THOUGHT LEADERS

Ellen Domb, Ph.D., is the editor of The TRIZ Journal, http://www.triz-journal.com, and the principal TRIZ consultant for the PQR Group in Upland, CA, USA. TRIZ is Dr. Domb's 6th career: she has been a physics professor, an aerospace engineer, an engineering manager, a product line general manager, and a strategic planning/quality improvement consultant.

Jamie Flinchbaugh is a founder and partner of the Lean Learning Center in Novi, Michigan, and the co-author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road. He shares his successful and varied experiences of lean transformation as a practitioner and leader through companies such as Chrysler and DTE Energy. He also has a wide range of practical experience in industrial operations, including production, maintenance, material control, product development, and manufacturing engineering. Jamie is a graduate fellow of the highly regarded Leaders for Manufacturing Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research thesis was on implementing lean manufacturing through factory design. He also holds a B.S. in Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA and an M.S. in Engineering from the University of Michigan. In 2006, Crain's Detroit 40 Under 40 recognized Jamie for his accomplishments.

Michael N. Kennedy has been a leader in the redesign of organizational processes for over 35 years. During his 30-year career at Texas Instruments Inc., Mr. Kennedy was the lead engineer on many development projects including missile system products and manufacturing systems. During his last 10 years at TI, he was a leader in reengineering the core engineering and manufacturing processes, including adopting concurrent engineering, solid modeling CAD systems, CAD/CAM integration, and leading quality initiatives. He has also worked extensively with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences for benchmarking and incorporating new technologies into U.S. manufacturing. His recent book "Product Development for the Lean Enterprise" has raised awareness and presented the underlying philosophy behind Toyota's outstanding product development success. He is the co-founder and CEO of Targeted Convergence Corporation with the mission of developing models, training, and tools for implementing the book principles into manufacturing industries. He is currently assisting many companies to implement the principles introduced in his book, including Ping, Ariens, Kohler, TRW, Fisher & Paykel, Shure, Teledyne Benthos, and Sara Lee.

Jim Luckman is a partner at Lean Transformations Group, LLC. He is the Past President and CEO of iPower Technologies, a company serving the distributed generation market of electrical power. He is also the President of Luckman Consulting, which provides coaching for companies interested in profound transformations. Luckman has worked in the auto industry for 34 years working at Delphi Automotive (formerly part of General Motors). He has had significant experience in Strategic Planning, Engineering and Manufacturing.

In his most recent position, he was Site Manager at the Technical Center of Rochester and Chief Engineer for Fuel Systems. He led a transformation at the Engineering Center by adopting lean manufacturing principles and developing lean principles in Engineering. He took a systems approach to making change and integrated this across all functions that support the development process. As the executive champion and change agent for Lean Engineering, he spent most of his time coaching and leading workshops for all Delphi Engineering organizations. He also held benchmarking workshops with many companies.

Jim has an Electrical Engineering Bachelor's degree from Tri State University and a Masters degree from Case Western University in Computer Engineering.

Dr. Bohdan "Bo" W.Oppenheim is a Professor of Mechanical and Systems Engineering at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Lean Advancement Initiative EdNet at MIT (consortium of defense companies), serves on the Steering Committee of the Lean Education Academic Network associated with the LEI, and is the founder and Co-Chair of the Lean Systems Engineering Working Group of INCOSE which recently published major work on Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering. He invented the method of Lean Product Development Flow. He assessed 125 manufacturing plants for Lean in the U.S. under the US Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center program. He has consulted Northrop Grumman Space Technology, Boeing Satellites, The Aerospace Corporation, Airbus, France Telecom, and 50 other companies in the US and abroad on Lean Product Development, Quality and Systems Engineering. He has four degrees from MIT, University of Southampton (UK), Stevens Institute of Technology and Warsaw Technical University. He lives in Santa Monica, California.

Mary Poppendieck is a popular writer and speaker whose translation of lean ideas into software development principles established the theory behind agile software development. The 2003 book Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck has become a classic in applying lean thinking to software development. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development, published in 2006, gives a more detailed view lean principles at work in the development of software-intensive products.

Katherine Radeka is a seasoned new product development leader with a track record of successful products and successful product development transformations. She is known for her ability to identify the things that keep great ideas stuck inside research & development, and provide effective strategies to get the development pipeline flowing to deliver more value to the business and its customers.

Durward K. Sobek II is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Montana State University. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an A.B. degree in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College. Dr. Sobek has been researching lean product development for over a decade, focusing on how organizations can increase their performance capacity through the application of lean principles. He is a frequent presenter, and has published numerous articles in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He is co-author of the prologue to Allen Ward's seminal book, Lean Product and Process Development, and is co-author of the book Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System.

Tricia Sutton is an innovative leader with diverse expertise in New Product Development, Program and Project Management, and Business Process & Program Design. Her cross-functional experience in information technology, engineering, manufacturing, sciences, management, regulatory programs, and facilitation/instructional design allows her to lead diverse efforts across many technical industries. Ms. Sutton founded and is President of Sutton Enterprises Inc., which focuses on helping organizations apply lean principles to product development to increase effectiveness & innovation. She leads LeanEx^sm, a knowledge exchange in lean product development where peers learn together to improve their businesses.