Comparison International — Advisory Board and Research Faculty
CIL's strategic development is guided by the PROBE Advisory Board, a group of 'best practice' experts and key stakeholders specifically chosen to ensure the continuing integrity and objectivity of our work. Board members include:
- Cedric Kennedy, Director of Finance & Operations of the CBI
- Professor Chris Voss, Director of the Centre for Research in Operations and Technology Management at the London Business School, and Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research
- Professor Aleda Roth, the Burlington Industries Professor of Supply Chain Management at Clemson University in South Carolina
- Phil Hanson, Senior Industrial Fellow at the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge.
The academic expertise available is also available to CIL in the form of its Research Faculty, which provides inputs to product development and verification and validation of international/regional/local/sectoral data analyses. Members of CIL's Research Faculty include:
Professor Phil Hanson
Phil is a direct contributor to Comparison International's project and
product development work, as well as contributing to the work of the PROBE
Advisory Board and Research Faculty. He is a Principal Industrial Fellow
at the University of Cambridge's Institute for Manufacturing. He is also
a lay church leader and a trustee of two charities, a freeman of the City
of London, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
From 1973 to 2002, Phil worked for IBM, initially in management positions in Systems Engineering and later in Sales including a period as West Midlands Branch Manager. For the last 12 years he was Lead Principal for IBM's management consulting practice in the Industrial Sector. In this capacity he was engaged at board level with global manufacturing companies across the world on issues of business strategy and operational improvement. Over this time the annual revenues for this consulting practice grew from nothing to 50 million dollars. Prior to joining IBM, Phil worked as a professional engineer in the Ministry of Defence and the Dowty Group including an assignment in Canada. Phil has an engineering degree from the University of Loughborough and an MBA from Cass Business School in London. He also has a Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford and an MA in Theology from the University of Nottingham.
In 1992, Phil co-authored with Professor Chris Voss at London Business School what became known as PROBE - a method of benchmarking manufacturing companies against a world-class vision. Since then the approach has been used by over 7000 organisations of all types worldwide. For three years he led the CBI study missions to Japan to understand the significant successes of companies who had won the 'TPM1' awards of the JIPM2. He has been a Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, a member of the EPSRC3 design college, the manufacturing board of the IEE and the board of the Loughborough University IMRC4, as well as Chairman of Governors at Solihull College and President of Mid Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce.
- TPM — Total Productive Maintenance
- JIPM — Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance
- EPSRC — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- IMRC — Loughborough Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre
Professor Chris Voss
Chris Voss is Professor of Operations and Technology Management at London
Business School and a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management
Research.. He has a BSc(eng), MSc and Phd from the University of London.
Chris published the first English textbook on Service Operations management
in 1985 and since then he has been one of the leaders in research in service
management. In 1992, Chris co-authored with Phil Hanson what became known
as PROBE - a method of benchmarking manufacturing companies against a world-class
vision. He led the influential International Service Study which has developed
international comparisons of service management and the management of experiential
services, and led directly to the development of the PROBE for Service
benchmarking tool. Professor Voss' work with the Advanced Institute of
Management Research is focused around several research projects and initiatives
to improve understanding of factors affecting national competitiveness
and, in particular, to further our understanding of how, and to what extent,
management can make a difference to organisational performance.
Professor Voss is active professionally and as a consultant to many companies. He founded and was for many years chair of the European Operations Management Association, and the annual research prize is named in his honour. He is also a fellow of many professional organisations including the British Academy of Management, the Production and Operations Management Society and the Decision Science Institute. At London Business School he has held many positions including departmental chair and deputy dean.
Dr David Yarrow
Dave is Comparison International's Development Manager, and also a member
of CIL's Research Faculty. He is an experienced organisational improvement
specialist with a successful 20-year track record in teaching, research,
supervision, publication, consultancy and training. Former employers include
NEI Parsons (heavy engineering), Price Waterhouse Management Consultants,
Northumbria University's Business School and the National Health Service
(NHS), where he was an Assistant Director of the NHS Learning Alliance, a
team of change facilitators supporting efforts to improve the UK's healthcare
services.
Dave holds a Masters Degree in Engineering from Cambridge University and a PhD (2006) in Organisational Improvement, which focused on a case study of the pursuit of organisational excellence, exploring the role of best practice benchmarking as an enabler of organisational improvement. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology and of the Chartered Quality Institute. He is committed to excellence in supporting the development of people and organisations and dissemination of the Ôimprovement' knowledge base, and to inspiring and nurturing best practice transfer within and across organisational and sectoral boundaries. Until 2004 he ran Northumbria University's Centre for Business Excellence, having played a leading role in establishing and growing a centre of expertise in this field, with specialisms including total quality management and continuous improvement, best practice benchmarking and excellence-based self-assessment, process benchmarking and the transfer of best practice, lean thinking and change management.
Dave has been a key player in the development of the PROBE suite of Best Practice Benchmarking tools since 1996. He has published widely on best practice benchmarking and related themes, and contributes to ongoing plans for the further development, dissemination and impact of the research agenda of CIL and its partners.
Dr. Norma Harrison 
Norma Harrison is Professor of Operations Management at CEIBS. Before joining CEIBS in 2007, she served at Macquarie Graduate School of Management as Professor of Management. She has had over 25 years of experience as an academic at various universities and 15 years of experience in consulting to industry and government agencies.
Professor Harrison's doctoral research was in Manufacturing Strategy and her teaching, research and consulting interests are in the areas of innovation and technology management, supply chain management, e-business, the globalization of operations, performance improvement, restructuring for competition and best practices. She is the co-author of the books, Technology Management: Text and International Cases (McGraw-Hill USA, 2002) and Statistics for Business and Economics (Harper & Row, 1989). Since 1990, she has organized major conferences and seminars in production and operations management.
