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Patricia
V. Bierley received her bachelor
of science in psychology from Purdue University. She has over
20 years of consulting experience in the areas of knowledge engineering
and expert systems development, training development and delivery,
team facilitation, and program and product evaluation. Ms. Bierley
co-developed one of the largest expert systems ever built for
microcomputers (7,000 rules). She has conducted skills training
sessions serving over 400 technicians and professionals and train-the-trainer
courses to teach clients how to deliver their own skills development
programs. She also has led over 40 “workout” problem-solving
sessions tackling a wide variety of business improvements affecting
both top- and bottom-line results. She has designed and conducted
evaluation studies to determine the content, effectiveness, and
cost efficiency of training products and programs. Recently,
she co-developed and delivered the Kaizen Facilitator Training
Course to assist in the development of new Kaizen leaders.
Ms. Bierley is the co-author of the Working With Others Training
Program. Currently, she is an independent organizational
effectiveness consultant working with public, private, and non-profit
enterprises to elevate personal and organizational performance.
Her special interest is in developing and empowering performers
to improve their well-being resulting in greater job satisfaction
and improved business results. |
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Chris
Bujak is a managing partner of Continual
Impact, a consulting group providing consulting and training in
continuous improvement. Chris is a mechanical engineer with extensive
postgraduate training and experience in the application of lean manufacturing
and Six Sigma methodologies and tools. As global director of continuous
improvement (CI) for Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Chris developed
an integrated CI model that included Lean Enterprise, Six Sigma™,
and other critical business improvement enabling elements. His global
initiative yielded $13 million (2021 current U.S. dollars) in savings
during its first year of implementation, $21.1 million in its second
year, and over $68 million in its third year. His program was featured
in a Business
Excellence article in July 2007. His work with Continual Impact
has reached some 200 organizations, with more than 4,000 people trained
and engaged in continuous improvements efforts. His recent focus has
been on public health organizations across the U.S. Chris is the co-author
of Life Enabling Commerce: An Economic System for the Good of Humankind.
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Jim
Byron has a masters degree in Organizational
Psychology and an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Organization Design
and Effectiveness. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
Lincoln Laboratory in 2020 following several decades of leading global
organizational effectiveness functions in Fortune companies, including
Pfizer, Air Products and Chemicals and Citi. In his current role, he
heads the Organization Design and Change group charged with elevating
organizational culture and performance. Jim’s work consistently
produced bottom-line results with documented returns on investment in
the tens of millions of dollars in benefits to his companies. Equally
important, it generated dramatic improvements in employee engagement
and satisfaction. He has authored or co-authored books, technical papers,
and graduate text chapters on organizational improvement topics. He holds
a graduate degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and an Advanced
Graduate Certificate in Organization Design. Jim also provides pro-bono
consultation and training solutions to community agencies and individuals
around the United States in the areas of organization and leadership
development.
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Joe
Cirafesi has a BS in Genetics from Cornell University and an MBA
in Finance, Accounting and Information Systems from the Pennsylvania State
University. He has expertise in change management, work process re-design,
business planning and strategy development, communications, human resources,
finance, accounting, joint ventures and acquisitions. Joe has held a variety
of key leadership positions, · Division Controller for a $500 MM
business of a Fortune 200 chemical producer; · Business Manager and
Process Owner for a $1 billion work process; · Lean Enterprise Manager
· Regional Director of Continuous Improvement in Europe for a Fortune
200 company. |
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Scott
A. Harrison, Ed.D., M.B.A. is founder and president of The Harrison Group,
LLC, a human resources consulting firm founded in 1994 specializing in
organization-wide performance system design and the purposeful alignment
and integration of systems that connect people (human resource planning,
recruitment, selection, and onboarding), performance (evaluation and professional
growth) and pay (strategic compensation strategy and policy development).
