We are a network organisation led by a core management team and supported by our operations staff in Goodrich, near Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

Daniel Jones

Daniel Jones 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.

See Dan's full biography on the Daniel Jones website

Marc Baker

Marc Baker 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.

Dave Brunt

David Brunt David Brunt is Senior Faculty Member 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:

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.

John Darlington

John Darlington John Darlington is a management consultant specialising in Lean Enterprise applications applying lean principles across the entire enterprise, from design to delivery.

He develops programmes of practical implementation integrating improvements to the physical flow of the product or service, and the information flow that converts customer demand into actions.

A qualified accountant John won the Toyota “Prize for Best New Idea” at the South African Production and Inventory Control Society and has been a guest speaker at APICS.

His recent work has been on compression of manufacturing lead-time to gain competitive advantage and on valuing and directing improvement activity. He combines application with teaching for Cardiff Business School’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre founded by Dan Jones on their MSc course specialising in mapping, capacity planning and scheduling and where he has developed Flow Costing.

Ian Glenday

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 work for LEA, delivering workshops for Lean Enterprise Institutes around the world as well as helping businesses to make their own Lean transformations.

John Kiff

John Kiff

After an early career in strategic marketing in the car and consumer-durable industries, John joined Professor Dan Jones at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School in 1994 as the Senior Researcher and subsequently Director for the ICDP (International Car Distribution Programme). ICDP was co-founded by Dan Jones and set up not only to study the future directions for car distribution, retailing and after sales but also to investigate how Lean principles could be applied to all the activities ‘downstream of the factory gate’.

From 1994 to 2007 John led ICDP’s research in various areas including After-Sales, Parts Supply Systems, Used Cars, Business Cars, Dealer Standards and Lean Dealer Processes and participated in all its other research projects including studies of New Car Supply and Stocking. His work with ICDP included hundreds of in-depth research interviews with executives in dealers, manufacturers and suppliers all of which have contributed to his considerable knowledge of car distribution.

John has given papers at numerous ICDP conferences, academic conferences and other motor industry manufacturer and dealer meetings across Europe. His papers have been published both by ICDP and in academic journals and include:

He has also delivered courses to dealers at Cardiff University Business School, the Catholic University, Lisbon, and for ICDP Australia. He has chaired numerous industry conferences in the UK, contributed to the UK Government’s Automotive Innovation and Growth Team Report and co-chaired its Working Group on Car Servicing and Repair Standards.

In addition to his work with ICDP, John has also carried out numerous individual client research and advisory projects including a series of projects since 2000 in various European countries enabling car dealers to implement Lean principles in their businesses. This experience has led him to co-author a workbook with David Brunt entitled ‘Creating Lean Dealers’ which was published in November 2007 by Professor Dan Jones at the Lean Enterprise Academy (LEA) www.leanuk.org. Creating Lean Dealers was awarded a Shingo Prize for Research and Professional Publication in 2010.

John now spends his time working with firms, primarily in car distribution but also in Sales and Service, to improve business performance through lean transformations as well as carrying out other advisory projects One of John and David’s clients, Jaegerbil in Norway, won the overall Lean Prize for Norway in 2011.

John is a graduate of the University of Wales, holds a Diploma in Management Studies and a Diploma in Marketing. He is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the Institute of the Motor Industry.

Ken Robertson

Ken Robertson Ken has extensive experience of the National Health Service, having worked in several large acute hospitals in England and Wales.

He started his career working as a Biomedical Scientist in Pathology Laboratories and was co-author of research papers on coeliac disease, after specialising in Histopathology and Cytology.

He also served for many years on National Advisory Committees, including the Welsh Expert Group on Cervical Cytology.

After managing a Pathology Laboratory of a Welsh NHS Trust for 8 years, Ken moved into General NHS Management and worked at Trust Board level with responsibility for Planning and Operational Management.

He has led major Service Improvement Initiatives throughout his NHS career and, from 2002, developed a keen interest & experience in applying Lean Thinking to processes in healthcare. Early work achieved significant improvements in service areas such as I.T. and Telephony Services as well as waiting time reductions in clinical areas.

More recently his work has been focussed on end to end processes (patient journeys) and Value Stream Development in Medicine and Surgery.

Ian Taylor

Ian Taylor 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.