Job Title: Initiative Owner
Company: Greencore
Tell us a bit about yourself. This can include telling us what fires you up about the job you do, your professional achievements, your career highlights. What inspires you? What attracted you to pursue a career in manufacturing? Is there anything else you’d like to say about either your job or UK manufacturing?
I have a mixed background of IT, operations and operational excellence (continuous improvement), with qualifications including a degree in Business Information Systems and a Six Sigma Black Belt. I have a passion for designing technology solutions which are complementary to, and guided by, the value added tasks of the physical process.
So often, the reverse is true where the physical process bends to fit a poorly designed technology solution incurring unnecessary cost, affecting adherence and impacting morale of operators involved. Primarily though, I enjoy the design of analytical solutions that cross from information into insight, making data universally accessible and useful to those involved, without ever skipping the critical foundational steps of ensuring source data is consistent, validated and ideally captured in a seamless way.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Five things come to mind – a mixture of quotes and learnings. 1: Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. 2: Let the process lead the technology and not the other way around, but NEVER digitise a bad process. 3: Despite popular belief you don’t actually have to be a different person at work – your sincerity and authenticity is your point of difference; don’t feel the need to become a corporate robot 4: Focus less on improving your weaknesses. Every one of your weaknesses is a strength for someone else so find those people and work closely with them, spending your time on enhancing your existing strengths and transforming them into superpowers. 5: Never be afraid to pitch your ideas, however out there they may seem. Remember, if the majority of the room doesn’t think your idea is crazy, you’re probably not thinking big enough. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you WIN.
What is your favourite engineered/manufactured product?
The iPhone simply for how it has crossed the barrier of generations allowing people who would have previously described themselves as technophobes to quickly learn and be part of the modern world.
Please give one interesting fact about yourself that not many people know.
I spent a lot of time learning about and then building a YouTube channel called ExcelGoat a few years ago. I hope to go back to it at some point.
If you weren’t in manufacturing what would be your dream job?
A product designer of some sort. I love nothing more than to see an initial idea in someone’s head transform into a sketch and then into a physical, useable product. I spend a lot of my personal time designing things and building them in wood.
