« I am Catherine Converset, President of Productivity Innovation, I am a Senior Lean Leadership Consultant, Lean Speaker, Lean Teacher and Coach.

I aim to help companies and administrations engage in organic changes to create a customer-oriented culture, improve efficiency, and develop innovative solutions.
I believe in Western organisations' vast potential for competitiveness. I believe that the two pillars of competitiveness are a culture of operational excellence, which drives innovation.

‘Keeping in motion’: from Continuous Improvement to Continuous Innovation. 

I know that in most companies, with the leadership vision of creating a customer-centric organisation, the determination to empower people, the elimination of the massive waste in organisational bureaucracy, and structured collaborative work, everything is possible: customer loyalty, people satisfaction, and innovative products and services! 

I have been assisting companies in the manufacturing and service industries in Europe and the USA on their journey to operational excellence. 
For over 30 years, I have helped leaders and operational teams create a culture of efficiency and customer centricity through collaboration, empowerment, and trust. 

My efforts are now primarily focused on supporting leadership teams in building an operational excellence strategy and helping service environments, such as sales and marketing, laboratories, engineering, and R&D. I know these services are critical to the company's performance and innovation capabilities!

My professional journey

 

As a senior lean consultant, expert, speaker, teacher in Europe and the USA, and President of Productivity Innovation, I started my professional career with 15 years of operational positions in large manufacturing companies before moving to consultancy and training/coaching.

I know what it takes to sell and provide customers with the best products and services!

 

These 15 years in the industry, spent in France and Italy, have been crucial in my journey. They gave me a deep knowledge of manufacturing groups: Pechiney, the European aluminium producer, and Carnaud Metal Box, the packaging leader.

“In Pechiney, I learned the beauty of aluminium production and manufacturing; I loved the engineers, supervisors, and people on the shop floor, their mastery of technology, and their dedication and engagement to making Pechiney a rich industrial group. For 10 years, by selling flat-rolled products, including can stock, I have been exposed to demanding large and international customers, and I understood the value of collaboration between support services and manufacturing teams.”

“In the Carnaud Metal Box plant in Italy, I faced the issue of the best way to respond to the vast challenges of the consumer markets. The question was: ‘How can we be more flexible to respond to the constant variations of the market?’ This has been my introduction to Lean / World Class Manufacturing and Operational Excellence, which are three different words for improving operations and accelerating development!”

All these experiences led me to join, in 1994, Productivity, which pioneered the Toyota Production System in the West, to participate in developing its Lean consulting and training activities in Europe and then the USA. This choice has been a deliberate one, with the intent of sharing with leaders of European companies, by experimentation, how they could get massive gains in lead time reduction, quality improvement, customer service improvement, and people satisfaction through a well-done Lean transformation based on people empowerment.