Chair's Closing Remarks & End of Day 1

Dr Patrick McLaughlin is a Chartered Engineer and Eur Ing. He is a Fellow of both the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, as well as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Production Management and a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA), both from Cranfield. In a career that spans manufacturing engineer, manager and director, he has worked in both multinational and SME businesses. His experiences with a range of manufacturing processes and working for a number of different companies allied to experience in several industries has provided him with a strong background in managing manufacturing operations, including managing growth, downturn, restructuring and relocation of manufacturing facilities. He has worked at director level in manufacturing operations for over twenty years, and has been responsible for several plant-wide operations excellence implementations. He has experience of implementing and managing change programmes to improve manufacturing performance in automotive, capital goods, industrial equipment and consumer durables. This experience includes responsibility for integrating the design and development of new products into a lean operations environment and developing a continuous improvement culture to facilitate performance gains in lean implementations. He is currently working as Course Director of the Operations Excellence MSc at Cranfield University in the UK. His areas of interest are in Developing Manufacturing Strategy for Competitive Advantage, Creating an Innovation Capability in Operations Businesses, and Strategic Development of Smart Manufacturing/Industry 4 to provide Competitive Advantage.