Skip Quinlivan
Skip Quinlivan has conducted many Kaizen events for The Center for Competitive Change. He was first exposed to Kaizen at Utica Tool in 1982, where he participated in six Kaizens under the direction of Shigeo Shingo. Since then, he has participated in more than 600 Kaizen events, including efforts at 40 Danaher Tool Group plants and 50 additional facilities. With 25 years of experience as a tool-and-die designer and manufacturing engineer, Quinlivan was instrumental in establishing successful Kaizen continuous improvement programs at Copeland Corp.’s Shelby, N.C., facility and Copeland’s Hartselle, Ala., facility, significantly increasing plant capacity, reducing inventory and lead times, and lowering product cost.

John C. Robertson
John C. Robertson is a lead reliability engineer with 46 years of experience as a mechanical engineer specializing in plant maintenance; 15 of those years were spent in the British Merchant Marine as second engineering officer. Robertson has also had extensive maintenance experience in the start-up and day-to-day operation of fossil- and nuclear-fueled power plants. In addition to specializing in vibration analysis, shaft alignment, power balancing, and precision maintenance, he is an experienced root-cause failure analyst. He has provided condition-based maintenance instruction and hands-on training to technical colleges, power plants, paper mills, and steel mills for more than 25 years. Because his teaching focuses on practical skills and real-world applications, his trainees typically achieve an outstanding passage rate the first time they take the Vibration Institute’s Level I Certification examination.
Robertson has published a number of technical articles, including: “Greasing Electric Motor Bearings Using Vibration Analysis”; “Applied Condition-Based Maintenance”; “Function of Sprinkler Head Systems”; and “Changing the Adjustable Wrench Mentality.”   He is also a Certified Plant Engineer (CPE).

Mike Rowney, PhD
Mike Rowney has spent the past 21 years helping companies formulate and implement strategies to achieve world-class competitiveness. He has worked with companies such as Alberta Power, Boeing, numerous Boeing suppliers in North America and Europe, Vitro (Mexico), SmithKline Beecham (United Kingdom and the United States), Burlington Northern Railroad, Nabisco, Public Service Company of North Carolina, Britax Rumbold (United Kingdom), Fairchild Fasteners, Alcoa, Anheuser-Busch, Chiquita, Timberline Software, the World Bank, and the University of Washington.
For Omark Industries (now a subsidiary of Blount Inc.), Rowney coordinated the planning and implementation of one of North America’s first full-scale efforts in lean manufacturing, TQM, and employee involvement. He later served in a similar capacity for the largest division of the Weyerhaeuser Paper Co.
Rowney has held managerial positions in production, R&D, strategic planning, marketing, and new business development. His recent work has focused on helping companies bring about rapid change successfully. He has been trained as a lead assessor for ISO 9000 and has consulted in TQM. He speaks German and French and has consulted and taught in both languages.
Rowney holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Alfred (Al) W. Ryan, Jr.
Al Ryan is a Vice President of MainStream Management, LLC., where he works in the Crisis Management and Consulting Team, where he is responsible for developing “S Business” LeanService Consulting Operations. Al Ryan is a 45 year veteran of service management, quality, and corporate management.  He has over 20 years of executive operational experience at a corporate level as well as 20 years of hands on general manager experience in field operations. Al also has international experience including 5 years in Europe as a senior executive. The experience along with a BS degree in Business Administration has provided Al with the advantage of being able to bring together and maximize the effectiveness of corporate and field operations through his understanding of each and their specific requirements to contribute to the success of a viable corporate enterprise.
Al has published articles and made presentations on LeanService as well as being a contributing author for a book focused on the security industry.
Al has been recognized as a leader in the Service Industry through his induction into the American Association of Service Managers International’s prestigious Presidents Club. Al also served honorably in the US Navy.

Carol M. Shaw
Is a full professor in the School of Engineering where she taught in the chemical technology program.  Carol is also CEO of The Center for Competitive Change.
She is founder of the Center for Competitive Change and in 1988 was the first in North America to introduce public workshops in lean manufacturing and kaizen improvement techniques with the Japanese Masters. She was a pioneer in conducting many kaizen events with many companies in the early nineteen nineties.
The common theme of her work at the University has been to use knowledge as a basis for change.  Early on she realized that organizations that used knowledge as their basis of competition were more profitable.  She introduced lean thinking to industry and academia. Later on an MIT professor coined the term lean learning organization. 
She and her team are responsible for conceptualizing, planning, implementing and developing innovative educational programs for industry and government.  Projects are directed to technology transfer; planning and implementing future technical directions for engineers; competitive manufacturing; creating organizational structures for insuring foundations for lean strategy.
Under Carol Shaw’s direction, with the assistance of an outside advisory committee and a strong internal team, The Center for Competitive Change began a full range of programs in the manufacturing reliability and operations area including programs in lean manufacturing, visual systems, and transforming maintenance to a reliability function.  Carol is now working on projects that build on innovation and creativity in the School of Engineering and bringing them to the classroom and the workplace. She is teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in lean thinking and lean office at the University of Dayton.

