Speakers at the UK Lean Summit 2011

Below you will find biographies for the speakers of the Lean Summit 2011 in order of appearance.

Jim Womack – Founder and Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute

Management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., is the founder and senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., a nonprofit training, publishing, conference, and management research company chartered in August 1997 to advance a set of ideas known as lean production and lean thinking, based initially on Toyota’s business system and now being extended to an entire lean management system.

The intellectual basis for the Cambridge, MA-based Institute is described in a series of books and articles co-authored by Womack and Daniel Jones over the past 20 years. The most widely known books are: The Machine That Changed the World(Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990), Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005), andSeeing The Whole Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011). Articles include: “From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise” (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1994), “Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection” (Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996), “Lean Consumption” (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2005).

Womack received a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970, a master’s degree in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975, and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT in 1982 (for a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany, and Japan). During the period 1975-1991, he was a full-time research scientist at MIT directing a series of comparative studies of world manufacturing practices. As research director of MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program, Womack led the research team that coined the term “lean production” to describe Toyota’s business system.

Womack served as the Institute’s chairman and CEO from 1997 until 2010 when he was succeeded by John Shook.

Takashi Tanaka – Senior Business Consultant, Dassault Systems K.K

Takashi Tanaka helped develop the visual-based product development process at Toyota Motor Company at 1990’s while dramatically shortening their development time. This process is now the standard inside Toyota. Takashi went on to implement it in Europe and North America in over 35 installations including automotive, construction, electronics, fashion, chemical, and consumer product industries.


Takashi now works as Senior Business Consultant for Dassault Systems as a project leader, he has involved in various stages of manufacturing processes such as Concept Planning, R&D, Production engineering, Line production, Distribution, Sales & service. Current applications are Digital Oobeya (Big project room), Cost planning, Quality into process, etc.

Mark Partington – Director of Operations, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

Responsible for Organizational performance of key standards and targets.  Over 30 years experience in Health Care Management in a variety of settings. The last 10 at Executive level.

Law Graduate. Masters Degree in Leadership Innovation and Change.

Interested in how Leadership practices contribute to Organizational success. Accredited trainer for Leading an Empowered Organisation (LEO) and Leadership Effectiveness Analysis (LEA)

Also interested in how culture influences organizational performance. Gained the Interpersonal Mediation Practitioners Certificate through UK Mediation.

All these skills are applied in the field within my organization.

Dr Paul Jarvis – Consultant in Emergeny Medicine, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

Paul is a consultant in Emergency Medicine at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust. He is the co-founder of the Emergency Department Quality Improvement Forum within the NHS Trust where he works.

Paul first encountered ‘Lean Thinking’ working in Clinical Decisions Units in Emergency Departments in West Yorkshire. He has built upon this, working alongside Marc Baker and Ian Taylor by implementing the principles contained within ‘Making Hospitals Work’.

Paul is currently leading on a project improving the clinical effectiveness of two Emergency Departments. He has shown how lean methodology can reduce patient journey time in the Emergency Department whilst improving the quality of care that is delivered.

Paul has recently completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Medical Education and hopes to use these skills to raise awareness of Lean methodology and the positive effects it can have on healthcare delivery.

Tania King – Service Improvement Manager, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust

Originally an Occupational Therapist Tania spent 17 years working both clinically and managerially as a therapist. An interest in Integrated Care Pathways then prompted a change of career path into this field as a corporate resource. This role then widened into one of Clinical Governance Support Manager.

Involvement in the Emergency Services Collaborative and other Modernisation Agency work lead to a great interest in service improvement within the NHS – so much so that she took on the role of Bed Manager within the Trust for 10 months in order to better understand and manage how patients flow through the hospital.

The Trust was chosen to be involved in a national Pathology Service Improvement pilot in 2005/06 with Tania as project lead. From this came the first contact with the Lean Enterprise Academy and a passionate interest in understanding how lean principles can be implemented in an acute hospital setting.

