Prior to starting her own practice in 2006, Kathleen was a Continuous Improvement (CI) Coach with Kraft Foods Ltd in Port Melbourne. In this influencing role, she developed and communicated CI strategies, trained teams in lean thinking and problem solving skills and facilitated productivity improvements using the lean tools of 5S, value stream mapping and set up reduction (SMED). Kathleen also presented by invitation as a lean practitioner at several lean leadership conferences in 2004 and 2006.

Kathleen’s strong facilitation skills have stemmed from her various experiences in both primary industry and manufacturing. She graduated from Monash University with a double degree (B.Sc./B.E.(Hons)) in 1993 after several years of being an academic tutor and winning an undergraduate scholarship and vacation employment with Dow Chemical. She started her career at Comalco Research Centre as a process/research engineer. Her engineering experiences at Comalco’s three operating sites (New Zealand Aluminium Smelter, Boyne Smelters Ltd and Bell Bay) involved process optimisation, troubleshooting and problem solving. As part of a smelter expansion project, she spent several years at Boyne Smelters Ltd in Queensland commissioning a new carbon anode plant and integrating a new technology and operating philosophy with an existing plant. During this time, Kathleen also had the opportunity to learn from and experience the challenges of major organisational change as all CRA (now Rio Tinto) operating sites moved from a unionised to a single status (all staff) workforce.

In mid 1998 Kathleen joined Kraft as a reliability engineer, improving the operation of several production lines by increasing uptime and efficiency. She was recognised as a change agent and by 2000 was managing operations in several production departments (portion controls, parmesan, peanut butter). She implemented some major change projects resulting in continuous operations in her areas, while managing to launch new products and drive improvements to the key performance indicators of labour variance, efficiency and delivery as well as safety and quality across three shifts. During a period of rapid change, Kathleen moved into the role of program manager for the peanut butter production line, where she led capital project and productivity improvement work. In her role, Kathleen coached operations personnel and led changes to plant process design and manning levels, resulting in significant cost savings. Her change management and leadership skills, as well as diligence with safety and quality aspects made her well suited to her next role in Kraft driving continuous improvement and lean thinking, and now as an independent Process Facilitator.