Lean Specialists in North America

Ron actively engages and mentors stakeholders of all levels and disciplines within a business, from the Board Room, through the Operations, Engineering, Sales and Marketing, Quality, Finance, and HR functions, through to the most junior of staff.

Ron’s Lean foundations developed during 16 years with Boeing. He was trained by Lean experts in Australia and U.S.A, including direct mentoring by world-renowned Japanese ex-Toyota lean specialists engaged by Boeing.

Ron then led the implementation of quality and Lean initiatives into Chubb Australasia, utilising their parent company’s United Technologies Corporations Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE) program, which is one of the most successful in-house lean and quality programs in the world.

Ron holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Aeronautical), a Masters of Business Administration and is an advocate of experiential learning. Through an array of diverse roles, Ron has encountered the trials and tribulations of leveraging lean principles to overhaul the culture and performance of businesses. Key roles include Project Manager, Production Manager, Engineering Manager, Quality & Business Improvement Manager, Service Manager, and General Manager. These roles have seen his span of control to include multi-site responsibilities, $96M annual turnover, and 256 employees.

Chris eventually assumed C-Suite roles as President and Chief Operating Officer of several key food manufacturers, each with an annual turnover range of $40 million to $100+ million and as many as 400+ employees, in Canada and United States. Under a mandate to return the companies to profitability, Chris led the turnaround and ultimate sale of those companies to strategic partners after successfully implementing strategic initiatives to increase revenue, improve process flow, reduce waste, and increase contribution margin.

For the past 15 years, Chris has advised, coached, and mentored multiple organizations in their strategic planning through his own consulting business. Chris’ clients spanned various sectors of the FMCG industry across Canada and United States and Chris actively engaged with all stakeholders to manage cultural transformation, Lean Principles, and form lasting and sustainable results.

Chris will be working across all industries throughout North America and is keen to actively engage with customers.

Anil has been helping organizations improve their performance over the past 15 years. He works with executive teams to build the strategic plan and cultural orientation for the organization and helps middle-level leaders translate the strategic plans into execution plans. Anil also leads complex cross-functional problem solving, transformational process redesign exercises, and enables organizations through Lean and Six Sigma training.

His main area of interest and research is to build a comprehensive management system, which integrates an organization’s strategic plans with organizational culture and employee engagement.

Anil has worked in a wide range of industries including aerospace (Bombardier Aerospace & Hamilton Sunstrand), software (OpenText & RDM), healthcare (MDS Diagnostics & University Health Network), governments (Govt. of Saskatchewan, Ministry of Health in Ontario), not-for-profit (Toronto Public Library & World Vision International), telecommunication (Bell Canada & Rogers), retail (Hudson Bay & Canadian Tire), manufacturing (Maple Leaf Foods & Turkstra Lumber), finance (ScotiaBank), construction (PCL Construction & Royal Building Products), airlines (Qantas Australian Airlines) & services (Morneau Shepell & Starwood hotels), among others. His training courses have taken his to 5 continents.

Anil’s current teaching assignments include the Lean Six Sigma Essentials course at the University of Toronto & the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Course at McMaster University, Hamilton.

Anil has an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario; an M.Sc. in Business Research from the Rotman School, University of Toronto; Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Certification from the Six Sigma Academy, Scottsdale, Arizona and he is a certified administrator of the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator. Anil is currently a doctoral research scholar at the Rotman School, University of Toronto.

He is also prominent in developing people through enhanced management and coaching skills, and the optimal use of balanced score cards. He masters change leadership activities in support of mergers and cost reduction initiatives.

His hands-on approach makes him a true leader in transformation projects, both on the shop floor and office environments.  He has been involved in the implementation of continuous improvement system based on the Lean-6 Sigma philosophy.

He has held senior management positions in large corporations such as Bombardier Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney where he was director of the ACE Program (Achieving Competitive Excellence).

His responsibilities included the leadership and strategic direction of all organizational processes.  He facilitated various workshops and provided training on VSM, 5S, 3P, Standard Work, Root cause analysis, SMED, and Lean Leadership.

Normand has also assisted many major corporations worldwide in various industry sectors including United Technologies, Embraer, Chromalloy, Meggitt, Leesta and Stelia in Aerospace, Canadian National in Railways, Synagry in agro-distribution, Celgene and Macrogenics in Pharmaceutical, Air Liquide in gases and technology, Morneau Sheppell, Invest Quebec and Aon in Financial industry.

Normand holds an MBA from the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal. Frequent keynote speaker, he lectures in aerospace engineering bachelor’s degree programs at École de Technologie Supérieure in Montreal.

Normand is fluent in English and French and he can support TXM customers across Canada and the USA.

Ash is a seasoned supply chain and operations professional with fifteen years of global, cross-functional experience in operations and supply chain management, global strategic sourcing, lean six sigma and quality management in diverse industries such automotive, oil and gas, medical devices and management consulting.