Harold P. Slater
Harold is maintenance materials technical leader at a major pharmaceutical company, where he supports four key divisional storerooms with a combined inventory of over $18M and 25,000 stocked items.  He developed their Stores Best Practices Guide, wrote and applied Stores Facility Assessment Guide in Kalamazoo and Puerto Rico, developed and conducted Stores Customer Survey, developed Motor Management Best Practices, implemented Key Performance Indicators for Stores and built the Material Management web site.  Prior to his current position he was reliability maintenance engineer, area engineer, and design and application engineer.
Harold has 25 years of experience in Manufacturing, Research, Operations, and Best Practices Management.  He is familiar with policies, management and operational groups, and is able to communicate effectively with each.  He has a solid engineering background and is dedicated to improving manufacturing excellence.  He is trained in Reliability Centered Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance, and he began the implementation of reliability engineering practices in site utilities, pharmaceutical, and chemical production. Currently is the global lead for the Materials Management module for the new CMMS (Maximo) installation.
Harold is a registered professional engineer.  He is licensed in and a board member of Manufacturing Reliability, University of Dayton, and is certified in Reliability Maintenance Management by the Society of Manufacturing Reliability Professionals (SMRP).

Preston Smith, Ph.D.
Preston Smith — a specialist in rapid product development and time-to-market techniques — helps manufacturing companies discover how to beat their competitors to market with new products. For more than 20 years, Smith gained industrial experience in mechanical and systems engineering, project management, and technology management at Bell Laboratories, IBM, General Motors Corp., and several smaller companies. He served as an internal consultant on the corporate staff of a $2 billion firm, guiding divisions in bringing new products to market faster, and he has been doing the same for other companies since 1986. He is co-author of Developing Products in Half the Time: New Rules, New Tools, which has sold more than 65,000 copies and has been translated into four other languages.
Smith has led more than 100 seminars in the United States and 17 countries on compressing product development cycle time. He routinely presents at conferences and corporate meetings and has taught product development courses at several universities.
A regular columnist for Product Development Best Practices Report, Smith holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University, is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC), a member of the Product Development and Management Association, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  He is the co-author of “Developing Products in Half the Time” and ……….

William R. Steele
Bill Steele has more than 26 years’ experience in the design and implementation of maintenance programs for complex electro-mechanical systems. He has done work for nuclear-powered submarines, commercial power plants, the process industry, and even amusement parks.
Steele’s most recent work has been assisting industry in performing a streamlined Reliability-Centered Maintenance analysis, including failure mode and effects analysis, and considering the substitution of condition monitoring, such as vibration analysis, infrared thermography, oil analysis, and ultrasonic noise detection, for interval-based maintenance. He has also worked with NASA, teaching Reliability-Centered Maintenance principles and implementing change in facilities maintenance programs agency-wide.
Steele has presented seminars and case studies on maintenance approaches and systems/machinery condition monitoring to a number of organizations. He is co-author of the chapter on Condition Monitoring/Predictive Maintenance in the R.S. Means Company publication, Cost Planning for Facilities Maintenance.

Kim Stormer
Kim Stormer has been working to improve manufacturing operations, office environments, and material systems and processes for over two decades.  Kim has worked in both process and discrete manufacturing environments utilizing both the traditional organizational structure and the team based matrix structure.  He has successfully implemented the Lean methodology at many companies, either as an internal consultant / change Kim Stormer agent or as an external consultant.
Kim has implemented the Lean methodology from a variety of leadership positions, from a project leader to a manager to a director level in both single and multi plant environments.  He is recognized as an expert in flow and lean implementations and in linking the supply chain into the implementations.  Kim has helped a variety of companies implement Lean such as Cummins, Hobart Corp., Vulcan Hart, Ranco, Allied Signal, Thermal Components, United Technology, General Thermodynamics, Mckenica, Yorktown Tool and Die, Wolf Range, Cooper Energy Services, Delphi, and Crown Equipment Corp. 
Kim has an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a MBA from Gannon University.

Craig M. Tickel
Craig Tickel has more than 31 years experience in engineering, project management, operations and contract management. He has been a leader of strategic planning and a supervisor of data analysis at Harrison Radiator and Information Systems security offices, a division of GM in Dayton, OH. Tickel has developed plant-wide production monitoring systems for GM, as well as led the growth of Productivity Quality Systems from 1984-1991, as a Vice-President of Operations. More recently Tickel has been an account executive for GE Capital in Connecticut, managing consulting contracts, and most recently has been the President/Principal at American Sterling Group, where he has done work in development of a company mission and vision, as well as led training sessions, and developed training materials, Bridge to Quality, for continuous improvement of.
Tickel has extensive coaching and training of Six-Sigma with various Fortune 500 companies, and is certified as a Master Black Belt.
Tickel has a B.S.I.E. from General Motors Institute and a M.B.A. from Wright State University.

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