This association with LEA has grown – CHFT were one of the founder members last year of the Door to Door Club with Tania as lead for the trust.

Alice Lee – Vice President Business Transformation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre

Eric Buehrens – Chief Operating Officer, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre

Peter Watkins – Operational Systems & Business Excellence Director , GKN Land Systems

Joined newly formed division to support strategic growth into a global provider of Power Management technology and solutions. As part of executive team I am currently developing and deploying the divisional Operational Excellence approach to support execution of our strategic plan. Developing the Operating system, principles and standards for managing effective change, while focusing leadership to create and share knowledge through learning by doing and reflection.

As Global Lean Enterprise & Business Excellence Director for GKN Plc I was responsible for developing, directing and implementing the Lean Thinking in 150 facilities, 30 countries with over 45000 employees. Operated as lead for board Lean Sub Committee chaired directly by CEO . Introduced “Flow of Value” thinking to breakthrough traditional management culture.

Developed Lean Enterprise Strategic direction on structure, knowledge and deployment framework with leaders and introduced global CI planning process. Delivered learning by doing “CI Leadership” programmes for top 100 CEO’s\executives & 500 plant Leaders and trained over 600 employees on Site & Process CI leader’s development programme.

Global Best Practise Director for GKN Driveline Responsible for developing, directing & deploying the Lean Enterprise approach in GKN Driveline Automotive in 25 countries with 44 plants & 25000 employees. Developed and rolled out a common approach to Lean Thinking and Sharing of Best Practise globally within GKN.

ArvinMeritor Intl Operations as Director of CI Strategy, Europe, Asia & Africa. Implemented Operational Excellence concepts across 29 Air & Emissions Manufacturing facilities, in 10 countries with 13,000 employees. Developed and improved CI activities in the extended value chain and supplier base. Gained MSc In Lean Operations from Cardiff.

Operations & CI Manager for ArvinMeritor Air & Emissions Technology, implemented CI in a technical Engineering & production environment. Involved in a large number of shop floor flow Kaizen & business improvement projects. Won quality gold achievement award & graduated from Continuous Improvement Leader program.

QA Team Leader & Project QA Engineer for Arvin Exhaust Ltd – responsible for customer product development quality systems and Arvin Total Quality Philosophies. Worked with Ford, BMW, Jaguar, Toyota, Renault etc.

Quality Controller and Prototype Sample Maker at TI Cheswick and completed Apprentice Sheet Metal Worker for Greenbank Engineering Group.

Dave Kelley – Lean Director Europe, Nike EMEA

Dave has spent the past 17 years at Nike in a wide variety of roles including sports marketing, sales, purchasing, and manufacturing. He began his Lean education when Nike embarked on driving Lean into its manufacturing base in early 2003, where his role was to work with external suppliers to drive a lean supply model into footwear factories. From that 3 year stint in Asia, Dave moved back to headquarters to begin driving Lean upstream into footwear design and development. Nike was able to reduce it’s time to market by 20%, and expanded Lean into all of product creation (footwear, apparel, and equipment). In 2010 Dave became the Lean Director for Nike’s European Headquarters, where he and his team of Lean Coaches are focusing their efforts in Supply Chain Operations, as well as in supporting functions such as Finance, Customer Service, and IT.

Marc Baker – Lean Coach, Lean Enterprise Academy Limited

Marc, who holds a degree in Process Engineering, is a Chartered Engineer and holds an MBA from Cardiff Business School, started his lean journey as a Process Engineer during the start-up and validation of a new pharmaceutical facility, where he first began applying lean concepts and principles in a regulated industry.

He led various Engineering organisations in Research & Development and Operations in a Johnson & Johnson company. He then became Head of Process Excellence (Umbrella term for Lean Thinking and Six Sigma)

This is where Marc and Ian Taylor first joined forces 2000.

While working together at J&J, Marc and Ian developed a robust, standardised and scientific approach to both applying and de-mystifying lean thinking. The company has enjoyed substantial increases in sales per employee, market share and profit margins through its application of Lean Thinking and Six Sigma.

