KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

John Bicheno

John Bicheno is Emeritus Professor of Lean Enterprise at the University of Buckingham and a highly respected figure in the global Lean community. With a long and distinguished career spanning academia and industrial engineering practice, he has significantly contributed to shaping Lean thinking and education worldwide.

For 16 years, he served as Director of the executive MSc in Lean at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff Business School, helping to develop leaders and practitioners in the field. He is the author and co-author of 13 influential books, including The Lean Toolbox, Human Lean, and The Lean Games and Simulations Book, which have become essential references for Lean professionals and educators.

John’s contributions have been widely recognised. He was awarded the prestigious Shingo Prize in 2024, received the “Operational Excellence Leader” award (UK, 2025), and was named the “Most Prominent Industrial Engineering Professional” in 2021 by the South African Institute of Industrial Engineers. A long-time supporter of ELEC, he also played a key role in its history, with the University of Buckingham hosting the third edition of the conference.

Carlos Rodrigues

Carlos Rodrigues is the General Manager of Toyota Caetano Portugal’s Ovar plant and a highly experienced Lean educator, with a career deeply rooted in the Toyota Way and Japanese management principles. His professional journey reflects a strong commitment to translating continuous improvement into long-term, sustainable performance, bridging operational leadership with people development.

Since 2009, Carlos has also been an active member of the Toyota European Productivity Kaizen Meeting (EPKM), where he has been involved in initiatives focused on learning, adopting, and replicating best Lean practices across the Portuguese organization, strengthening internal capabilities and promoting continuous improvement. Combining executive leadership with education and mentoring,

Carlos is widely recognized for his work in Lean leadership, strategy deployment, and the development of learning organizations. His approach emphasizes leading by example and cultivating environments where people continuously grow and improve.

Jo Ann Pabst

Jo Ann Pabst is a highly experienced Lean transformation leader with more than 25 years of practice supporting organizations across a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, defense electronics, automotive, and healthcare. Her professional journey reflects a deep and sustained commitment to operational excellence, with a strong emphasis on developing continuous improvement cultures that are both effective and people-centred.

Throughout her career, Jo Ann has worked across both operational and transactional environments, helping teams translate Lean principles into meaningful performance improvements. Her leadership experience spans hospital and ambulatory operations, finance and corporate auditing, human resources, compensation and payroll systems, sales effectiveness training, and even winery operations—demonstrating the versatility and power of Lean thinking across very different contexts.

In recent years, she has been actively involved in Lean healthcare transformation initiatives in the United States, collaborating with organizations such as Alameda Healthcare System and Atrium Healthcare System. Her work focuses on improving processes, strengthening operational and patient outcomes, and embedding sustainable improvement practices within complex healthcare systems.

Jo Ann holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Northeastern University and a Master of Science in Administration from Boston University. She is also a certified Shingo Examiner, reflecting her deep engagement with the Shingo Model and its principles of operational excellence.

She is currently Research Director at the Shingo Institute, further strengthening her contribution to advancing global thinking and practice in operational excellence and Lean transformation.

Her areas of expertise include Lean manufacturing, strategy deployment, Kaizen, Six Sigma, value stream transformation, and capability building through training and curriculum development, with a strong emphasis on non-manufacturing Kaizen applications.

Andrea Chiarini

Andrea Chiarini is an internationally recognised expert in Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Industry 4.0, and World-Class Manufacturing. He combines strong academic expertise with extensive consulting experience across both manufacturing and service organisations, supporting companies in the design and implementation of advanced operational excellence systems. He is Professor of Operations Management at the Università degli Studi di Verona, co-founder of Chiarini & Associati, Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Throughout his career, he has been dedicated to operational improvement, organisational performance, and the development of management practices in complex industrial environments.

At ELEC 2026, Professor Chiarini will deliver a keynote lecture of particular relevance due to its focus on World-Class Manufacturing, a topic that represents an important and innovative addition to the conference programme. For the first time, ELEC will place dedicated emphasis on this strategic framework, extending the discussion beyond Lean to explore how organisations can integrate complementary approaches to operational excellence in highly competitive industrial contexts. In his keynote entitled “Lean and World-Class Manufacturing: different paths towards Operational Excellence in manufacturing companies”, he will discuss how World-Class Manufacturing relates to and differs from Lean methodologies, highlighting both their complementarities and practical implications.

His presentation will provide participants with valuable insights into how these approaches can be leveraged to achieve sustainable operational excellence in manufacturing organisations. This keynote represents an important milestone for ELEC 2026, reinforcing the conference’s commitment to advancing knowledge, fostering critical discussion, and promoting innovative perspectives in Lean and Operational Excellence.

Jorge Ferreira

Jorge Ferreira is, since 2007, the Site Manager at IKEA Industry Portugal and a highly experienced industrial leader, with a career spanning more than thirty-five years in international companies, particularly in the automotive sector. His professional journey reflects a strong commitment to building and leading high-performing organizations across diverse cultural and industrial contexts, combining operational excellence with people development.

Since 2015, Jorge has also been actively involved in international projects within IKEA Industry, coordinating and supporting industrial units in Sweden, Slovakia, Russia, and China. This experience has further strengthened his ability to lead multicultural teams and to transfer best practices across different geographies, reinforcing alignment and continuous improvement within the organization.

Throughout his career, Jorge has worked in several key functional areas, including Human Resources management, Industrial Engineering, project management, and production unit leadership. In 2007, he took on the challenge of establishing IKEA’s industrial group in Portugal, a milestone that reflects his capability to build and develop organizations from the ground up.

Jorge is widely recognized for his people-centered leadership approach, where the priorities of individuals and business performance are integrated through continuous improvement, learning, and development. His daily mission focuses on creating environments where diverse teams—across Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, and Slovakian backgrounds—can grow, collaborate, and consistently improve performance and delivery.