment
The overall process, or a specific part of it, can be
improved by reducing Lead Time. Our experience covers
manufacturing, service and administrative
environments.
Since 2003, Altran’s Operational Excellence team has built
the SLIM toolbox (Systematic Lean Implementation
Method). The modular structure of SLIM can match with
any of your process improvement projects.
Contact:
Operational.excellence@altran.com
NL/EN : +32 492 915 481

4. 4
Why are we presenting this together?

5. 5
AMI: Implementation specialist
- Maastricht & Den Haag: 15 consultants
- Project, Change and Talent management
- Governmental & technical organizations
- Rijkswaterstaat
- Boskalis
- Philips
- Rijksgebouwendienst
- KEMA
- …
Our philosophy:
- Project- and Process- approach
- Learning by doing
- Involving internal (client) organization
- Storytelling & sharing of knowledge/ experience
- Building internal network of people

6. 6
AMI & Learning
‘Soft’
• Psychological safety
• Feedback
• Accountability for high and demanding goals
‘Hard’
• Evaluating
• Post mortem analysis
• Lessons learned
Learning happens between people (it’s a group process).

7. 7
Wouter & Dennis: Informal learning
Informal learning…
- is everything that is learned outside of the classroom and the books
- is a ‘byproduct' of working together
- is a means to an end
- cannot be predicted, but can be influenced and stimulated
Stimulating Informal learning
- Building internal networks of people (WHO, WHO knows WHAT)
- Between colleagues: coaching and being coached
- Learning together: bridging expertise-gap
- Serious Gaming

8. 8
Our case
■ One of those projects was 95% focused on informal learning.
■ Installation and implementation of “Improvement Teams”.
■ An Improvement Team is a group of operators, together with a coach, taking up one
of the many daily problems they are confronted with.
■ The groups works without hierarchy
■ The output is mainly focused on getting to know how to improve, less on the
actual result
■ The coach is someone of the ‘overhead’, and plays a facilitating role
■ Idea behind the Improvement Teams: stimulating the brains who are attached to the
hands of workers!
“We used to push buttons, today we can solve problems!”

9. The process of a project
A
B•In a project we go from A to B within a specific time and budget
•Although we discover some interesting side paths
(but what about the times and means?)
Creating an environment with
room for possible side paths
=
Creating an environment full of
informal learning

10. 10
‘Speeddating’
- We give you 10 minutes to talk to 3 participants
- The ‘whistle’ gives the signal to go talk to someone else
Around the question:
- What would you like to discover about informal learning?
- What questions do you have about this case?

11. 11
Contact information
Wouter.visser@ami-consultancy.com
+31 (0)615014585
Dennis.fredrickx@altran.com
+32 (0)475903143