Lean Enterprise Academy - Speakers

René Aernoudts

Dr. René L.M.C. Aernoudts (1968) is chairman of the Lean Management Instituut in Driebergen, the Netherlands and managing director of Sentary Coaching & Consulting. He has a background in Business Economics, Sociology and Organisational Behaviour. Before founding the Lean Management Institute he was a managing partner of a renowned consulting firm mainly working in Europe, for banks, insurance companies, governmental institutes, hospitals and manufacturers. His objective is to bring lean and the typical results that come with it to service and non profit organisations. In the workshop he will show the change management strategies that can be used in implementing lean in an organisation.

Michael Ballé

Dr. Michael Ballé, business consultant and author, is co-founder of the Projet Lean Entreprise (www.lean.enst.fr).

This is France's leading lean initiative, conducted in collaboration with Telecom Paris, where Michael is associate researcher. For over a decade, he has focused on the human implications of lean implementation in fields as diverse as manufacturing, healthcare and administrative processes. As a cognitive sociologist, he has taught organization theory in several business schools.

He is co-author of The Gold Mine: a novel of lean turnaround, and has published extensively on organizational change. The Gold Mine has received the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research.

For more information about Michael Ballé please see www.michaelballe.fr.

David I Ben-Tovim

Professor David Ben-Tovim is a psychiatrist and clinical epidemiologist by background. He is currently leading the Redesigning Care program at the Flinders Medical Centre, a 500 bed teaching hospital in the southern suburbs of Adelaide in South Australia. The Redesigning Care program is a hospital wide program applying Lean Thinking to processes throughout the institution from the Emergency Department through to the Central Sterile Supply Department. Hundreds of the hospital staff have now participated in a Lean Thinking training program or a Redesign project. The Redesigning Care group at Flinders also mounted the First Australasian Redesigning Care summit in Adelaide in March 2005. Over three hundred and fifty participants from hospitals and health services throughout Australasia attended the summit whose title was “Improving Patient flow by applying Lean thinking principles”.

David Ben-Tovim trained in Medicine and Psychiatry at the Middlesex and St Georges University Hospitals in London, and in Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, also in London. He moved to Australia in 1984, after a period of work in Botswana. He has acted as a consultant for the World Health Organisation on a number of occasions, as well as making various attempts to reform health services in South Australia and elsewhere. He established the Clinical Epidemiology Unit at the Flinders Medical Centre in 1998, and was Director of Clinical Governance for the hospital prior to the launch of the Redesigning Care program in 2003. He is the author of over seventy publications in the peer reviewed literature. One of his abiding regrets is that his monograph on mental health and primary health care in Botswana was published well before the country was discovered by the readers of Alexander Mccall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and is now out of print.

Denise Bennett

Denise Bennett is currently Deputy Director of the Redesigning Care program at Flinders Medical Centre. She has been a member of the team since the commencement of the program in late 2003. Denise has supported major redesign within the medical patient journey and several other hospital wide programs of work including nursing, after hours, and separation summary redesign.

Denise has a background in nursing, management, project management and research. Her career in nursing was predominantly in nephrology within both the public and private sector. Denise’s passion for leading and managing change has been vitalised by her exposure to Lean Thinking. Denise has played a major role in the organisation of the 3 Australasian Redesigning Health Care Summits held to date. She also plays an active role in the newly founded Australasian Lean Health Network.

Graham Booth

Currently an active member of ECR Europe co-chairing the Shared Learning board and acting advisor to conference, and operational boards. Non Executive of Polymer Logistics (UK) Ltd a Retail Ready Packaging Company.

With a huge range of contacts throughout the world in both retailing and manufacturing working through his own company J.A.N.G International, allows for constant appraisal of the Industry.

Previously Stores Board Director of Tesco plc having been in its management team for 35 years.

Was the architect of much of the Tesco current replenishment systems for total supply chain management with special emphasis on automated ordering value chain analysis shelf ready packaging and lean thinking. Served time in stores from store manager to regional director before moving into a central role to drive what is classed as a world leading supply chain.

