ShareRorry Harding, Senior Consultant
Rorry Harding has over 35 years leadership experience in a variety of industries and environments, including project management, product development and process improvement. He has led training development, engineering, and Lean implementation with management, offices, service labs and manufacturing, creating engagement from the shop floor to the Executive. The recurring theme is one of significantly improving team performance and improving the delivery of quality products and services.
Rorry’s practical experience includes leading Value Stream Mapping and Assessment in a variety of businesses, both manufacturing and non-manufacturing – some specific areas include medical device, document control, product development, manufacturing in energy sectors, warehousing, machining, maintenance, assembly, test labs and office/admin processes. The results were dramatic in reducing costs and lead times, while improving quality.
He also established a program and led the first-year savings effort to achieve $22M in productivity and one-time cash savings at AECL. He developed an effective multi-skilled team that transitioned the company culture and leadership approach from a cost-cutting to sustainable continuous improvement, based on Lean methods and philosophy. VSM was used to significantly reduce metallurgical analysis time for in-reactor components, improve maintenance processes to eliminate backlogs and improve response times, and to streamline Corrective Action processes. A suite of Lean tools were applied to reduce manufacturing defects for reactor components and to transform the attitudes of the manufacturing operations.
Rorry has developed and successfully executed training on Lean for corporate leadership at all levels, critical to influencing front line leaders and getting buy-in by staff in both unionized and non-unionized environments. He adapts a Lean Practitioner/Green Belt program within an organization to directly support the direction and vision of the organization/leadership. One example of effectiveness was that they were able to exceed their cash savings targets annually, with sustained savings at $35M.
He was further involved in developing a unique and interactive, Lean Online program which is being used to train 1,000s of people around the world, in all industry sectors, at a Yellow Belt level of learning. This training tool is critical to organizations who need consistent, effective, economical training on the methodologies, language and approach of Lean, across all their departments and facilities.
Rorry has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from University of Ottawa.
Continuous learning includes many leadership, coaching, project management, business and management courses including Leadership Fundamentals, Quality System courses, LEAN tools, Synchronous Manufacturing (Theory of Constraints), Project Management certification, Change Management.
