Leadership keynotes from:

Rene Carayol Former senior executive and board member of Pepsi, Marks & Spencer IPC Media and the Inland Revenue

Paul Coby CIO and Head of BA Services British Airways

Bill Black Group Senior Vice President – Quality & Operational Excellence ABB

Plus inspirational deployment insights from leading lights in the Process Excellence industry:

Thom Keehan Business Transformation and Integration Leader GE Money Bank	Tony Gattuso Vice President for LSS Business Transformation for Developing Markets Xerox	Sofie Blakstad Head of Re-engineering O&T EMEA Citi
Cem Miralay Head of Customer and Business Process British Gas	Emmanual Decroix Global CIB Process Excellence Leader BNP Paribas	Bernard Crump CEO NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement
Tom Falcon Director of Distribution and Production Shepherd Neame	Dr. Cristian Matei Master Black Belt Alstom Power Thermal Service	Scott Hermanson Global Commercial Excellence Leader Corning Cable Systems
Neil Trivedi Global Business Process Excellence Director GKN PLC	Karen E. Darrow UK TLCS Operations & Lean+ Manager Boeing Defence UK Limited	Peter Kirby Head of Solutions Development Kleinwort Benson
Paul Irish Operational Excellence Manager RSA Insurance Group	Nina Oakes Regional Director of Six Sigma & Operational Innovation Starwood Hotels and Resorts	Gerard C. Poolman Head of Process Excellence/Technical Asset Management APM Termainals
David Montgomery Head of Data Management & Continuous Improvement RWE npower	Joachim Majus Dipl.-Ing, Head Professional Project Management and Business Design, Deutsche Telekom Kundenservice GmbH Customer Experience Design	Phil Roberts Head of Business Improvement General Medical Council, UK.
Toby Winchester Senior Principle Scientist Pfizer	Steve Towers Founder BP Group	Fernando Navarro UK CIB Process Excellence Leader BNP Paribas
Gary Adams Data & CI Capability Manager RWE npower	Julia Harnischfeger Director Six Sigma (Blackbelt) England Hotels Starwood Hotels & Resorts	Peter Evans Director of Quality Virgin Media
Rhian Hamer Head of Lean Academy Ministry of Justice	Marcel Kranenburg Business Process Improvement Leader SABIC Innovative Plastics	June Jones Supply Chain Change Manager Argos
Sebastián W. Fleisman Quality and Process Improvement Leader Repsol YPF	Peter Ryan Fernandes Process Improvement Manager Maersk Line

Speaker Biographies

Rene Carayol
Former senior executive and board member of Pepsi, Marks & Spencer
IPC Media and the Inland Revenue

René Carayol is one of the world's leading business gurus specialising in leadership and culture, drawing from his own unique experiences on the boards of the biggest British and American organisations; from Marks & Spencer and Pepsi to IPC Media and the Inland Revenue. He is the best selling author of the leadership and culture bible, "Corporate Voodoo" and has had the privilege of working closely with some of the world's best leaders; from former US President Bill Clinton to the seventh Secretary- General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and from former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to Sir Richard Branson.

Paul Coby, CIO of British Airways, is the BA Director responsible for technology and shared services across the airline. Paul’s business principle is – ‘there are no IT projects, only business projects’,

Paul joined the Civil Service in 1978 and having been seconded to IBM in 1983, held several senior civil service positions, including Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Transport. Paul was asked to join British Airways’ IT Department in 1997 and became CIO in 2001.

Over the last nine years he has reduced the cost of running BA’s IT operation by 54%, enabling the Airline’s investment in industry revolutionising ‘customer and employee enabled’ systems. BA’s successful IT investments include the award winning ba.com with on-line and mobile check-in.

This January, he took over responsibility for financial shared services, property, business metrics and the application of Lean process across the airline.

Paul is also Chairman of the e-skills UK CIO Board. E-skills UK works with employees, educators and government to transform IT skills at all levels and ages in the UK economy and society.

Additionally, Paul chairs SITA, which is owned by the Air Transport Community and provides network services and IT solutions in 220 countries across the world.