Working at J&J also provided Marc and Ian the opportunity to work with its customers in the healthcare industry, where they began their first experiments in the application of lean to healthcare processes.

Since leaving J&J Ian and Marc have spent the last seven years working both with the Lean Enterprise Academy and as Interim Line Managers specialising in large Health Trusts in Acute and Community settings in addition to operationalising Integrated Care Pathways across multiple organisations.

Marc and Ian are the authors of LEA’s latest publication, the book ‘Making Hospitals Work’ which both, seeks to de-mystify lean thinking and explains their approach to the application of lean in healthcare.

Ian Taylor – Lean Coach, Lean Enterprise Academy Limited

A qualified Production Engineer with considerable experience in Operational Management, Ian started his lean journey whilst managing Operations within the highly competitive Tier One, Automotive Industry supplying the likes of Toyota, Ford and General Motors. Assisting Tier Two businesses (the organisation’s own suppliers) in making their own successful Lean transformations became a major part of his role.

More recently Ian worked as a Value Stream Manager in a Johnson & Johnson company. This is where Ian and Marc Baker first joined forces 2000.

While working together at J&J, Marc and Ian developed a robust, standardised and scientific approach to both applying and de-mystifying lean thinking. The company has enjoyed substantial increases in sales per employee, market share and profit margins through its application of Lean Thinking and Six Sigma.

Working at J&J also provided Marc and Ian the opportunity to work with its customers in the healthcare industry, where they began their first experiments in the application of lean to healthcare processes.

Since leaving J&J Ian and Marc have spent the last seven years working both with the Lean Enterprise Academy and as Interim Line Managers specialising in large Health Trusts in Acute and Community settings in addition to operationalising Integrated Care Pathways across multiple organisations.

Marc and Ian are the authors of LEA’s latest publication, the book ‘Making Hospitals Work’ which both seeks to de-mystify lean thinking and explains their approach to the application of lean in healthcare.

Dave Brunt – Chief Executive, Lean Enterprise Academy Limited

David Brunt is Chief Executive at the Lean Enterprise Academy. The academy is dedicated to pushing forward the frontiers of lean thinking and helping others with its implementation. He is the co-author of “Creating Lean Dealers – The lean route to satisfied customers, productive employees and profitable retailers.”

David helps firms making a lean transformation. He conducts public workshops at the Lean Enterprise Academy and develops and delivers bespoke in-house workshops for firms. In addition David mentors firms making a lean transformation. He has walked and mapped over 300 value streams in both manufacturing and service sectors in businesses such as steel production, vehicle and component assembly, FMCG, retailing and banking and financial services.

David has been both applying and researching lean since 1990. He spent over three and a half years as the Porsche Verbessrungs Process (PVP – Porsche Improvement Process) Manager at Porsche Cars Great Britain and carried out work to develop lean in after sales, used car processing and parts operations as well as conducting a number of other business process improvement projects at dealer and national sales company level. His work on lean dealer operations formed the basis for several chapters in James P. Womack and Daniel Jones’ book, Lean Solutions, and his work has been implemented successfully by GFS, the “lean dealer” example in the book.

Prior to his work at Porsche, David was Senior Research Associate working for Daniel Jones at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University Business School. There he was involved in a number of research projects:

  • The Lean Processing Programme (LEAP), a three-year initiative focused on mapping steel to component value streams to identify significant gains in competitive advantage for the UK upstream automotive industry.
  • Lean projects with individual firms to research and apply Lean Thinking outside the automotive industry in areas such as FMCG and non-automotive based manufacturing.
  • The International Car Distribution Programme (ICDP), the world’s leading co-operative research programme into the future of car distribution and retailing. Research focussed on the application of Lean Thinking to car distribution and car dealerships.

