James P. Womack

Dr. James Womack is the father of the lean movement and has been talking about creating value through continuous innovation around deep customer understanding for many years. Jim will share his insights about value creation in a fast moving world where customers often seek a solution to complex problems involving many products rather than a single product: Mobility rather than a car, or health support to prevent disease rather than just an insurance policy. You can’t afford to miss this important talk.

Recieved a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1970, a master's degree in transportation systems from Harvard in 1975, and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT in 1982 (for a dissertation on comparative industrial policy in the U.S., Germany, and Japan).

Co-author of The Machine That Changed the World(Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990), Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster, 2005), and Seeing The Whole Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2011).

Articles include: "From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise" (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1994), "Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection" (Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996), “Lean Consumption” (Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2005).