Victor Chance

Victor Chance is Worldwide Vice President of Operations for Cordis Corporation, a $4B sales unit of the Johnson & Johnson company,. Responsible for Worldwide Operations, Mr. Chance directs the company’s global manufacturing, supply chain management and strategic sourcing activities. Vic is well known within J&J as an accomplished implementer of lean production systems and six sigma programs with a strong track record of generating year over year productivity increases.

Prior to joining Cordis, Mr. Chance was Vice President of Operations, Worldwide for Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics where he deployed an operational re-engineering program using J&J’s Process Excellence tools. The changes resulted in significant improvements in productivity, quality, response time and customer satisfaction.

Vic joined Johnson & Johnson in 1999 after 12 years at the AlliedSignal Corporation, being a key contributor to that company’s operational excellence transformation. Mr. Chance was heavily involved in the deployment of 6 Sigma and Lean Manufacturing at AlliedSignal during the course of multiple operations management assignments in several businesses.

A graduate of Auburn University with a B.S. in Engineering, Mr. Chance also holds an M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Bridgeport.

Prof. Matthew Cooke

Professor Matthew Cooke is Professor of Emergency Medicine at Warwick Medical School and Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Heart of England NHS Trust. He is a Senior Fellow in the NHS Improvement Faculty for Patient Safety and Quality Improvement. More ...

John Coughlin

John Coughlin is currently Senior Vice President, Corporate Services, at Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. John obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Windsor, with a double major in economics and political science. John went on to obtain a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Windsor, in 1976 and was called to the Bar for the Province of Ontario in 1978.

John practiced law in the area of civil litigation with the McTague Law Firm in Windsor for 5 years before joining Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, as Director of Human Resources. He has held progressively more responsible positions in the organization at the Vice President level since 1986. He has had responsibility for Human Resources, Organizational Development, Health and Safety, Physical Plant, Renovations and New Construction, Information Services, and Health Records, as well as providing legal advice to the hospital. In 1989, John received a Certificate from the School of Business, at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario upon completion of The Queen’s Executive Program. John is the Executive Lead for the LEAN program at Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital.

Pascal Dennis

Pascal Dennis has a background in Health, Safety & Environmental management, Quality, Finance, Human Resources, and Strategic Planning. He currently works as Manager of Health & Safety, Manager HR at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, has supported several model launches & continuous plant expansion, and worked with lean masters in North America and Japan.

He has been in the business of consulting and training lean concepts for four years and is an expert in Policy Deployment, A3 Thinking, Visual Management; Kaizen & Problem Solving; Lean Transformation; Lean System Development, Human Resources.

Pascal has hands on experience through work with The Ford Motor Company, Eastman Kodak, and Delphi Automotive and has received recognitions for his work - ASQ Quality Golden Quill 1997, OSH Award for Professional Achievement 1998, Nominated for Shingo Award 2003.

His books include Andy & Me, Lean Production Simplified – a plain language guide to the world’s most powerful production system, Quality, Safety & Environment – Synergy in the 21st Century

Ann Eason

Ann Eason, leads the National Pathology Service Improvement Programme providing lean and six sigma services for NHS pathology teams. Her career began in pathology and having trained in each of the four main disciplines became state registered in microbiology. She has since worked with medical, surgical, geriatric care and emergency teams in a number of roles. Work with the NHS Coronary Heart Disease Collaborative provided a valuable opportunity to work across the healthcare spectrum of primary, secondary and tertiary care settings.

Ann has an MSc and MBA and an interest in evidence based medicine and the psychology of change management. She has written and contributed to a number of publications.