David has written a number of reports and publications including “Supply Chain Management And The British Metals Industry” for The Metals Industry Competitive Enterprise (MICE) and the books “Manufacturing Operations and Supply Chain Management – The Lean Approach” with David Taylor (2001) and “Creating Lean Dealers – the lean route to satisfied customers, productive employees and profitable retailers” with John Kiff (2007.)

David’s career started in the automotive industry at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars where he held a number of roles in the fields of Purchasing, Supplier Development, Quality and Customer Service.

He holds a Masters in Business Administration specialising in Supply Chain Management from Cardiff Business School.

Sharon Tanner – Senior consultant, Q-V System

Sharon Tanner serves as a senior consultant to global companies in the US and Europe for QV System, Inc.  Previously, she worked in applied research and product development at NASA and The Boeing Company. At NASA, she worked Space Shuttle and Hubble telescope issues and led national collaborative efforts among academia, industry, and multiple NASA sites.  At Boeing she led the Fuselage Integrated Product Development Team for the 737-900, managed numerous high-leverage structural projects for Boeing airplanes, and served as senior leader for internal consultants, applying lean methods with executives and knowledge-workers.  Sharon’s technical degrees include a BS in Mechanical Engineering and graduate work in Acoustics at Penn State University; she also has graduate work in education and undergraduate degrees in journalism and Spanish.

John Darlington – , LERC

An accountant originally, John qualified as a “Lean and Six Sigma Expert” through the Renault Institute of Quality Management and as a “Jonah” through the Goldratt Institute. He worked for AlliedSignal for 13 years in the Turbocharger division. His roles varied from Financial Controller and IT Manager to Plant Manager of the European Aftermarket. He spent two years as Kaizen Director of the largest Forging Group in the UK, where his role involved him heavily in the systematic application of Lean Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management. John specialises in Costing and Capacity planning at Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School, and he has been a guest speaker at American Production and Inventory Control Society, and South African Production and Inventory Control Society where he won the Toyota Prize for Best New Idea.

Klaus Petersen – Group Process Manager, Solar Group

Though the last 3 years there has been created a mobilisation of almost 3200 people, who start to think Lean and think in processes. The tasks that I am responsible for are:

  • Rolling out Lean in 8 countries in 3 years. This requires an ambitious plan and a lot of discipline.
  • Establishing the framework for the roll out meaning models for workshops and their contents and also communication material to be able to convince people that Lean is not bad – but it offers opportunities.
  • Established an academy to train employees, leaders, managers and Lean specialist. This also means develop the training materiel so that it fits the need of the company. This was done out of the philosophy that if you want people to join you have to give them competences and skills.
  • Setting up structures and doing follow up meeting with the countries to ensure progress and constant rolling of the implementation.
  • Ensuring involvement and sustainability of the Lean work by doing GO-SEE and assessments in the different processes.
  • Coaching of managers, leaders and Lean specialists to make sure they live the Lean philosophy
  • Establishing a culture where KPI and performance management I part of daily work.
  • Develop new concepts, models or introduce new Lean tools to ensure a constant development of the Lean programme such as leadership processes or finding a concept for Lean to support the implementation of SAP in all their phases.

Through these 3 years we have achieved amazing results in the central warehouses and also in the administration and one of the factors for that is the cross functional thinking –don’t work in silos work in processes just like the customer sees you. A big milestone for our Lean program was to win the DI productivity award 2010.

Alan Mitchell – Co Founder, Mydex and Ctrl-Shift

Alan Mitchell is founder of the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum (www.rightsideup.net) and the infomediary service Mydex (www.Mydex.org). Alan is author of Right Side Up and The New Bottom Line. He writes regularly for the Financial Times and other publications such as Marketing Week and is Managing Editor of the International Commerce Review.

Daniel Jones – Chairman, Lean Enterprise Academy Limited

Daniel Jones is a management thought leader and advisor on applying lean, process thinking pioneered by Toyota to every type of business across the world. He is the founding Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy www.leanuk.org in the UK, dedicated to pushing forward the frontiers of lean thinking and helping others with its implementation. His work has inspired the very successful implementation of lean by Tesco and many other companies.