Bill Black
Group Senior Vice President – Quality & Operational Excellence
ABB

Bill Black: is a graduate of Marine and Mechanical Engineering, a Member of the IMechE and EurIng and is a Fellow of the RAeS. He began his career in 1972 with BP Tanker Company before joining the aeronautical industry, in 1979, as a design and stress engineer. He progressed through various management roles in engineering, manufacturing, procurement and customer services before being appointed as Head of Quality and Integration for Airbus in June 2000, based in Toulouse. In 2004, Bill moved to become Chief Quality Officer at EADS, Airbus’ parent company, and was based in Paris.

Since January 2009, Bill has joined ABB in charge of Quality & Operational Excellence, based in Zurich.

ABB is one of the world’s leading engineering companies, helping customers to use electrical power effectively and working to increase industrial productivity in a sustainable way. With $35bn of revenues, ABB employs 120,000 people in 5 Divisions, spread over 100 countries.

Bill’s key challenge is in leading, coaching and supporting networks of energetic and passionate Quality & Operational Excellence people and Project Managers, in a continual drive for improvement in operational performance throughout the ABB value chain. The goal, through relentless OPEX improvement, is to deliver bottom line operational efficiencies whilst maintaining and improving customer confidence.

Bill is married to Jacqueline and living in Zurich, they have three boys, all are married and, so far, they have two grandchildren.

Sofie Blakstad
Head of Re-engineering O&T EMEA
Citi

Sofie has worked in change management and re-engineering for over a decade, for City financial institutions including UBS, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Chase and now Citi, over the last 15 years. She has headed up the O&T Re-engineering function for Citi for the last two years, focusing on process excellence as an enabler to drive cost savings with a particular emphasis on low investment solutions and breaking down silos. Taking a holistic view across investment banking, consumer banking and wealth management with multiple front to back processes has led to identification of multiple opportunities for streamlining across business lines and functions, as well as identifying opportunities for footprint optimization and consolidation opportunities. With a long history of delivering challenging change programmes across multiple geographies, Sofie is also a researcher in programme risk management and project lifecycle management.

Cem Miralay
Head of Customer and Business Process
British Gas

Cem Miralay, Head of Customer and Business Process, British Gas Born in North Cyprus. Got his BSc in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, New York. Started career as a software developer and launched several commercial software packages culminating in the sale of his company and rights to the technology to a software giant in 1994. Cem joined Microsoft Corp in 1994 and spent 11 years at Microsoft in various roles. Most notably he was General Manager, Global MSN Ops, for five years, responsible for Sales, Customer Service and Billing operations for all MSN Properties – including Hotmail, IM, xBox, expedia.com etc. Following his time at Microsoft, Cem was the European VP of Customer Experience for AOL. Cem has been at British Gas little over two years, with responsibility for all Customer and Business processes and the experience of all customer agents. He is married with five children and one on the way.

Emmanual Decroix
Global CIB Process Excellence Leader
BNP Paribas

Emmanuel started his career in the Technical Leadership Program of General Electric Healthcare in 1994 He then integrated the Corporate Audit Staff completed assignments in Asia, Europe and the USA After CAS he joined GE Insurance as a Master Black Belt, based in Munich, and rejoined GE healthcare as the Integration and Operations Manager in Budapest In 2001, Emmanuel became the Chief Operations Officer of GE Consumer Finance based in Paris where he industrialized the Operations and off shored 15% of Back Office activities In 2004 he was appointed General Manager of Solectron in Hungary. Emmanuel became BNP Paribas Lean Six Sigma leader in 3rd quarter 2006 and established a Global Program across the Group Since September 2009, he is the Global Deployment Leader for the Corporate Investment Banking division of BNP Paribas

Bernard Crump
CEO
NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

Bernard Crump was born in Burton on Trent and studied Medicine at Birmingham University qualifying in 1980. After 7 years in clinical practice and clinical research, he returned to the West Midlands to postgraduate training in Public Health Medicine. He spent a decade as Director of Public Health, in South Birmingham and in Leicestershire, where he was also Deputy Chief Executive. In 2002 he became CEO of Shropshire & Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority, a post which he occupied until being appointed the first CEO of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement in July 2005.