Ian Elliott

Ian Elliott is the Director of World Wide Manufacturing for the Diabetes Franchise for Johnson and Johnson which provides Self Monitoring Blood Glucose equipment and test strips, as point of care solutions for Diabetics. The Franchise has revenue of $2.6bn for Johnson and Johnson and Ian has accountability for the Manufacturing facilities in Scotland, Puerto Rico, United States and Australia. Whilst an employee of Johnson and Johnson for twenty three years, he has previously worked in the Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Franchise providing semi automated Immunoassay tests systems to hospitals and reference laboratories. It was here he was a part of the LERC LEARN 2 progamme back in 2002 and has continued to be an advocate for Lean and its expansion in the Supply Chain.

Ian has been a part of the Leadership team of two Franchise Lean transformations which have delivered impressive business results. Ian graduated from University College, Cardiff with an Honors degree in Biochemistry, became Member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt and is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Lean Operations at University of Wales.

Ian currently lives with his wife and three children in Zug Switzerland.

David Fillingham, CBE

David Fillingham has been Chief Executive at Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust since September 2004. He joined the NHS in 1989 having previously worked in Personnel Management and Marketing positions with Pilkington Plc. After a short period at Mersey Regional Health Authority, David has occupied a number of Chief Executive positions – in Primary Care at Wirral FHSA from 1991 until 1993; in commissioning at St Helens & Knowsley HA from 1993 until 1997 and in acute hospital services at North Staffordshire Hospitals Trust from 1997 to 2001.

From 2001 to 2004 David was Director of the NHS Modernisation Agency responsible for developing new ways of working and promoting leadership development across the NHS as a whole. David is now relishing the challenge of putting that national experience in to practice back on the frontline of the NHS at Bolton. In particular he is deeply involved in applying “lean” principles to healthcare.

David lives in St Helens in Lancashire. Other than the NHS his passions are watching his local rugby league team and spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Ian Glenday

Ian started his lean journey as a micro-biologist running a fermentation plant producing enzymes, where he first began developing lean concepts and principles for application in process industries. After time out to gain an MBA from Bradford Business School he joined Reckitt & Colman. He led an MRPII project to class "A" status in their pharmaceutical division. He then moved to the house-hold and toiletries division where he was responsible for initiating and implementing a pan-European supply chain strategy based on the lean concept of "every product every interval". He then became Head of Policy Deployment at Colman's of Norwich where substantial increases in sales per employee, market share and profit margins were achieved by applying Lean Thinking across the whole company.

More recently Ian has been working with companies as an independent Lean coach and sensei. His approach to applying lean in many types of industries, including chemicals, paints, pharmaceuticals, grocery, food and drinks, is refreshingly different, instructive and entertaining.

Ian currently divides his time between working with Professor Daniel Jones at the Lean Enterprise Academy where he is a Senior Fellow, delivering workshops for Lean Enterprise Institutes around the world as well as helping businesses to make their own Lean transformations through his company Repetitive Flexible Supply Ltd. (www.rfsweb.com).

Torgeir Halvorsen

Torgeir was born and lives in Bergen, the second largest city in Norway. After completing his studies, he worked in the paint industry for 10 years as product manager and sales manager, with industry customers. This was followed by 10 years in IT (Esselte, NIT/ IBM/ CMA) as a regional manager, product manager and managing director, with customers in industry, commerce and government departments.

For the past 15 years Torgeir has been Managing Director of Jæger Automobil, a regional Dealer for Toyota and market leader for the past 30 years. The company is a family owned business which has been going for 80 years. It has been involved in implementing lean systems since 2006 and co-operates with the Lean Institute in this work. 
As a Toyota dealer Jæger Automobil also works on implementing TSM, and TPS in Service, practically 5s, standardisation, express service, visual management and problem solving methods.

Torgeir has been on the board of Jæger Automobil since1996 and has been president of the Norwegian Toyota Dealers Association for the past 5 years.

Paul Jarvis

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.