He is the author with James P Womack of the influential, best-selling management books – The Machine that Changed the World, and Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Organisation – which describe the principles and practice of lean thinking in production. Their latest book Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers can Create Value and Wealth Together extends these ideas to consumption, provision and service delivery.

These books have triggered a worldwide movement of lean practitioners and the establishment of the Lean Global Network of Lean Institutes (including the Lean Enterprise Academy) which teach lean locally and have organised over 25 Lean Summits in the USA, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Turkey, Israel, South Africa, India, China and Australia.

Kate Silver – Deputy Director, Efficiency & Reform Group, The Cabinet Office

Kate is the Deputy Director with responsibility for the Cross-Government Continuous Improvement Strategy aiming to eliminate waste and duplication using the skills and knowledge of staff at all levels and focussing on the needs of our customers. Prior to this she was the Deputy Director of the Government IT Profession working across the public sector. Kate started her career at Surrey County Council before moving to central government where she has had roles with Ofsted, the Department for Constitutional Affairs and HM Revenue & Customs in addition to her 2 most recent roles with the Cabinet Office.

In her spare time Kate is a commissioned officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (Training) branch working with Air Cadets across Surrey.

Alec Steel – Audit Manager, National Audit Office

Alec Steel is an Audit Manager working within the National Audit Office’s (NAO) Cross-government team and is responsible for leading the NAO’s work on process management with government departments. He joined the NAO from the public sector where he led a series of initiatives to design and implement business process change. During his career with the NAO Alec has applied the principles of process management to a number of reports to Parliament including recruitment in central government, a review of a major government department’s continuous improvement programme and an assessment of the maturity of process management in central government.. In addition to his work on process management, Alec’s other work focuses on how Government uses consultants, assures major projects and manages its estate. Outside of the NAO, Alec acts as process management advisor to the board of a major UK charity.

Kevin Summersgill – Audit Manager, National Audit Office

Kevin Summersgill is an Audit Manager working within the National Audit Office’s (NAO) Cross-government team and is responsible for leading the NAO’s work on process management with government departments. He joined the NAO from the private sector, where he worked in textile engineering and education. Kevin has applied the principles of process management to a number of reports to Parliament including recruitment across central government, reviews of two major government department’s continuous improvement programmes and an assessment of the maturity of process management in central government. Kevin’s other work with the NAO has focussed on how government assures major projects and assessing change management programmes in government departments and their agencies. Outside of the NAO, Kevin acts as process management advisor to the board of a major UK charity and holds an MSc in Economics.

John Shook – CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

John Shook is recognized as a true sensei who enthusiastically shares his knowledge and insights within the Lean Community and with those who have not yet made the lean leap.

Shook learned about lean management while working for Toyota for nearly 11 years in Japan and the U.S., helping it transfer production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and subsequently to other operations around the world. While at Toyota’s headquarters, he became the company’s first American kacho (manager) in Japan. In the U.S., Shook joined Toyota’s North American engineering, research and development center in Ann Arbor, MI, as general manager of administration and planning. His last position with Toyota was as senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, KY, assisting North American companies implement the Toyota Production System. As co-author of Learning to See John helped introduce the world to value-stream mapping. John also co-authored Kaizen Express, a bi-lingual manual of the essential concepts and tools of the Toyota Production System. In his latest book Managing to Learn, he describes the A3 management process at the heart of lean management and leadership.

Shook is an industrial anthropologist with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and is a graduate of the Japan-America Institute of Management Science. He is the former director of the University of Michigan, Japan Technological Management Program, and faculty of the university’s Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering.

He is the author of “Toyota’s Secret: The A3 Report”; Sloan Management Review, July 2010; “How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI”; Sloan Management Review, January 2010. Shook is a sought-after conference keynoter who has been interviewed on lean management by National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous trade publications.