Toni Davies began her association with the world reknowned Deming Prize winning Dr. Ryuji Fukuda in 1989, when he was a featured author & consultant with Productivity, Inc. During this time they worked together along with other fine consultants of Productivity, Inc. to refine and apply CEDAC & Policy Objective Deployment to an array of North American & International businesses. As a lead consultant working with Pratt & Whitney, US & Canada, Timken, ITT, and Northern Telecom, Toni Davies also collected the impressive results data for Dr. Fukuda’s book, Organizational Fitness (Productivity Press, 1997) during and after her Productivity tenure, for which he thanks her in his Forward.
This exciting time also launched the model for the “Total Improvement Process Week” a unique and comprehensive week long immersion at a host plant which takes participating leaders through all the steps they need to understand, set-up, implement, & manage improvement priorities using Policy Objective Deployment & Cedac. United Electric Controls (winner of the Shingo Prize 1990), The New Standard Company, Materials Research Corporation, Autosplice, Inc. are just a few of the organizations who hosted and benefited from this exceptional week with Dr. Fukuda & Toni Davies. Davies Consulting is planning to offer this unique model with Dr. Fukuda again in the future in an advanced version.
When Davies Consulting, Inc. was established, Dr. Fukuda and Toni Davies decided to collaborate again as independent partners to continue to help organizations in their improvement journies. Dr. Fukuda wrote to Toni in 2000,
“ Guiding & supporting client companies to the successful path of continuous improvement calls not for a consulting firm of big size or with many consultants. Capacity and personality of each consultant as well as quality of curriculum he/she tries to promote make or break his/her improvement plans”
To Toni he wrote, “ I have always admired your outstanding capacity. You were by far the best consultant among many…I have always felt I could trust your sincere personality. This is probably the most important point of consideration, and I have ultimately concluded that I can hand over my key to you” (Correspondence 7/10/00).
In 2001, Dr. Davies traveled again to Japan to work and study with Dr. Fukuda, at his invitation, his most recent advances in depth including SEDAC (PM Analysis, 3 sigma, PDCA advances), policy objective deployment, SQC, TPM, Reliability Engineering, and Human Errors Control.
Toni Davies feels incredibly fortunate to have worked with several well-known and remarkable senseis, but her special work and learning with Dr. Fukuda was and continues to be a tremendous inspiration for her continuing kaizen work. Davies Consulting is dedicated to continue seek ways to bring his extraordinary insight to our clients and consulting partners as long as possible.