Scott Jeffers

Scott Jeffers is the current General Manager of Global Supply Chain & Lean Initiatives for GE Healthcare’s Clinical Systems division. In this role he leads the overall coordination of global manufacturing initiatives, strategic supplier development, and Lean Six Sigma deployment across GE’s Ultrasound, Monitoring, Cardiology, Bone Densitometry, Maternal-Infant Care, and Life Support Solutions businesses. Clinical Systems is a $4.3 billion segment of GE Healthcare, developing innovative technologies that improve clinical precision at every point of patient care.

Prior to this role, Scott served as the General Manager of Americas Customer Fulfillment and operationally supported over 500 sales reps and $1.3 billion in America’s distribution. His team delivered unprecedented improvements in customer-facing support using the Toyota Production System principles. Scott also led two manufacturing Plants for GE Healthcare, the most recent of which won the 2003 Wisconsin Manufacturer of the Year Award and OSHA VPP certification honors. This GE “top plant” was the origination point of many of GE’s Lean tools, including the widely used GE Lean Deployment Guide.

Before GE, Scott was an Officer in the U.S. Air Force and ran research programs for Wright Laboratory in Florida, and joint programs between the Air Force, Dept of Energy, NASA, and EPA in New Mexico. Most notably was his involvement with the Cassini Mission to Saturn, which launched from Florida in 1997 & entered Saturn’s orbit in 2004.

Scott holds a Bachelors Degree in Physics from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of West Florida.

Jim Luckman

Jim Luckman is President of Luckman Consulting, Inc., which provides coaching for companies interested in utilizing lean principles and engaging the entire workforce in making profound change. Recently, Jim was the President and CEO of iPower Technologies, a company serving the distributed generation market of electrical power. In this position, he successfully applied lean across all functions in the organization providing a common change model.

Jim has worked in the auto industry for 34 years employed at Delphi Automotive (formerly part of General Motors). He has had significant experience in Strategic Planning, Engineering and Manufacturing. In his most recent position at Delphi, he was Site Manager at the Technical Center of Rochester, NY, and Chief Engineer for Fuel Systems. He led a transformation at the Technical Center by adopting lean manufacturing principles and applying Toyota product development principles. He took a systems approach to making change and integrated this across all functions that support the development process. As the executive champion and change agent for Lean Engineering, he spent most of his time coaching and leading workshops for all Delphi Engineering organizations and other interested companies.

Jim has an Electrical Engineering Bachelor's degree from Tri State University and a Masters degree from Case Western Reserve University in Computer Engineering.

Carol Makin PhD, FRCS

Carol has been a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon for 17 years at Wirral Hospital NHS Trust. She is currently Clinical Director for General Surgery & Urology and formerly Clinical Director on the Trust Board

Carol is particularly concerned with obtaining a good quality outcome for all patients produced in association with staff who are valued members of a team – you should want to go to work!

Over the years Carol has embraced the concept of service redesign. Initial exposure was through the application of action learning in a multidisciplinary group - turning around house officer recruitment from 10 applicants for 40 posts to over subscription within 1 year. Subsequent experience with phase 1 of the Cancer Services Collaborative and the Modernisation Agency demonstrated the potential for effective working between clinicians and management focused on a specific project over a defined time period.

Carol is tired with the annual round of cost improvement exercises resulting in staff reductions (often experienced and therefore expensive members of staff ) in combination with pressure on clinicians to do more. There is a time when working harder, longer, and smarter ceases to be effective and there are many disillusioned workers in the NHS today.

The Lean approach is not a quick fix with instant gains in the traditional sense of NHS measurements. Adopting Lean is a whole new philosophy. An organisational culture change is necessary. Lean brings an opportunity to redesign and modernise in an environment where everyone’s opinion is valued, but perhaps most important of all the opportunity to change rapidly and embed changes into routine practice with resulting longer term rewards than the NHS has seen in the past.

Having been inspired by Lean Thinking, the Lean Summit, and Professor Daniel Jones, Carol has obtained CEO and senior management support to apply Lean principles to healthcare at Wirral. In May 2006 the first rapid improvement workshop was held around elective surgical services. This was followed in October 2006 by joint workshop between A&E and PCT.