He has written and lectured on a wide range of topics in healthcare including aspects of population health, the role of clinicians in management, health and healthcare improvement, the use of metrics in encouraging improvement and the use of health economics in decision making. He is visiting professor at the University of Leicester and Honorary professor at the University of Warwick. He has been a member or chairman of many national committees and the author of several influential reports. Most recently he chaired the DH Choosing Health Public Health Information and Intelligence taskforce and has been made an inaugural member of the new Health Innovation Council.

Bernard lives in Leicestershire with his wife, Isabel, a GP and two children, Eleanor and Thomas.

Tom Falcon
Director of Distribution and Production
Shepherd Neame

Tom Falcon is the Production and Distribution Director at the UK’s oldest brewery Shepherd Neame, well-known for its ales like Spitfire and Bishops Finger and lagers like Asahi Super Dry and Kingfisher.

Tom joined Shepherd Neame in 2008 and during this short time has overseen significant changes and improvements in this historical and successful family business. Before joining Shepherd Neame, Tom held business improvement roles at AP Moller-Maersk, his last being Strategy and Process Excellence Director at The Maersk Company (UK). Prior to this Tom spent 3 years as a management consultant with A.T.Kearney and several years in East Africa, mostly with the region’s leading freight-forwarding and logistics company, SDV Transami. Tom has a BSc.hons from Edinburgh University, an MBA from INSEAD and is a black belt (PMI / Maersk).

Dr. Cristian Matei
Master Black Belt
Alstom Power Thermal Service

Owning a Master in Advanced Technologies and being Dr. in Business Process Reengineering/Management, trained by Rath&Strong (BB) and Six Sigma Academy (MBB), Cristian is currently working at ALSTOM Power - Thermal Service Master. He received his MBB certifications from ALSTOM in 2006 and from SSA in 2009. He has over 17 years (last 13 years with ABB and ALSTOM) of practical experience in different line and functional management positions: from mechanical engineer to CAD/CAM/CAE Manager and Production Manager, and from Business Process Re-engineering Co-coordinator to Business Improvement Manager and Master Black Belt. He offers a unique strategy in blending human potential, technology and processes by integrating the key Design and Improvement methodologies. Cristian has extensive management consultancy experience being co-founder and Honorary President of Advanced Thinking and Advanced Thinking Management Group , two Bucharest-based strategic management-consulting groups.

Scott Hermanson
Global Commercial Excellence Leader
Corning Cable Systems

Scott Hermanson is the Global Commercial Excellence Leader for Corning Cable Systems, a position that he has held since June 2009. Scott has responsibility for managing the strategic direction of the business' Commercial Excellence program. Before moving into his current role, Scott managed the tactical and strategic Performance Excellence initiatives for Corning Cables Systems' five North American manufacturing facilities. He is currently based in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX.

Before joining Corning, Scott worked for General Electric. Scott joined GE in 1993 as a Customer Service Representative for Polymerland in Los Angeles, CA. Since then, he has served in a variety of different Sales, Marketing, and Global Program Manager roles. He has worked extensively in Mexico, Latin America, and Asia, calling on multi-national corporations with operations in the Maquiladora NAFTA region. In 2001, Scott relocated to Dallas, TX where he became Commercial Black Belt for the Western Sales and Marketing Regions. In 2003, he moved on to the managerial position of West District Sales Manager, where he had responsibility for 10 direct reports. Scott finished his GE tenure when GE Plastics was acquired by Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), where he worked as the Global Commercial Learning Leader. His key responsibilities in this role were designing, developing, and implementing learning and development programs on a global basis for Sales, Marketing, and Product Management.

Scott earned a Bachelors degree in Economics from San Diego State University and an International MBA from the University of San Diego. He has studied abroad at the post graduate level in China, Mexico, and Brazil. Scott is bilingual in Spanish/English and also has semi-fluent language skills in several other languages.

