functions, working in the aerospace, software tools, finance and ... undergone extensive professional training. Kaizen .
Driving Competitiveness through Continuous Improvement Conference
Speaker Profiles Bill Costantino Bill is the founder and Senior Partner for W3 Group, LLC. He was among the first 200 employees hired at Toyota’s Georgetown, KY, auto plant, where he was a group leader for 7 years. Since 1994, he has worked as an independent consultant, supporting companies in diverse industries making the leap to lean management. Bill’s five-year effort converting Cedar Works to lean manufacturing is summarised in a chapter of the book, Becoming Lean (Productivity Press). For the last five years, he has collaborated closely with Mike Rother, author of Toyota Kata. Rother and Costantino have developed and co-lead a variety of professional development seminars and workshops for the University of Michigan and Lean Enterprise Institute. Their focus is teaching the underlying philosophy, critical routines, and skill development of the Toyota Kata approach to management. Bill is an Ambassador for Toyota Kata and frequent speaker around the world. He is an adjunct faculty at Bainbridge Graduate Institute for the Sustainable Operations course, a guest lecturer at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI, and a member of the Michigan Lean Consortium.
Frank Devine, Accelerated Improvement Frank specialises in creating a continuous improvement culture from the bottom-up. This deepens and accelerates employee engagement, systematically develops continuous improvement capability at all levels and rapidly overcomes resistance to change. He has also developed a comprehensive system of leadership development, The Cathedral Model, to equip leaders to create and sustain such high levels of engagement. Frank has trained senior leaders and internal change champions in organisations such as Johnson & Johnson (Shingo Gold Prize 2014), Rolls Royce, Coca Cola, GKN, CarnaudMetalbox, Lake Region (Shingo Prize winner 2013), GE (their high potentials), Bacardi and Boston Scientific. As a visiting lecturer, Frank contributes to the “getting buy-in”, employee engagement, leadership and coaching aspects of the Lean Enterprise MSc at both Buckingham and Cardiff and to Warwick University’s WMG. He also provides executive coaching to a number of clients including Rolls Royce, Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson and Bechtel. In his presentation Frank outlines the challenges for change management and people engagement (especially for SMEs) and how these can be effectively overcome using a structured system for leadership development.
Mike Burrows Mike is UK Director and Principal Consultant at David J Anderson and Associates. For much of his career, Mike has led development teams and larger IT functions, working in the aerospace, software tools, finance and energy sectors. Mike is well known to the Kanban community through the sharing of his experiences and speaks regularly at Lean/Kanban events in several countries, his book “Kanban from the Inside” is due out in September. In his first workshop “Introducing Kanban” - Mike describes a repeatable approach for introducing and developing Kanban systems (visual pull systems) for software development and other “creative knowledge work” environments, outlining the benefits that can be realised. In the second workshop “Kanban’s not-so-hidden agendas” - What do you want from Kanban? Help self-organising teams make better decisions? Improve service delivery? Or something bigger perhaps, that impacts on organisation and culture? In this longer interactive session, Mike explores the Kanban Method from the perspective of its values system.
Dan Alexander Dan is Managing Director of Kaizen Institute UK. He has wide experience in manufacturing and has undergone extensive professional training. Kaizen enables businesses to achieve their performance dreams through continuous improvement of people, processes and systems. They help diagnose problems, create awareness, draw roadmaps, lead implementation, develop experts and coach leaders to sustain business excellence. Career 1986 Electrolux Refrigeration: Production Supervisor 1991 Metallifacture Ltd (1St Tier Automotive Supplier), Kaizen Manager 1995 Wagon Automotive (1St Tier Automotive Supplier), Manufacturing Manager 1997 Kaizen Institute, Consultant 2009 Kaizen Institute: Managing Director, UK Office. Expertise Trained in JIT and TFM – Total
Flow Management, by Toyota and Nissan Participated in numerous very successful Lean Projects to Reduce Lead Time, Working Capital, Reduce Costs, Improve Productivity and Customer Service; Experience in Lean implementation in many sectors Automotive, Food, Printing, Textile, Aerospace, Electronics, Construction Expertise in Kaizen Change Management and Kaizen Lean Transformation Initiatives.