Robert Martichenko

Robert Martichenko is President of LeanCor LLC. Headquartered in Burlington Kentucky, LeanCor delivers Logistics and Supply Chain Management services to organizations embracing Lean production principles.

Robert has over ten years of transportation, consulting and third party logistics experience. This experience includes multiple operational launches, including the "green field" start up at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana.

Robert is a student and teacher of Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Lean and Six Sigma. He is currently an active instructor for programs offered by the Lean Enterprise Institute USA and Saint Louis University -John Cook School of Business.

Robert currently sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of "Logistics Quarterly" magazine and contributed the chapter on "Lean Six Sigma Logistics" in Michael George's book "Lean Six Sigma ". The author of a leadership handbook called "Success in 60 Seconds"; Robert has recently co-authored an operational management book on eliminating waste in logistics, to be published in April 2005.

Robert complements his years of logistics experience with a Bachelor Degree in Mathematics from the University of Windsor, an MBA in Finance from Baker College and is a trained Six Sigma Black Belt.

Past President of the Cincinnati Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) Roundtable, Robert now serves as a regional advisor to a group of CSCMP roundtables.

Born in Timmins Ontario Canada, Robert resides in Kentucky and enjoys family time with his wife Corinne, two wonderful daughters and assorted pets.

Neil McEvoy

Neil McEvoy is President and CEO of Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital a 300 bed tertiary care facility in the border city of Windsor, in southwestern Ontario, Canada.

An engineer by training, Neil began his career designing clinical laboratory equipment, and entered the hospital field by establishing a Clinical Engineering Department at one of Canada’s teaching hospitals.

For eighteen years he served as chief operating officer, working with QA, TQM, UM, QI and one or two other acronyms that healthcare has embraced. Throughout, he developed a keen interest in the leadership of change not only as process, but as system and as learning as well.

Since taking up his role in 2004 as CEO of Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, Neil has set out to foster a cultural change among the 2,000 staff and physicians at the hospital. As part of this renewal he introduced LEAN to the hospital team in 2005. By spring of 2006, the Emergency Department had seen tremendous improvements in patient access and service, and by year end major initiatives were underway in five other areas.

The management team is now engaged in a major hospital-wide integration exercise that extends the experience and learnings gained in the LEAN projects.

Neil was born in Dublin, Ireland, and was educated at University College, Dublin, The Ohio State University, and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Alan Mitchell

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.

Frits Nygaard

After the acquisition of Radiometer by Danaher in 2004, I implemented the Danaher Business System in operation; which is implementing and stabilizing a lean platform. It was completed in 2 years. From 2006 we worked on developing a lean culture controlling and managing all operation activities at daily board meetings at the shop floor. I left Radiometer in 2007, 3½ years in the lean journey of the company.

John M Neill, CBE

In 1987, John Neill led the management buyout of Unipart Group and began the process of transforming the culture and philosophy of the business. As a result of the senior team’s commitment to a stakeholder philosophy, the majority of the company today is owned by management and employees.

In the late ‘80s, the company set out to achieve world class operational performance through the implementation of Lean. Today, Unipart successfully supplies a wide range of blue chip companies including Jaguar, Airbus, Vodafone, Homebase and Halfords. Cranfield Institute has voted Unipart Group the ‘Most Visionary Company for Transformational Change’ in the UK; while John is personally recognised as a leading authority on the practical application of Lean principles in the service sector.

Bill Owad

William P. Owad, Jr., senior vice president of Operational Excellence with Cardinal Health’s Medical Products Manufacturing segment, is responsible for the development and implementation of an enterprise approach to operational excellence. Owad also supports the development and implementation of quality and customer loyalty measurement systems.

Owad, who has served as a examiner for both The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program and the Ohio Award for Excellence, is a trained Six Sigma Black Belt. He also is a graduate of Intermountain Healthcare’s Advanced Training Program in Health Care Delivery.