Neil Trivedi
Global Business Process Excellence Director
GKN PLC

Neil Trivedi is the Global Business Process Excellence Director for GKN PLC. Neil has a background of manufacturing and supply chain operations across a diverse range of industries. Neil has been developing and delivering Lean applied to business process for a number of years across all non-manufacturing functions.In his current role, Neil designs, develops and delivers Lean Business Process transformation across the organisation for all levels of the business. He is currently half way through delivering a programme of senior leadership training.Neil holds an MSc in Lean Operations from Cardiff University as well as an MBA from Imperial College London.

Karen E. Darrow
UK TLCS Operations & Lean+ Manager
Boeing Defence UK Limited

Karen E. Darrow, UK TLCS Chinook Operations / Lean Manager, is responsible for leading and managing the Operation and Lean requirements for the Chinook TLCS programme in Gosport, England. Karen has been in this position since April 2007 Previous to this assignment she was the JDAM Production Manager, in St. Charles MO.USA. Karen has been responsible for a breath of lean transformations, leading a team that was awarded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence, Missouri Quality Award and the Missouri Team Quality Award. During her career with the Boeing Company, Karen has also, held various positions in Industrial Engineering. Karen received her BS from Wright State University, Dayton Ohio and her MS from Webster University.

Peter Kirby
Head of Solutions Development
Kleinwort Benson

Peter plays a key role in the continuous improvement of processes across Kleinwort Benson, a private bank with assets under management of £7bn, 700 employees and 10 offices around the UK and Channel Islands. Peter's focus is on timely delivery of cost-effective solutions, on encouraging collaboration with business users, and on ensuring that the overall architecture delivers value to the business.

Paul Irish
Operational Excellence Manager
RSA Insurance Group

Paul joined the Operational Excellence team at RSA Insurance Group (formally Royal & Sun Alliance) in July 2009. Since then, Paul has worked on a number of projects across the group, including a detailed analysis of process improvement opportunities for the Mexico office and is currently leading a review of the UK Motor Claims process.

Prior to this, Paul was the 6-Sigma Master Black Belt and Quality Manager for Ford Financial, which provides automotive financing for Ford Motor Company across Europe. Here, Paul focused on transforming 6-Sigma from a mature stand-alone programme to one that was closely integrated with core business planning and improvement activity.

Paul's previous experience, both within Ford Motor Company and Ford Financial, includes IT project management within global purchasing, payroll/pensions, and service centre functions, plus two years as the Ford Financial IT black belt.

Nina Oakes
Regional Director of Six Sigma & Operational Innovation
Starwood Hotels and Resorts

Nina graduated from the University of Sussex in 1997 with a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and joined Kodak Ltd on their graduate training scheme. During her 6 years at Kodak Nina was a Process Engineer responsible for chemical laydown onto the film, was Lead Engineer on a multimillion dollar project to install new Coating equipment into the production line, and also held several operational management roles including Shift Operations Manager for Graphic Film Manufacturing. Lean Sigma was an integral part of the ethos at Kodak and during her time at Kodak Nina completed the 6 weeks intensive training course, and saved over $50K through process improvement projects in order to achieve her Black Belt qualification.

In 2005 Nina joined Barclaycard as one part of the initial team which introduced Lean Sigma into the contact centre environment. As part of this role Nina managed the Change Programme for the Sales and Service and through managing a range of continuous improvement projects the programme delivered savings of over £100K during the first year of implementation. Nina was also Operational Readiness manager for the launch of the Skycard and ensured that all new processes in the contact centre relating to this new card were fit for purpose.

In 2006 Nina joined Barclays Wealth as a MBB managing a team of Black Belts across Banking Operations working in multiple locations across Europe using Lean Sigma tools to carry out process improvement projects. During her time at Barclays Wealth Nina also held Operational Management roles.

Nina joined Starwood Hotels & Resorts in October 2009 as Regional Director Six Sigma & Operational Innovation, North West Europe. In this role she is responsible for co-ordinating the Process Improvement activity in 30 hotels, focusing on improving the client experience as well as identifying efficiencies.

