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 (PhD, MBA, BSocSc (Hons), BA) is a Professor of Management
and Chair of Operations Management at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management
(MGSM), Macquarie University, Sydney. Before joining MGSM in 1996, Professor
Harrison served at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) as Foundation
Head of the Graduate School of Business. Professor Harrison has had over
25 years of experience as an academic in various universities and 15 years
of experience in consulting to industry and government agencies. In MGSM,
she served in various senior management roles within the School and was,
until recently, Associate Dean and Director of International Alliances and
Accreditation.
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 globalisation 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 organised 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 has since 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.
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