Jim brings a wealth of experience from the high tech, hospitality, manufacturing, and engineering industries. He has been involved with process improvement and change initiatives for over 12 years and has trained and mentored Black Belts for the past six years. Jim’s strength is facilitating cross-functional teams to resolve chronic business problems. Originally trained in textile engineering, Jim led a number of teams to achieve significant savings through cost controls, enhanced work methods and improvement material utilization. His efforts led to over $1 million in savings and dramatic streamlining of operations. Later, as a design engineer responsible for readying new technologies for production, he became skilled in process and product Design for Six Sigma methods. In this role, he also filed seven invention disclosures and two patent applications. Jim's successful track record continued at GE (Power Systems), where he received his Master Black Belt certification and guided a number of successful initiatives. One highlight was an effort that reduced cycle times for building motors from four weeks to three days, increasing performance to customer delivery request dates from 30% to over 75%. As a consultant, Jim has taken his on-the-job experience, practical approach and off-beat humor to train and consult a wide range of client organizations in Six Sigma and Lean efforts. His various clients in manufacturing and transactional environments have seen a combined yield of more than $13 million. Jim has trained and coached hundreds of Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts and Green Belts in all aspects of process improvement for such clients as Sun, AOL, Palm, Nokia, GE and Roche Diagnostics.