Gerard C. Poolman
Head of Process Excellence/Technical Asset Management
APM Termainals

Gerard Poolman obtained a BSc and MSc in Materials Science and Engineering from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. After his studies he worked for Procter and Gamble as European Packaging Development Manager and for the Glass Division of Saint Gobain as assistant plant manager, responsible for Investments, Purchasing and Maintenance. He worked for 10 years at Johnson & Johnson, where got formally trained and certified in Process Excellence, both lean and six sigma Black Belt. He initiated a company wide Maintenance Excellence program, first in Europe and expanded it to Asia-Pacific and Africa. In the process he turned it into a Manufacturing Excellence program. In 2005 he was invited to work at J&J Corporate Headquarters, USA as their worldwide director manufacturing equipment, responsible for both manufacturing excellence and manufacturing equipment global sourcing. While in the USA, he obtained a MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He joined APM terminals, part of the Danish A.P. Moller Maersk group, in 2009 as their Head of Process Excellence and Technical Asset Management, responsible for the deployment of both initiatives in Europe and Northern Africa.

David Montgomery
Head of Data Management & Continuous Improvement
RWE npower

David has over 10 years experience covering a variety of roles with a primary focus on management of change and improvement. Having come from an IS Engineering background, through to business improvement and on to large operational management, he has developed a rounded view of the importance of good Data and Process Management. David has been involved in large scale improvement programmes tackling Data Quality issues utilising process improvement as well as technology solutions. He is a strategic thinker who focuses on the overall journey and the emphasis on the legacy that improvement will leave rather than the here and now. More recently David has been involved strategies and techniques to improve data quality, cost of ownership and operational efficiency. David has a conviction that Data Management and Process Management must go hand in hand and his work to date has focused on the approaches to improvement on both of these topics.

Phil Roberts
Head of Business Improvement
General Medical Council, UK.

Phil has had four careers. A full time young officer in UK’s Royal Marine armed forces for 2 years, 24 years in the UK Royal Mail, 28 years in the Reserved armed forces and most recently four years in the General Medical Council. He wants to stay there but realises that as the Head of Business Improvement he may have to manage himself out of a job. He started his Business excellence journey in 1996 and has enjoyed the ride ever since. His passion is the customer, be them internal or external. His ambition is to be the customer who can be completely demanding without having to pay for the privilege!

Toby Winchester
Senior Principle Scientist
Pfizer

Toby has been at Pfizer Sandwich (UK) for 15 years. Having studied Biochemistry at York University and then moved on to do a Masters in Biochemical Engineering. The Pfizer career has spanned working in various sectors of research from veterinary medicine natural products (fermentation), running materials management teams and plate based screening teams. Current role is that of leading a sample logistics group, with a major focus on process improvement implementation / keeping the customers happy.

Steve Towers
Founder BP Group

Steve Towers is the founder of the Business Process Group (www.bpgroup.org) a global business club (originally formed 1992) exchanging ideas and best practice in Business Performance Management, Transformation and Process Improvement. He leads from the front and works with many of the leading fortune 500 companies as a mentor, coach and sometimes consultant specializing in the implementation of performance improvement, process change and transformation. An inspirational speaker and author of several books including “A Senior Executives guide to BPR”, “In Search of BPM Excellence”, “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and recently “Customer Expectation Management – Success without Exception” he is noted for his direct and pragmatic approach. Steve previously worked for Citibank where he led restructuring and business process transformation programs both in the US and Europe.

Steve advises many boards and sits on the steering panel of the influential California based BPM Forum, a group of distinguished C-Level executives heading up Global 500 companies.

As a coach and mentor he works first hand with organizations in the private and public sectors helping them successfully transform their businesses. In 2006 he received the “Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to Business” at the Gartner conference in San Diego. Steve lives with his family in England and USA.

Fernando Navarro
UK CIB Process Excellence Leader
BNP Paribas

Mr. Navarro works directly with Business Unit Leaders helping them to drive business transformation and enable business strategy. He brings over 10 years of experience in helping global organizations to implement strategic change programs delivering significant operational and financial performance improvements. He has gained broad experience in architecting and deploying programs, using a blend of Lean Six Sigma and Change Management methodologies, which have enabled his clients to develop a continuous improvement capability.

