What’s on at the UK Lean Summit 2023

The UK Lean Summit takes place Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th, April at The Spine, Liverpool. The Summit is structured around how lean thinking and practice help us navigate the key problems of:

  • The productivity challenge and cost pressures.
  • Supply chain disruption.
  • The environmental crisis.
  • Lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The content is organised as a series of plenary talks and interactive learning sessions. We have a fantastic range of speakers and organisations – including The National Audit Office, CSL Seqirus, Toyota, Incentive FM, Aramis Group, the NHS and Ecobat ready to share their stories.

To provide context to the productivity challenge, we’ve asked Alec Steel from the National Audit Office to discuss the key issues. We’ve then got interactive learning sessions designed to help you think through the gaps that exist in your approach.

For example, those interested in improving their productivity performance will find the work being done at both Incentive FM and CSL Seqirus to engage everyone to help improve the work particularly useful. In addition, the learning sessions on how to develop effective problem solvers and the session on building an effective management system are key to improving productivity.


In terms of supply chain disruption, we will present our research in this area. It’s an area we are particularly interested in. We will share how we have been developing learning processes to teach and coach organisations to close performance gaps in supply issues.

The environmental crisis is an ever present challenge for all of us. John Manning of Ecobat will be accompanied by Neil Trivedi, co-author of “The Green Factory: Creating Lean and Sustainable Manufacturing” to discuss how lean thinking and practice is intrinsic in developing sustainable activities.

As lean thinkers, it’s important we spend time reflecting. We have a wide range of cases from Fred Schnider’s story of how Iberia has dramatically improved it’s MRO (maintenance and repair operations) slashing lead time by 90% during the Covid-19 pandemic to Nicolas Chartier’s work to develop Aramis Auto as one of the dominant online used car retailers. In addition we have a fantastic story from healthcare shared by Professor David Smith.

Finally, we know just how important kaizen is in everything we do. We are delighted that Toyota have agreed to share reflections on how they go about developing kaizen spirit and we’ve also asked Sharon Visser, author of “Lean Houses for Dragons” to provide her reflections of doing this from scratch. All of this plus our Chairman Dan Jones challenging us to think about where lean thinking goes next.

With sectors as diverse as retail, manufacturing, engineering, pharmaceuticals, airlines, service and healthcare there is something for everyone – whether a seasoned lean thinker or someone starting out on their lean journey. We look forward to seeing you at the event.

Best Wishes,

Dave Brunt

Purchase your Summit Ticket

Each year customers tell us that our Summit is the not to be missed Lean event of the year for any leader, senior manager or lean practitioner wanting to transform and or sustain the gains from their lean efforts. You can find out more about the programme and reserve your place at https://www.leanuk.org/uk-lean-summit-2023/ We look forward to seeing you in Liverpool in April.

Pre-Summit Masterclasses to Attend