Prior to joining Cardinal Health, Owad, the author of several publications and presentations on quality improvement and customer loyalty research, held many operations and administrative roles within the health care provider market. These roles include corporate director of Quality for ProMedica Health System, executive director for Cordelia Martin Health Center, and several adjunct faculty positions with the College of Pharmacy at the University of Toledo and other nationally recognized programs.

Owad is currently serving as the Past Chair to the Central Ohio American Red Cross BioMedical Services Board and is a past Board member for Management Excellence Incorporated.

Owad received his bachelor’s of science degree in pharmaceutical sciences and his master’s of business administration from the University of Toledo.

Stephen Parry

Stephen Parry’s career in service centre operations spans over 15 years, during which time he has been responsible for building and operating large scale international call centres in various sectors; IT Services, Retail Direct-Marketing and Financial Services.

He has extensive experience in the areas of customer service strategy, proposition development, organisational development, business process alignment, technology introduction, change and turnaround management.

Most recent role was Head of European Strategy and Operational Development for Fujitsu. In 2001 he was awarded both the European Call Centre of the Year award for Innovation and Creativity, and the European Call Centre of the Year award for best people development program.

In 2002 he took Fujitsu to the finals of the UK National Business awards for Customer Focus and they became winners of the 2003 National Business Awards for the Best Customer Service Strategy.

Dilesh Patel

Dilesh Patel is a co-founder and president of the Visual Communications company, GumshoeKI . Previously the director of major accounts at SDRC, Dilesh received his degrees in engineering from the University of Southampton in England and from MIT.

He has broad international experience having lived in Africa, Europe and America and with an Asian heritage. His work with global companies like Nokia, Procter & Gamble, Nissan and Siemens has taught him the power of simple visual alphabets in developing world class processes.

Over the last 4 years, Dilesh's passion for visual communication has been channeled to developing simple visual software solutions that can be easily deployed by business users. GumshoeKI's eVSM software is based around the value stream mapping methodology in the best selling book "Learning to See". eVSM provides lean practitioners an easy way to draw, analyze and share the value stream maps that are critical discovery and planning tools in a lean initiative.

Dr Nick Rich

Nick is a Director of Cardiff University's Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre. He was a founding member of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) and worked with Professor Daniel Jones for some 12 years in a variety of research roles (1993 - 2005).

His main research interest concerns the design and implementation of lean production and maintenance systems. During his time with Danielat the Cardiff Business School, Nick was involved with such projects as the Andersen World-wide Lean Enterprise Benchmarking Studies, Supply Chain Development Programmes, 3 Day Car Programme, Lean Processing Programme, Nuclear Industry Suply Chain Project, Learn2 industrial networks, and various other projects. These programmes have yielded many millions of pounds savings and Nick is far from the stereo-typical academic!

Nick was fortunate enough to hold one of the elite Toyota Motor Company Research Fellowships (Japan) and used this time to study Toyota and its family of suppliers in 1997 at the depth of Japanese econmic recession and witnessed some remarkable improvement and engineering achievements despite 50 years of kaizen.

Nick holds a degree in Economics, Masters in Corporate Finance and a PhD in the emulation of lean manufacturing systems. He has written numerous books, articles, and has contributed to various Government Reports including the DTI Automotive Innovation and Growth Team, and the Metals Industry Competitiveness Report MICE. He also sits on the board of several manufacturing businesses and institutions that promote Engineering and maintenance.

Robin Santucci

Robin heads up the Global Solutions Consulting Practice for Siemens Canada Ltd. Using a LEAN approach, Global Solutions consultants provide clinical consulting expertise in patient centric workflow optimization enabled by technology. Global Solutions is a “vendor neutral” arm of Siemens world wide providing consultative services in the areas of Patient Centric Workflow Optimization, Process Based Facility Design, Demand Driven Asset Optimization, and Technology Enabled Innovation. Each engagement is aimed at eliminating waste and creating value chains to enhance the patient journey and clinical outcomes.