Gary Adams
Data & CI Capability Manager
RWE npower

Gary has worked in the utilities industry for 8 years for npower retail, part of the RWE npower group. During this time he has held a number of roles both operational and non-operational with a specialism in change management. Gary was introduced to Lean Six Sigma in 2005 when npower piloted its introduction. Since then he has led and supported a number of successful Lean Six sigma initiatives. He has played a pivotal role in the coaching and development of others in these methodologies and the subsequent development and role out of npower’s own Continuous Improvement methodology – ‘DRIVE’.

Gary currently holds the role of Data & CI Capability manager with responsibility for leading the definition, development and execution of npower’s 2020 roadmap for Data and CI. This role involves definition and development of the capability for npower’s people, processes and methodology as well as measurement of organisational maturity in Data and CI.

Julia Harnischfeger Director Six Sigma (Blackbelt)
England Hotels Starwood Hotels & Resorts

As one of the Area Blackbelts in Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ Northwest Europe Region, Julia leads the Six Sigma & Operational Innovation program for their six England Hotels, with a combined benefit target of $850k in 2010. Her Blackbelt role within Starwood includes responsibilities of DMAIC project leadership, operational lean reviews, Greenbelt development, project idea generation, facilitation of Fast Track events and a continuous focus on creating and maintaining the all important improvement culture. When Julia joined Starwood in 2007, her first task was to implement and imbed a Six Sigma culture from scratch at Le Méridien Piccadilly, a historic hotel that shortly before had become part of Starwood’s global portfolio. Julia received her Blackbelt qualification within those two years and alongside the Greenbelt community delivered $700k in financial benefits for the hotel.

Prior to entering the world of process improvement, Julia held several operational and non-operational management positions within the hotel industry, including Director of Front Office at Conrad London and Analyst within Conrad Hotels’ brand team, based in Brussels. In 2000 Julia graduated cum laude from Washington State University with a BA in Hotel and Restaurant Administration.

June Jones
Supply Chain Change Manager
Argos

June Jones joined Argos in 1987 as a despatch office clerk at the Castleford, Yorkshire, warehouse. She became an expert in all aspects of distribution over the following years, held many roles and successfully managed the implementation of a bespoke warehouse management system. June went on to manage Magna Park, Leicestershire, distribution centre (DC) before successfully managing the opening of Barton DC – Argos' only automated warehouse – (near Burton on Trent) in the late 1990s. All these experiences led to her appointment as Argos Distribution's Systems and Improvement Manager. This evolved into her current role of Supply Chain Change Manager, overseeing continuous improvement across all of Argos' supply chain, not just its UK mainline distribution network.

June puts her success down to a mix of common-sense approach, based on her experiences working as a team member, and her flair for managing new situations developed as one of Argos' best business managers.

Rhian Hamer
Head of Lean Academy
Ministry of Justice

Graduating with a first class degree in engineering with business, Rhian started her career as a graduate management trainee with the global steel maker Corus. Fast-track progression enabled her to gain experience in all areas of the business from Operations to Research and Development to Marketing and Finance.

Rhian went onto train as Six Sigma Black Belt whilst undertaking a Process Engineering role at a fast-moving, high volume semi-conductor manufacturer. Leading projects that delivered annual savings in excess of £1 million through quality and efficiency projects, Rhian become hooked on Six Sigma as a methodology, a measure and a way of running a business.

Moving to Perkin Elmer exposed Rhian to further change methodologies including DFSS for new product introduction and Lean Thinking as way of streamlining and managing complex, multiple supply chains.

Rhian joined the public sector 4 years ago, where as part of HMPS she enjoyed the challenges of implementing Lean and Six Sigma in a transactional environment for Shared Services.

Recently, Rhian has been appointed as Head of the Lean Academy for the Ministry of Justice. Rhian has recently completed an MBA with Cardiff Business School specialising in Lean, with particular emphasis upon sustainable change within the public sector.