About the Authors

Roger Burghall has more than twenty years of experience in continuous improvement and is an expert in Lean Six Sigma Transformation and Operational Excellence. He has a track record of achieving rapid business and operational process improvement within a diverse range of domestic and international market sectors and cultures. Roger originally qualified as an electronics engineer and he gained his MBA from Cardiff Business School. In addition, Roger is a certified MBTI practitioner and is a frequent speaker on operational excellence at European manufacturing strategies and shared services conferences.

In his spare time Roger enjoys hiking in the Cotswold countryside and taking part in endurance cycling events, which keep him fit! He also loves collecting and playing acoustic and electric guitars. He has played in folk and rock bands in the past and now enjoys playing his instruments in his home studio.

Vince Grant is an expert on Lean Six Sigma and Business Transformation and continues to assist many leading organisations with their business improvement journeys. He has been a senior (lead) assessor for the European and UK National Quality Awards on several occasions and passionately supports the principles, values and practices associated with the EFQM Excellence Model. Vince was selected by General Electric to train many of their people in Europe on Six Sigma to Master Black Belt level when GE first implemented this in their Financial Services businesses.

Vince is a Director of the Lean Six Sigma specialists Catalyst Consulting having jointly founded that company almost 20 years ago. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, and holds a Physics PhD from Manchester University and an MA from Selwyn College Cambridge.

Before founding Catalyst Vince held senior management positions in the IT, Telecommunications and Financial Services industries in the UK and various other European countries. He continues to use his financial expertise as Finance Director of Catalyst, although this is just a small part of his overall role. His interest in the physical sciences continues – but on an amateur basis these days.

His experience of Strategy Deployment stems from the mid 1980’s when his operation in Hewlett-Packard was one of the first in Europe to import from Japan and apply Hoshin Kanri as its preferred method for deploying and tightly aligning its business strategy. He had the good fortune to spend time in Japan at a later date, learning first hand from their leading experts and companies how to apply this and other leading management practices. Hopefully some useful best practice from this is also reflected in this book.

Vince’s other active interests include gardening, playing the organ for local church services, and walking – particularly overseas in warmer climates during the English winter months.

John Morgan is the author of several books, including The Lean Six Sigma Improvement Journey and Go Lean, and is co-author of Lean Six Sigma for Dummies, now in its second edition, and SPC in the Office. His experience has led to him being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about the potential of Lean Six Sigma in the UK, especially in the public sector and National Health Service.

John has been a Director of the Lean Six Sigma specialists Catalyst Consulting for almost 20 years, and much of their highly acclaimed material has been created by him, including tailored work for companies such as General Electric, BAA, Saint-Gobain Glass, Barclays and British Telecom. In addition to training delivery and coaching, John’s primary responsibilities are in the areas of product design and development.

John also jointly heads the British Quality Foundation’s Lean Six Sigma Academy. A Chartered Insurer and Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, John’s early career background was in Aviation Insurance and Reinsurance. He first started to apply Lean Six Sigma techniques in his role as Customer Service Director in a North American Financial Services company before helping to set up Catalyst.

A keen song writer, he is also working, albeit very slowly on his first novel, Black Widow Blues, which he hopes to publish next year. It’s fair to say that writing a Dummies book is probably easier and there are agreed deadlines to meet, of course!

Authors’ Acknowledgements

I have found writing this book to be both enjoyable and challenging and I would like to thank my wife, Anna-Liisa and my friends and colleagues for all their support.

I would like to thank David Cowburn and Bob Lyons for their immense contribution and collaboration in the development of the Rapid SD methodology and also Barbara Bird for her contribution to the capability maturity and assessment process.

RB

My thanks to my wife Pat and my family, and friends and business colleagues for being so understanding on those occasions when writing my contributions to this book took priority over other things more important to them at those times. I hope that one day my various grandchildren now in their early years will also find some interest and value from this book.

A particular thanks to my colleague John Morgan – co-author of this book – who has coordinated our efforts and brought his experience from previous books (including another one in the ‘Dummies’ genre) to keep us from straying too far from the proper path (dare I say ‘True North’). Also to my other colleague and co-author Roger Burghall whose particular interest in Strategy Deployment and Hoshin provided that final push to encourage me to sign up to this task.

My thanks also to the many business people and academics I have worked with over the years from whom I have learnt so much. I have been fortunate to have worked at the leading/learning edge of applying best practices with organisations and individuals in the UK, elsewhere in Europe, and in the US and Japan.

Finally I would like to thank all our other colleagues and partners at Catalyst for all their professional and personal support. This is not only for the time we’ve been writing this book but also over the years and the contributions they have all made and continue to make to the success of our business and our clients. Their knowledge and skills have helped to inform and support mine and are inevitably reflected in the content and views expressed in this book.

VG

Writing any book tends to take a fair bit of concentration, time and effort, so there’s a general thank you to my wife Margaret, and my family, and friends for putting up with that.

In pulling this second Dummies title together, it was a question of trying to get the balance right in terms of how much material to incorporate specifically about Lean Six Sigma. The authors felt that anyone buying this book should already have at least a reasonable understanding of the topic, so there was quite some debate with Wiley, and indeed ourselves, about how best to deal with that. We hope you’ll understand and appreciate the approach we have taken, which is somewhat different from other Dummies titles.

As ever, there’s a general thank you to everyone at Catalyst who has helped in some way, and to the team at Wiley who have provided great support, too, especially Iona Everson, Jo Jones and Claire Ruston who has since left them to explore a new venture.

JM

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

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