Prior to joining Siemens, Robin held a number of hospital leadership positions within Canada. Her background includes holding senior leadership positions in community as well as multi-site academic sciences centers including McMaster University Medical Centre. Robin has been a presenter at numerous conferences in Canada and the United States holding a MBA as well as a bachelor of science in nursing and nurse practitioner certification.

Kate Silvester BSC MBA FRCOphth

Kate Silvester originally trained and practised as an ophthalmologist. In 1991 she retrained as a manufacturing systems engineer. Kate spent seven years in management consultancy transferring manufacturing principles to service industries such as banking, airlines and healthcare.

In 1999 she rejoined the UK's National Health Service and worked on many national programmes to improve the flow of patients through the system, thus improving timeliness, cost and quality of healthcare. Kate’s specific area of expertise is in the design and management of organisational systems to address the variability in demand and capacity. She was appointed as a honorary senior lecturer at Warwick Medical School in January 06.

She now coaches NHS boards and senior clinicians in systems engineering techniques (including Lean) as part of the Osprey programme.

John Shook

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.

Art Smalley

Art Smalley is a veteran of Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan with experience in manufacturing engineering and maintenance for the Powertrain production division helping launch several new facilities around the world.

Upon returning to the U.S. Art served as Director of Lean Manufacturing for Donnelly Corporation a one billion-dollar global tier one automotive parts supplier with a highly successful track record in driving lean improvements. More recently Art worked as the North American lead trainer and engagement manager for the international consulting firm of McKinsey & Company. Art is the author of the LEI/LEA workbook entitled Creating Level Pull and is a frequent workshop instructor and content contributor as well.

Michael Szwarcbord

Michael Szwarcbord took up his position as Executive Director, Acute Services, Southern Adelaide Health Service and the General Manager, Flinders Medical Centre in May 2005. He is responsible for hospital service in the southern Adelaide region.

Mr Szwarcbord has held both roles of Chief Executive Officer and Deputy Chief Executive Flinders Medical Centre. In 2004 he introduced and has subsequently sponsored the ‘Redesigning Care’ initiative to successfully transform hospital processes based on ‘Lean Thinking’.

Prior to commencing at Flinders Medical Centre in early 2002 he held the appointment of Chief Executive, ACT Community Care. His career has predominantly been that of a senior executive in human services in the public sector in South Australia, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. This has spanned health services, disability services, statutory welfare policy, planning and service delivery; and the purchasing and funding of non government services.

Mr Szwarcbord qualifications include Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Social Administration. He is a Fellow, Australian Institute of Management and an Associate, Australian College Health Service Executives.

Takashi Tanaka

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 formed QV System in 2004 and is its Founder and Principle Consultant (QV-System.com). He currently works with clients in the US and Europe. His experience and deep ties within Toyota allow him to help his clients understand and apply the latest thinking and innovations.

David Taylor

David Taylor is a Senior Research Fellow in the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School. At Cardiff he has worked on several research projects to apply Lean Thinking to supply chain management. He has worked in industries as diverse as steel, automotive, high-tech equipment manufacture, shipbuilding, footwear and most recently on a large project on the agri-food supply chain for the Food Chain Centre, funded by the UK government.

He previously worked in the Department of Logistics at the University of Huddersfield, as a Research Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne and as Marketing and Distribution Manager with a medical equipment manufacturer. He has worked with many companies both in the UK and abroad and has published two books and numerous articles on supply chain management in both academic and practitioner journals.

John Toussaint

John S. Toussaint, MD, is CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, and CEO of the newly-launched ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. The Center’s mission is to create a healthcare marketplace that rewards providers for delivering value measured in terms of best quality at the lowest cost to their customers.

Martin Turner

Martin is married with 4 children – lives in Bettws Newydd, Usk – born in Tredegar and has lived in Wales all his life. He has one grand-daughter.

