“2009 was the year Aberdeenshire Council committed itself to extending its use of lean thinking beyond its already successful use of rapid improvement events (RIEs) to a more thorough-going root and branch implementation of lean throughout the organisation. I am pleased to say that BHW, led by Stephen, put in the best bid for the work and that their performance fully justified the decision to use them. Key to our ambition were the transfer of skills to existing and new facilitators, pilot implementations and support for senior managers. Stephen excelled in all three. He is an excellent communicator at all levels. He was quick to understand our needs and flexible in meeting them, pulling in additional highly impressive colleagues for specific tasks.” January 13, 2010 “Stephen was recommended to me by our Operations Director and Rotating Machines Managing Director. His innovative techniques and adaptive style, during the working sessions, contributed to aligned, and motivated, project leaders. I am personally grateful for his support in the local deployment of group objectives and introduction to a community of improvers. Our objectives were based upon reducing cycle time, improving quality and creating value for our customers. Our unit has circa 1400 employees and has achieved orders of €800m in 2009”

local authority; major engineering company