John Ransford - MAS Advisor
John’s role involves liaising with manufacturers in the region and performing Manufacturing Reviews on a face-to-face basis to identify areas for business improvement, focusing on his specialist areas of Low Carbon and Advanced Manufacturing. Using his wide experience in the manufacturing sector, he analyses process and creates detailed reports that structure a plan for moving forward. The final part of his role is helping companies find consultants to support them and ensure that project are eligible for grant funding.
John is a lean manufacturing specialist with hands on improvement implementation experience, a sound technical background, and over 12 years experience of implementing quality systems and lean practices for multi-national first tier suppliers to the aerospace and automotive sectors. John is highly accomplished in business and process analysis techniques which lead to improvements in all areas of a company.
Previously John was employed as a Senior Consultant for WCS International, creating strategies for improvement and implementing the changes throughout many major blue chip companies. During his time at WCS John supported a diverse range of companies – BNFL Sellafield, Kraft, Marlow Foods and RJB Mining - with the introduction of lean improvement techniques. This role included working as a project manager to train, implement and advise on team based TPM and Lean manufacturing systems as well as TOC as per companies needs, and typically such projects achieved a 10 to 1 return on costs and investment.
His additional experience includes 2 years at Adwest Driver Systems, supplier to Rover, Nissan, Honda and Toyota, as Business Improvements Manager reporting to the Operations Director and responsible for reviewing the Rover business, ensuring on time delivery and product quality, implementing World-Class Manufacturing standards and acting as a consultant for continuous improvement. Achievements include reducing the reject rate reduced from 65% to .01% by improving deliveries and quality and addressing product variation - leading to savings in the region of £10,000 per annum. Other experience includes 2 years at Freudenberg Technical Products as Kaizen Manager, responsible for delivering improvements in their internal efficiencies, as well as improving the operation of their global logistics supply chain. Achievements included a 20% improvement in Value Added work on manufacturing processes and restructuring overseas plants generating savings in the region of $3.9 million.
John joined the MAS East Midlands team in February 2003, during this time he has been involved in over 130 projects and diagnostic visits and has identified and achieved combined savings within SME clients of over £10million.
John’s qualifications include a HNC in Mechanical/Production Engineering from Leicester Polytechnic (De Montfort) in 1991; S.P.C. & S.P.C instructor – Byron consulting, Deming - Deming Institute, Taguchi D.o.E. - Small Piece Trust, Process Certification; Root Cause Investigation; Process Re-Engineering - Pratt & Whitney Shingjutsu, and Lean Systems - Shingjutsu (United Technologies). He is a qualified Productivity and Competitiveness Analyst (PAT) and has trained 10 others to achieve this level.
To contact John directly call 07900 911568 or e-mail on John.Ransford@mas-em.org.uk
