James Vatalaro

James is a business consultant, educator and author with Productivity Inc., a leading international consulting and training firm that specializes in delivering topline growth and bottomline improvement solutions throughout the Global 1000. Mr. Vatalaro has over 25 years of experience in building valueenhancing capabilities in transaction, service and manufacturingbased organizations. Prior to joining Productivity Inc., James worked for 15 years in the US aerospace industry holding progressive senior leadership positions in manufacturing, quality assurance and manufacturing engineering. While working with the Boeing Company, he trained, coached, and mentored in the Toyota Production System from those who helped create it (members of the Toyota Autonomous Study Group) and led the successful Lean transformation of several major valuestreams. For the past 10 years, James has been partnering with the leadership of Global 1000 companies such as Genentech, Inc., Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, the adidas Group, and CertainTeed Corporation. His capabilities are broad and deep in the areas of strategy innovation and business modeling, strategic continuous improvement, strategy deployment, leadership development, and custom educational curriculum design & delivery. James is an expert in the rapid implementation of Productivity’s comprehensive Lean Management System and Operational Excellence improvement toolkit. He has trained and consulted globally to included projects in China, SEA, the EU, and North Africa. James is certified in SixSigma through the University of Michigan, certified as a Lean Manager by Productivity Inc. and the Ohio State University, he is a 3P (Production Preparation Process) facilitator, coauthor of the book Implementing a Mixed Model Kanban Pull System, and a teacher of Lean Manager Certification at the Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University.