Richard Crowley joined as a consulting partner to Davies Consulting, Inc. in 2005. Prior to this, he has worked with Toni Davies for several years on her major accounts with the Kaizen Institute of America since June of 1998. He brings unsurpassed knowledge and experience in Operations Management, Lean, SMED, TPM, and, in particular, Pull Systems using Kanban to the group. There are few individuals in the world today, much less in North America, who possesses this combined expertise.

Richard’s career in manufacturing began 24 years ago on the shop floor of Gates Rubber Company where he gained a total understanding of manufacturing from an operator’s perspective. Following his work at Gates, he returned to university to pursue his BSBA degree from Southeast Missouri State University, graduating Magma Cum Laude in Production Operations Management. Richard also completed a management internship at Toyoda Gosei (TG) – Missouri resulting in a remarkable case study , “Use of Value Engineering to Improve Industrial Productivity” , which was published in the proceedings of the “Productivity & Quality Management Frontiers –IV, Volume 2, 1993).

Richard joined Toyoda-Gosei fulltime in 1992 as a Production Analyst, quickly advancing to Manager of Production and Inventory Control. It was in this capacity that Richard first became exposed to the variety of KAIZEN methods and strategies that led his department to QS9000/ISO9001 certification.

Richard has worked with a variety of consulting clients, including Alfmeier Corporation, ACCO, Kraft, Bosch-Rexroth, Electro Motive Diesels, Cardinal Glass, APW, FAG Bearings, Longhorn Glass, JCI, Krupp, and Stewart & Stevenson as well as others.

Richard’s shop floor experience, management experience, and consulting experience allow him to understand the importance of total employee involvement within an organization for any improvement strategy to be successful. He supports a strategy that is driven and supported from the top of the organization, but believes everyone in the organization has to become actively involved for KAIZEN to be successful.