Professor Harrison was elected President-Elect of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) in 2007, following a number of terms, since 1998, serving as Vice-President, DSI, as well as President, Asia Pacific DSI. She was also elected Board Member of the Production and Operations Management Society for 2001-2003. She has been involved in major benchmarking projects, including Promoting Business Excellence (PROBE) Manufacturing and Service; the Global Manufacturing Futures Project (1986-98); the Global Supply Chain Management Project (1996-98); and Australian benchmarking projects for printing and hotels industries. She has also worked in collaboration with Australian State and Commonwealth governments and industry in introducing innovation audit programs and reviews of international best practice in the adoption and management of soft and hard technologies.
In 2002, Professor Harrison was appointed by the Australian Federal Government to the Governing Board for the Joint Accreditation System for Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ) and served as Vice-Chair of the Board from 2003-2004. In 2003, she was appointed by the New South Wales (NSW) Government to the Council on the Cost & Quality of Government, and served as the Chair of the Review Committee for the NSW Board of Studies.
Dr Andrea Shapiro
Dr. Andrea Shapiro is the principal of Strategy Perspective (www.4-perspective.com)
and author of the Tipping Point computer simulation and workshop. The Tipping
Point workshop complements the PROBE best practice benchmarking tools by
providing a framework to help leaders drive business change.
Andrea designed and developed the Tipping Point simulation and workshop in 1997. The simulation is grounded in organisational theory, systems thinking, and today's real-world challenges, and demonstrates the dynamics that underpin effective change. It gives managers new and innovative tools to maximize the success of their own change initiatives The workshop has been used in universities, professional and governmental organisations, and corporations, including Sunor Energy, GlaxoSmithKline, NASA, the American Society of Training and Development, the UK National Health Service, and the University of San Diego. Her book, Creating Contagious Commitment, grew out of a demand from workshop participants for more examples, theory, and background, for anyone faced with implementing a significant organisational change.
Andrea's experience includes software development, business modeling, management, and organisational learning and development. Her former employers include Hughes Aircraft, Price Waterhouse, Baxter-Travenol, and Nortel Networks. After obtaining master's degrees in mathematics and psychology, Andrea earned a doctorate in behavioral decision making from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She went on to further studies at the Coaches Institute and the MIT Sloan Business School executive education program in system dynamics. She has served on the Graduate Faculty at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and taught decision making at Pfeiffer University's graduate program in organisational management.
Dr Malcolm Gall
Malcolm’s early career was in academic research in physical chemistry, then in the development of plastic materials in engineering, consumer and chemical industries. For fifteen years he worked on institutionalising improvement and establishing formal Quality and Environmental management systems in the petrochemical activities of the Norwegian energy enterprise Norsk Hydro. Malcolm holds a PhD in Chemistry, is a professional member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has been a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society since 1994. In recent years his interest has been in making the opportunities and limitations of statistics clearer to non-statisticians. Work in this area has been the analyses of surveys, business performance, health, environmental and occupational hygiene data. Malcolm contributes to several aspects of Comparison International's work, enhancing the statistical expertise available to contribute to the ongoing development of PROBE best practice benchmarking tools and to the analysis of benchmarking data.
Dr. John Davies 
Dr. John Davies joined the University of Salford in 1992 after working in management roles in the chemical processing industries for 13 years. John is a Senior Lecturer in Quality Management at Salford Business School. He is the Research Centre Director for the Research Centre for Organizational Excellence (COrE), which is the largest collection of Quality Management researchers in Europe. His current areas of research activity are the implementation of Quality Systems, Models and Techniques (including Six Sigma) in a range of organisational contexts, Service Quality and Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Development. He is a member of the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Quality, TQM Journal and Quality Assurance in Education. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), a Chartered Quality Professional (CQP), a former Chief Examiner for the CQI Diploma and Certificate in Quality, Chair of the CQI’s Advisory Council and a Trustee and Board member of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE). He has published over 40 refereed papers and has extensive experience in working with organisations through funded projects (KTPs and ESF) in business process development, quality and performance improvement.
Jonas Oldmark
Jonas Oldmark has had various management roles at The Natural Step in Stockholm since joined the organisation 1997. The Natural Step is an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to education, advisory work and research in sustainable development. Today Jonas plays a critical role in expanding The Natural Step activities internationally with a specific focus on developing The Real Change Research Partnership Programme. 2003-2008 Jonas served as head of Sweden development and he is still involved in the management of The Natural Step activities in Sweden and in advisory service project.
Jonas has more than ten years of experience working with major corporations to help them identify and execute opportunities to achieve competitive advantage through strategic environmental and social performance. Jonas assignments have covered sectors as: agriculture and food industry, construction and property, banking and financing, chemical industry and transportation.
He has worked with leading companies on:
- developing business management systems integrating sustainability in annual planning and operations.
- assessing business risks and opportunities related to sustainability.
leveraging investments in corporate social responsibility work. - creating innovative stakeholder partnerships and activities to address critical sustainability issues throughout value chains.
Jonas is involved in research and development projects such as “Management systems for sustainable businesses”, “Eco-labelling and Procurement” and “Sustainability principles and strategic sustainable developing guidelines”. He has played a major role in the development of the “PROBE for Sustainable Business” benchmarking tool, continues to play a role in its refinement and in analysing and disseminating the learning arising from deployment of this tool. He also serves as a teacher at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden on the Masters programme “Strategic leadership towards sustainability” and is one of the authors of the course book.
Contact Comparison International for more information about or company, products and services.