Level 3 Success

April 2018: Graham Canning

Congratulations to Graham for successfully completing the LCS Level 3 Programme.

Graham is Managing Director of UK-based consultancy Lean FSL Associates Ltd. A graduate Production Engineer, Graham worked for 15 years in various Manufacturing roles, including time as a Group Leader at Toyota’s Burnaston factory. Since 2004, Graham has worked in Lean and CI consultancy roles, helping implement Lean thinking in sectors as diverse as Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, Construction, Printing and Food & Beverage manufacture. He is an Associate Partner for a number of leading Lean and CI consultancies including OEE Consulting, SA Partners and Project 7.

An advocate of a ‘hands on’ approach at ‘gemba’, he is equally comfortable either working with Senior managers in developing Lean transformation strategies, or coaching team members through their own development as Lean practitioners.

He gained an MSc in Manufacturing Leadership from Lancaster University Management School in 2008.

Graham’s Level 3 submission demonstrated his mature strategic capability and incorporated high levels of critical reflection. His Lean thinking assignment showed his passion for developing Lean within the context of a ‘learning organisation’, and concluded that success in applying and sustaining Lean, requires a whole system approach to be taken and in particular, a focus on the critical role of Kata.

January 2018: John Blincow, Lloyds Banking Group

John is a senior manager with Lloyds Banking Group and has a career spanning 30 years in Retail Banking, Commercial Banking and Group Operations. John has had many roles in banking, including branch management, operations management, change management and, more recently over the last 9 years, programme management continuous improvement and operations excellence. He has an MBA with Edinburgh Business School and is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland (MCIBS).

John’s Level 3 Programme cases focused on leading a large scale programme of continuous improvement work delivered into the Commercial Banking Division of Lloyds. They centred around three broad themes of engaging Lloyds colleagues to deliver a simpler Commercial Bank, increasing competitiveness by building lean capability/skills and returning their middle office operations to its original design intent of value and quality.

His assignment studied the implications of the digital revolution on banking, specifically around the need to re-organise their organisational designs and set-ups to leverage planned productivity benefits. It was inspired from reading Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s seminal work ‘The Second Machine Age’ and research was gathered from 22 companies by way of questionnaires around innovation and Lean practices in a Digital age.

John concluded Banks need to strategically re-think their set up, assign skilled resource to customer value streams and also innovate around flow, quality and cross functional working.