He has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and supporting
performance management and scorecard-based variable pay systems that tie
business-level, group-level, and person-level achievement to incentive
payouts. He has mated his systems with continuous improvement "workout" sessions
that enable employees to advance business success thereby achieving greater
person and team success. He has built human resource departments from scratch
and audited the functionality of human resources systems from the perspective
of supporting high performance organizations like Lean Enterprises. Scott
received his Bachelors (B.S.) at University of Maryland, Masters in Business
Administration (M.B.A.) at University of Southern Maine, and Doctorate
in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.) at University of Maine. Scott is a Certified
Compensation Professional (CCP), Professional in Human Resources (PHR),
and Certified Performance Compensation Administrator (PCA). Scott has also
been an instructor at the University of Southern Maine. |
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Mark
Reed is a senior CI consultant and Vital Enterprises associate.
He has 34 years of experience in manufacturing and service areas including
26 years in management positions. During his career, Mark has implemented
Statistical Process Control and other Quality management methods to continuously
improve the operations he managed. He has implemented Lean since 1999
and has conducted Value Stream Analysis, Kaizen, and other Lean tool events
in the U.S., the Middle East, and throughout Asia. He is a certified Tool
Master in Value Stream Analysis, Kaizen, Workplace Organization and Visual
Controls, Quick Change, Mistake Proofing and team facilitation skills.
He led the implementation of Lean/Continuous Improvement(CI) for the Asian
segment of Fortune 200 global business. It established Lean/CI within
just 11 months in a business unit operating in 8 countries with over 1.3
billion dollars (USD) in revenues and 4,500 people. During that period,
he engaged, energized and trained personnel to master plan the implementation
of Lean/CI and implement 145 Lean improvement events. The savings in the
first year (while he was still training personnel) were over $30 million
(USD). This first year included six weeks during which the project was
on hold due to SARS.
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Don
Roll has been immersed full time in the CI environment for nearly
a decade now. He is a CI Tool Master who has lead over 100 CI events in
shop (both discrete and continuous manufacturing) and office settings and
trained people in CI tools in Canada, Scotland, United Kingdom, Spain, and
Hong Kong, as well as in the U.S. While specializing in implementation of
Workplace Organization and Visual Control (WOVC), Don is also certified
in Kaizen, Work Process Mapping, Quick Change, in addition to a large variety
of root cause and foundational CI tools. What he enjoys the most about CI
is the exchange of knowledge, the energy associated with people striving
for excellence, and the measurable improvement such people can make. |
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Joseph
P. Vitalo is a lean manufacturing consultant and trainer with over
ten years experience in planning and leading lean improvement events. Through
these events, he has improved businesses in the United States, Canada, Europe,
and the United Kingdom. He is the coauthor of the Kaizen Desk Reference
Standard, and has trained and developed Kaizen leaders in automotive, pharmaceutical,
electronics, machinery manufacturing, and process industries. Joseph is
currently a lean consultant and trainer with Vital Enterprises. |
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Raphael
L. Vitalo received his doctorate in clinical
psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has
authored 40 professional articles, technical reports, and chapters
in the areas of psychology, organizational consulting, work process
improvement, information systems, and artificial intelligence. Dr.
Vitalo worked in community mental health during the first half of
his 50-year career as therapist and as Clinical Director of two mental
health centers. In the first of those centers, he led his staff in
improving the success of treatment outcomes by 31% (from 70% to 92%),
reducing dropout from treatment by more than 50%, expanding the number
of people served with the same level of staff by 20%, and producing
a per unit cost of care that was 56% below the national average. In
the second of those centers, again working with his staff, he produced
similar gains in caregiving. In the second half of his career, Dr.
Vitalo worked as a business consultant. He has designed, managed,
and implemented more than 350 projects serving public and private
companies in the areas of organizational effectiveness, performance
management, workforce productivity, business process reengineering,
risk management, applications of the Quality and Lean Enterprise models,
knowledge engineering, information systems design and development,
and expert systems design and development. He is currently the president
of Vital Enterprises. |
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