Art Byrne

Art Byrne started his personal Lean journey in 1982 when he became General Manager of The High Intensity and Quartz Lamp division of General Electric’s Lighting Business Group. This was the first successful Lean implementation within GE and it started Art on a continuous quest to implement Lean in every business he ran. Because Art has always implemented Lean from effectively the position of CEO he brings a unique perspective on the role of the CEO in implementing Lean. Because he has done this in many companies over the years he has a lot of practical knowledge to share with you from businesses that most likely share some characteristic of your own business.

Art left GE to join The Danaher Corporation as a Group executive responsible for eight of the then thirteen businesses that comprised Danaher at that time. He was instrumental in introducing Lean to all of the Danaher businesses. These initial efforts evolved over time into the now famous Danaher Business System. While at Danaher Art learned Lean from a group of former Toyota executives all of whom had worked directly for Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System.

Art left Danaher to join The Wiremold Company as CEO. At Wiremold, working closely with Orry Fiume and the rest of his management team , he aggressively implemented Lean as the companies strategy. As a result Wiremold was able to more than quadruple in size and increase operating income over 13x in the course of the next eight years. More importantly it allowed Art to take a company valued at $30 million when he arrived and sell it after a little more than eight years for $770 million. As a result of these efforts, Wiremold was written up in books such as Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones; Gemba Kaizen by Masaaki Imai; an Better Thinking, Better Results by Bob Emiliani which is a detailed history of Wiremold’s Lean implementation as well as being mentioned numerous times in other books on the Subject of Lean. Art has been a keynote speaker at many national conferences on Lean.

After retiring from Wiremold in 2002, Art joined J W Childs Associates LP, a Boston based Private Equity firm as an operating partner and has been implementing Lean throughout the Childs portfolio companies. Art serves as Chairman of four of these portfolio companies and has been on the board of a fifth. He also serves on the board of a publicly held Life Insurance company and has initiated and been assisting them in implementing Lean throughout their business. He has also done Lean consulting and initiated a Lean program at one of the major hospitals in the Hartford, CT area so he understands that lean can apply to any type of business.

Art grew up in Cambridge, MA and holds a BA in Economics from Boston College and an MBA degree from Babson College. He and his wife Mariko reside in Avon, CT.