Lean Institute Africa gets its first woman CEO

20th March 2018

     

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Rose Heathcote has been appointed CEO of the Lean Institute Africa (LIA) as of 1st March 2018. She thereby becomes the Not-for-Profit Organisation’s first woman CEO, and second woman Institutional Head in the ten-year-old, twenty-seven-member Lean Global Network (LGN). She will attend the Lean Transformation Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, USA from 25 – 28 March where she will get to engage many of the LGN leaders, and they her.

LIA was established at the Graduate School of Business, UCT, in 2007 and was admitted to the LGN soon after. Its declared purpose is ‘the sustainable development of society’ with a vision to ‘Contributing to better organisational outcomes and quality of life by advancing Lean Thinking and Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

 “Rose Heathcote is extraordinarily suited to the appointment, and very committed to the vision and purpose of LIA,” says LIA Chairman, Professor Norman Faull. “An industrial engineer by training, she has filled a number of roles whilst accumulating the skill and experience to take over from Dr Anton Grütter as CEO and successfully lead LIA into the next frontier. It is likely that her participation at the Lean Transformation Summit in the USA later this month, will be a productive and inspiring time, for all involved.”

Rose got early exposure to the Toyota Production System (now widely referred to as “Lean Thinking”) when working for the Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC). During this time she had extended periods of overseas training with the Industry Forum in the UK (a UK government-sponsored programme to learn from the Japanese about improving industrial performance) and the Confederation of Indian Industry, thereby adding to a rich network of contacts. Two Japanese Kaizen Experts from Nissan also mentored her for a period of a year during this time. Thereafter she was a highly regarded consultant with Competitive Capabilities International (CCI), working, literally, from “Cape to Cairo.” Family circumstances then demanded a re-direction of her career, and she started her own consultancy, aptly named Thinking People, through which she has worked with a wide range of industries and organisations.

With a passion for sharing the practical and effective body of knowledge she has acquired, she is the author of two books, Clear Direction and Making a Difference. The latter is based on the work she did as Master Facilitator with LIA during the eighteen-month, highly successful assignment to reduce patient waiting times at four Gauteng public hospitals. Endorsing Clear Direction, French lean guru, Michael Ballé, had this to say: “A terrific, systematic, easy-to-use handbook of Operational Excellence. A must-read and a must-use for any leader, manager or department head.” Rose is currently busy with her new book, Green Value Stream, which explores the natural progression from Lean to Green Thinking to reduce environmental impact.

“Rose has a remarkable grasp of the tools in the Lean toolkit,” says Professor Faull. “However, equally important to the technical side of lean, she understands, and practices, the social side, whereby executives, managers and team leaders develop the skills of ‘humble enquiry’ and empathy to grow the problem-solving abilities of all employees, i.e. creating thinking people aligned with the purpose and strategy of the organisation.

During her participation at the Lean Transformation Summit later this month, she will have meetings with John Shook, Lean Global Network Chairman and esteemed Lean thinker, Jim Womack, Lean Enterprise Institute founder, as well as Lean IT specialists, Mike Orzen and Steve Bell. She will take a keen interest in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) contributions to the world of Lean, a special interest of hers. She looks forward to feeding the learning back into LIA, including at the Lean Summit Africa 2018 happening in Cape Town from 30 October to 1 November.

Asked what Rose considers important to Lean Leaders in Africa, without reservation she says, “Show people you care by practicing what you preach”.

Get in touch with Rose Heathcote or Lean Institute Africa at leaninfo@gsb.uct.ac.za or 021 406 1477

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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