Tom Cody

Process Improvement Consultant

Tom Cody is a senior Lean and Operational Excellence consultant with over 20 years’ experience working across manufacturing, life sciences, engineering and service environments. He brings a blend of hands-on operational credibility, strong people-centric coaching capability and deep technical grounding, making him particularly effective in Lean Start and SME-focused improvement programmes.

Tom built deep operational and leadership experience at Abbott Vascular through senior roles spanning Quality, Engineering and Operations, ultimately operating at Management level. During this time, he led and supported multiple high-value projects across Lean, quality, validation, logistics and operational improvement, with individual project values exceeding €10 million. He also played a central role in large-scale cultural change initiatives, most notably as a key contributor to the Abbott Vascular Clonmel site’s transformation from a pre-Lean operation to becoming the first site in Europe to achieve the Shingo Gold Medallion for Operational Excellence. This experience strongly informs his work with SMEs, where the emphasis is on building internal capability, ownership and confidence.

A key strength of Tom’s approach is his ability to coach and empower frontline teams and managers to apply Lean tools in a practical and sustainable way. He has extensive experience facilitating DMAIC-based projects, including defining clear problem statements, mapping current and future states, establishing meaningful baseline data, leading root cause analysis and supporting teams to implement low-cost, high-impact improvements. His style is highly collaborative and grounded in real operational constraints, making Lean accessible rather than theoretical for teams new to structured improvement.

His consulting experience spans cost reduction, productivity improvement, waste elimination, standard work development, visual management, SMED, 5S, performance metrics and control plans. He is particularly effective at helping teams identify and implement quick wins, while simultaneously putting simple structures in place to sustain gains through daily management routines and clear accountability.

Tom’s consulting style is practical, data-driven and people-focused. He is particularly well suited to Lean programmes where the objective is not only short-term improvement, but equipping teams with the skills, confidence and structure to continue improving long after the project has concluded.

Education:

Tom holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Manufacturing, along with qualifications in Manufacturing Technology and Mechanical Engineering. He also holds a Level 9 Certificate in Leadership in Digitisation of Manufacturing.