He entered the NHS as a finance trainee with Gwent Health Authority in 1969. After qualifying as an accountant he held several posts within the Authority, the most senior being that of Deputy Treasurer. In 1986 he accepted the post of Unit General Manager of Gwent Community Services, providing community, mental health and ambulance services for the population of the whole of Gwent (450,000).

His transfer to acute services came in 1990 when he was appointed Unit General Manager of the South Gwent Health Unit. In the succeeding three years he was responsible for the submission of a successful application for conversion to trust status and on 1 April 1993 he became Chief Executive of the newly established Glan Hafren NHS Trust. with an annual turnover of £123 Million and 5500 staff.

Following reconfiguration of Trusts in Wales in 1999, the former Glan Hafren Trust, Gwent Community Health Trust and Nevill Hall & District Trust merged to form a single trust for the whole of Gwent. Martin is now Chief Executive of Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust which provides a comprehensive range of services for approximately 600,000 people. The Trust has a budget of over £450 Million and employs some 13,000 staff. During 2000 he spent 3 months in Harvard University where he successfully completed the Senior Management Programme.

He has acted as lead surveyor for the King’s Fund Accreditation process, advising other trusts on their organisational and management arrangements. He has also participated in the King’s Fund Development Programme involving educational and consultancy tours of the UK, United States and Sweden. He was commissioned by the European Union to advise it and the Lithuanian Government on the development of health services in that country. Most recently he has undertaken consultancy work in Jamaica.

Martin is Chairman of the Institute of Health Service Management in Wales; Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants and a member of their Council; Fellow of the Centre for Health Leadership, Wales; Member of the British Institute for Management; and Vice Chairman of the All Wales Trust Chief Executives Group in Wales.

Paul Walley

Paul Walley is Associate Professor in Operations Management at Warwick Business School. He has worked with healthcare organisations for the last 12 years. He has been an advisor to NHS Improvement Collaborative programmes, including the Emergency Services Collaborative and the Improvement Partnership. In 2005/6 he directed a study into the potential for Lean Thinking in the Scottish Public Sector, which recommended that Lean could be used to make dramatic improvements to quality and efficiency. At the University, he works as part of a multi-disciplinary team the is developing the concept of “Clinical Systems Improvement” as a means of engaging clinicians in Lean.

Scot Webster

Scot Webster graduated from Bucknell University with a BS in Chemical Engineering. Scot held various engineering and shop management positions eventually teaching and leading Lean and Six Sigma at General Electric Medical Systems. Scot is one of GE’s first Certified Master Black Belts and was the Director of Quality for Asia and General Manager of Compliance and Regulatory Affairs.

Beginning 2003 Scot accepted the Vice President of Quality role at Medtronic, Inc., responsible for designing and deploying their Lean and Six Sigma methodology. Presently, residing in Minneapolis, Scot is the VP of Global Business Solutions for Medtronic, Inc.

Peter Willats

Peter has spent most of his working life developing and implementing lean systems. As a member of the Borad of GKN Automotive in the 1980's, he was exposed to lean ( before the term was coined ) as a supplier to all of the japanese OEMs and while serving in the Management Board of two of the company's joint ventures in Japan. In 1990 he started the Kaizen Institute of Europe with Masaaki Imai with the aim of bringing best practice Japanese shopfloor management to Europe. During the course of the following five years, he served four pasenger car makers in Europe as well as a range of other industries, adapting the methods and approach to different cultural and technical environments.

In the mid 90s, he was appointed as the Director of the Manfacturing Practice at McKinsey & Co and spent the next decade establishing operations in North America, across Europe and finally in China. During this time he extended the application of lean systems design to process industries and the service sector. In 1998, he founded the Production Systems Design Center in the UK to provide a two year lean training course to the Firm's consulants and clients. The Center now operates in seven locations around the world.

Peter is currently a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Co and an advisor to Cancer Partners UK.

James P Womack

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), Seeing The Whole: mapping the extended value stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2001), Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005). 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.