About John Thorburn Consulting Inc.

I am a Professional Engineer, Certified Management Accountant and Project Manager with 30 years of experience including senior executive responsibilities.

Started my career as an Industrial Engineer and progressed to the level of Vice President of Operations. Strategic planner with implementation experience gained over several years as a Vice-President Operations at 3 companies. The success was built on leadership skills, continuous professional development and an established reputation as a troubleshooter.

A postgraduate education focused on accounting adding financial analysis and business management skills. Achieving the designation of Certified Management Accountant led to an appointment of Director of Finance at Litton Systems. Building on previous management roles in quality, operations, supply chain and facilities management establishing a portfolio of cross-functional skills. In addition to my professional designations I have been certified in the practice of lean manufacturing and as a six-sigma black belt.

Project Management skills leading several implementations of information enterprise systems and technical transfer of complex product platforms. Demonstrated human resource skills used to manage over 500 personnel in multiple locations and implementing numerous cross-functional projects. My portfolio of skills allows me to empathize with each member of the teams’ constraints leading to mutually productive solutions. Constraints are often roadblocks to change and require a balanced approach clearly stating the reasons for change and leading everyone in the same direction.

I have the experience of delivering an SAP implementation at L-3 Communications on budget and on schedule as a direct result of my cross-functional skills. The lessons learned from this experience and through further observations have been that an insufficient understanding of the AS IS state leads to a poorly defined project charters and scopes. A well-defined charter and developed scope helps manage stakeholders’ expectations and forms a solid platform for change management.

John Thorburn Consulting focuses on the elimination of waste through the use of waste using analytics, lean six-sigma and cost performance measurement such as variance analysis and earned value analysis. ”Armand Feigenbaum” defined non-value added or negative value added work as the hidden factory in manufacturing. The estimates of these costs range from 25% to 30% all of which comes from poor communications and not listening to the voice of the customer (VOC). Identifying the root cause of these costs using Six-Sigma DMAIC, FMEA, and other quality management tools definitely impacts the financial statements. At Litton Systems I was the divisional lead on using these techniques to pull the division from last place in the corporate navigation group to first place.