Ash has managed a $25 million manufacturing operation as well as over 100 suppliers globally suppliers, with a purchasing spend in excess of US $150 million. His prior engagements include providing operational excellence and supply chain consulting services to over 100 several small and medium-sized organizations as well as working for renowned organizations such as Emerson, Abbott Laboratories, Rolls-Royce, and The Toyota Group in the United States and Canada.

Ash has managed and led diverse teams to deliver significant cost, quality, and lead-time improvements. Ash’s educational background includes MBA in Operations & Supply Chain from The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, Master of Science – Mechanical Engineering from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK and Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India. Ash is also an American Society for Quality Certified Six Sigma Black Belt.

During his time with Caterpillar, Scott was one of a very few “Go-to” Lean Manufacturing Experts entrusted by executive leadership to tackle and solve critical, complex issues within the Caterpillar supply base. He coached many suppliers’ owners, executives and teams enabling them to meet both demanding ramp-up schedules as well as sharp declines in demand while improving safety, quality, velocity and cost without capital expenditure!

He has enabled many suppliers to dramatically reduce lead times, inventories, and costs to remain viable and competitive, and to increase profitability. Scott also served as an Operations Manager and as a Manufacturing Engineering Manager at multiple Caterpillar locations.

While at The Timken Company, Scott held positions as a Product Development engineer, Technical Service Engineer, Quality Manager, and as an Operations Manager in Canton, OH.

Scott earned his undergraduate degree in Metallurgical Engineering, a Master’s in Materials Science Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and an MBA from Malone University. He is an APICS certified supply chain professional, an SME Lean Bronze practitioner, and a certified Change Master.

Scott is based in Louisville, Ohio and is available to travel across North America.

Marco has worked at some of America’s largest companies including Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell, Merck and Shell. He has held a range of positions including Senior Manufacturing Engineer, Six Sigma Implementation Leader, Operations Manager, Toyota Kata Coach and most recently as a director applying his extensive knowledge and experience to businesses in the San Antonio Area.

Marco has led multi-site, global, Lean Six Sigma transformations in oil & gas [Shell, Chevron], medical devices [Johnson & Johnson], healthcare [Johnson & Johnson], automotive [Allied Signal, Honeywell, Alcoa Fujikura] and pharmaceutical [Merck] realizing substantial process & operational improvements and significant cost reductions.

He has also developed his own Lean system at Secabell Systems incorporating Lean Management, Leader Standard Work, Toyota Kata, TPS, Operational Excellence, Six Sigma, TQM, and Project & Program Management to address the pervasive challenge of “how to effectively lead an enterprise while at the same time continuously improve its core processes”

Marco has extensive experience to transform your business and can speak English and Spanish, so is well positioned to help our clients across Southern America and Mexico.

Theron joined the TXM team at the end of 2014 and
brings over 25 years of Executive, Operations, and Quality Management leadership
within the General Manufacturing, Aerospace, Defense, Precision Machining,
Food Service, and Banking & Finance sectors.

Theron holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Manufacturing Engineering, a Masters Degree in Business Administration, and certifications in both Lean and Six Sigma Methodologies.

Theron is also an Adjunct Professor for The National Graduate School of Quality Management in Massachusetts where he has taught tens of Undergraduate, Master, and Doctorate candidates and coached/mentored them through their Business Projects (thesis) that resulted in a substantial return on investment for their sponsoring companies.

Most recently, Theron was the Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt consultant to the Executive Leadership team at a major world renown Refractory company.  Theron guided the company out of a ten (10) year Bankruptcy and helped them restore financial profitability, by streamlining operations and preserving jobs, so they could remain competitive in the free market.

All of their 17 North American factories and numerous Business Process locations successfully embraced the massive Lean cultural transformation that was required.

Bérengère joins TXM with over 20 years’ experience in Lean Management, Problem Solving and Strategic Project Management.

She uses a structured analytics-driven, cross-functional and participation process to operationalize strategies. She has extensive experience in international environments and will focus on the North American market for TXM.

Bérengère started her career in 1996, with Schlumberger in the European Affairs department as a lobbyist and in technology and competitive intelligence.

In 1999, she joined Ernst & Young Consulting, providing counsel to mid to large size companies, mainly in the soft drink, finance, insurance, and telecommunications industries.

In 2005, she joined the Lean Operations department of Toyota Europe, where she led strategic projects following the Toyota methodology and business practices. She supported the development and the implementation of the Toyota and Lexus Sales team management model in Europe, in the multifunctional process reengineering for the European group and its affiliates.

In 2009, Bérengère became an internal consultant for the Bombardier Aerospace Achieving Excellence System. In this role, she supported the deployment of the continuous improvement system in various functions and Business Units, providing training and coaching on lean practices and tools and promoting a culture of change. She also led several problem-solving projects with cross-functional teams.

In 2014, Bérengère became an independent consultant for small to medium organizations. From training to on-the-job-coaching, Bérengère loves to share her knowledge with the teams.