John Y. Shook

Senior Advisor and Executive Chairman, Lean Enterprise Institute
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

John Shook learned about lean management while working for Toyota for nearly 11 years in Japan and the U.S., helping it transfer production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to NUMMI and subsequently to other operations around the world. While at Toyota's headquarters, he became the company's first American kacho (manager) in Japan. In the U.S., Shook joined Toyota’s North American engineering, research and development center in Ann Arbor, MI, as general manager of administration and planning. His last position with Toyota was as senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, KY, assisting North American companies implement the Toyota Production System. As co-author of Learning to See John helped introduce the world to value-stream mapping. John also co-authored Kaizen Express, a bi-lingual manual of the essential concepts and tools of the Toyota Production System. In his latest book Managing to Learn, he describes the A3 management process at the heart of lean management and leadership.

Shook is an industrial anthropologist with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and is a graduate of the Japan-America Institute of Management Science. He is the former director of the University of Michigan, Japan Technological Management Program, and faculty of the university’s Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering.

He is the author of "Toyota’s Secret: The A3 Report"; Sloan Management Review, July 2010 and "How to Change a Culture: Lessons from NUMMI"; Sloan Management Review, January 2010, which won Sloan’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize for outstanding article in the field of organizational development.

Shook is a sought-after conference keynoter who has been interviewed on lean management by National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and numerous trade publications.

John Bicheno is Professor of Lean Enterprise at the University of Buckingham, Buckingham UK. Previously he was with the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff, where for 12 years he was course director of the M.Sc. program in Lean Operations. He has written 11 books on lean, one of which, The Lean Toolbox, has sold over 110,000 copies.

Euclides Coimbra is a worldwide Thought Leader in Continuous Improvement.
He has an extensive experience in cultural change and Kaizen Lean transformation processes.
With international experience in several sectors, he has been mainly focused on the coordination and development of new areas as well as the management of large global projects. Author of the books "Kaizen in Logistics and Supply Chains" and "Kaizen: A Strategy for Improvement, Growth and Profitability".

Carlos Ribas is the Bosch representative in Portugal, accumulating this function to the Plant Management of Bosch Car Multimedia in Braga.
He holds a degree in electronic engineering and acquired his global executive leadership and management skills in Portugal and abroad, at Hoechst (1984-1988), Yazaki (1988-2002) and Bosch (since 2003).
His strategic priorities are innovation and development of high-technology products and the sustainable increase of the activities of Bosch in Portugal.