Keynote Speakers

Bruce Hamilton

President, Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, USA

Asking the Right Questions – Management’s Key to Lean Transformations

Bruce is known worldwide for his powerful video training series, beginning with Toast Kaizen that introduces the basics of Lean manufacturing in a humorous, visual and very effective format. Bruce, himself a recipient of Shingo Prize as an industry leader, is now Vice Chair of the Business Board of Examiners for the Shingo Prize and participates on the Shingo Board of Governors. 
Contrary to conventional thinking, Lean is a not simply a set of tools to be layered onto existing system, but is a critical strategic shift in management thinking to ‘ask the right questions’ that will increase competitiveness, reduce costs and build business flexibility.

What are those questions?  Dr. Shigeo Shingo, co-creator of Toyota’s incredible improvement system has shown us the way when he stated:

“The best place to look for improvement is in places where it is thought not to exist.” 

Where are those places?  This is management’s challenge to understand !

Ron Moore

Managing Partner of The RM Group, Inc. Knoxville USA

What it Takes to Achieve World Class Performance

Ron Moore is the Managing Partner of The RM Group, Inc. Knoxville, TN. He travels worldwide working with manufacturing companies in Australia, North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Far East.  He is the author of Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence, now in its 3rd edition; as well as author of Selecting the Right Manufacturing Improvement Tools – What Tool?  When? and has written over 30 journal articles.

Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.  Achieving world class performance is much the same. It takes a little talent, and a lot of tenacity. Ron will offer his views on leadership, aligning the organisation, teamwork, and managing change for assuring world class performance, plus a synopsis on how best to apply the various tools being touted as key to world class performance. 

Gavin Hughes

Executive General Manager, CSR Ethanol

Sustainability - The Lean Practitioner’s New Focus Area

Gavin Hughes has over 25years experience in manufacturing in Australia across Automotive (Pacific Dunlop), Packaging – FMCG, (AMCOR) and Agribusiness, value adding (CSR) sectors. Gavin, with qualifications in Applied Science (Chemistry), has held a wide range of leadership roles in organisational development, production and general management.  Gavin has extensively studied and successfully implemented Lean and Japanese business improvement methodologies. However, he stresses that being able to compete in a Green society is no longer an option.

Gavin will discuss Sustainability and the impact of Global warming and why CO2 is an issue. We all need to take new innovative approaches, including Lean, to using energy efficiently. A critical focus on this issue is essential for business and a necessity for the planet. Gavin will outline how biofuels can contribute to the solution and describe the strategies that CSR Ethanol are embarking upon.

John Lemberg

General Manager Operations, Rio Tinto Alcan,  Bell Bay

Lean Leadership at Rio Tinto

John Lemberg has worked in a broad range of operations, service and support roles at a variety of Rio Tinto sites over the past 25 years. As well as line and technical roles at aluminium smelters in Australia and New Zealand, he has led R&D work at Rio Tinto Aluminium’s research centre in Melbourne, managed a copper refinery in New South Wales and site services at a gold mine in Borneo, Indonesia.

For Lean to deliver full value, front line leaders need to be committed to a vision and pathway beyond just the rollout of tools. What is the correct context and how do we design systems and culture that will genuinely transform the organisation in a sustainable way?

John will explore this subject and reflect on his extensive experiences of leading change and implementing Lean.

Paul McCarthy

CEO, Business Support Network

If at first you don’t succeed ……. there’s a fortune in failure?

Q:        What do the most successful people in history have in common?
A:         The willingness to fail.

No great advancement has ever been achieved without the capacity to overcome obstacles, face challenges and risk making a mistake. Without doubt the biggest barrier to a business reaching its potential is the fear of failure. Shifting people outside their comfort zones and providing the right type of support and structure is the ultimate challenge for your leaders.
Join international award winning speaker, author and consultant Paul McCarthy, as he shares a new way of looking at the issue of failure. In this dynamic session you will discover how to overcome the fear of failure and create your own Lean action plan that will lead to your success.

Gary Kerr

Director, Leverage Lean

Lean Metrics - How to Measure the Right Things

Gary has many years of real-world experience in businesses, so he understands how Lean Thinking can work for you, and what obstacles you will have to overcome to achieve results.  Gary is an engineer with a Master’s Degree majoring in Business and Technology.  He spends a great deal of his time sharing his knowledge and coaching organisations towards World-Class performance.  Gary is  acknowledged as one of Australia’s leading Lean practitioners.

What we measure tells our people what is important but how do traditional metrics work against Lean. How could measurement systems influenced an airline disaster?  How we measure, where we display the metrics and what we do with the metrics, are every bit as important as what we choose to measure.
Gary draws on real-life examples of metrics working against the best interests of organisations and describes how you can avoid the common measurement traps.