Lean Consultant and President of Productivity Innovation – the Lean education and consulting company which introduced the Toyota Production System in the USA – I moved from heavy industries before entering into Consulting and Education.
After graduating from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ECSP), I spent 10 years with Pechiney SA, the European Aluminum leader, where I held several, progressive leadership positions in France and Italy, becoming Worldwide Export Manager of Aluminum Rolled Products for Pechiney Rhenalu, and Marketing Manager for Packaging at Pechiney Headquarters.
For 10 years, I worked with the engineers, technicians and extraordinary operators of Rhenalu, in this jewel of the aluminum industry, to better serve our industrial customers, and I still have in my memory the aluminum and its alloys, the factories and processes as well as the smell of rolling oil…
Subsequently, I joined Carnaud Metal Box Company spending my next five years in Italy leading Carnaud’s Plastic Packaging Operations for the Cosmetics and Perfume Industry. In this role, I experienced the challenges of responding to the B to B to C requirements and understood that applying the Toyota principles (introduced by Productivity) was essential to building the capability to serve customers. The concept of the inverted pyramid made me understand the power of a continuous improvement wave at all levels of the company as well as how important it was to work with people actually doing the job on the Gemba (the workplace – where things happen…).
I joined Productivity in 1994 to disseminate these Lean principles and philosophy to European companies. Following extensive Lean and Six Sigma experiences in a wide-variety of situations with both large and small companies in Europe and the USA, I learned by training operators and supervisors in the workplace and by engaging leadership. I understood how leadership makes the difference in the success of organizations. I then developed with my consultants’ team a wide experience of Lean transformation in manufacturing industry and in services (banking – insurance – financial services and other service sectors), and established relationships with many leaders in Europe and in the USA in all sectors.