Stanwick Academy launches book and supports Belgian cancer fund

The event offered a varied and inspiring programme featuring various speakers. Tom Van der Straeten explained how Stanwick puts its ambition as a Centre of Excellence into practice on a daily basis. In doing so, he emphasised the growing importance of the Stanwick Academy. Whereas the organisation previously focused strongly on consultancy, training and coaching now play an increasingly prominent role. It is precisely this combination that makes it possible not only to implement improvements for clients, but also to embed them sustainably and focus on capability building. Lean and Six Sigma form the substantive basis for this, with DMAIC serving as a concrete and scalable guideline for improvement projects.

Author Kurt Maegherman, who has been working as a senior management consultant at Stanwick for over twenty years, also took the floor. After months of intensive writing, this launch represented not only a celebratory moment for him, but also an opportunity to look back on a rich career as a consultant and trainer. Drawing on his many years of experience, he highlighted several fundamental principles of process improvement. For instance, he argued that there is no such thing as a bad idea: only by testing an idea in practice does it become clear whether it works or not. He also emphasised the importance of critical reflection, both among employees and within the organisation.

Something that Paolo Capanna, Quality & Lean Six Sigma Manager at Agidens and a guest at the event, can also confirm: “The training made me realise how often organisations jump straight from problem to solution without data analysis or thorough root cause analysis. As a result, often only the symptoms are addressed, rather than the actual cause. Within Agidens, this led to the realisation that waste was sometimes simply organised in a faster, more modern and more appealing way, without actually solving the underlying problem. Lean Six Sigma offered me, for the first time, a structured approach to breaking that pattern, with a profound impact on both my professional development and my personal way of thinking.”

Finally, Arjan de la Rie, Director of Manufacturing & Technical Operations at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, also shared a particularly compelling real-world story. He outlined how the Leiden site managed to support the rapid and reliable global delivery of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the construction of a new site, there was a strong focus on standardised work, guided by the lean philosophy. This enabled each part of the production process to be entrusted to a separate team. This approach made it possible to reduce the production frequency from 21 to 5 days, whilst increasing production capacity to 22 million units per batch, with a workforce of approximately 250 employees. It was particularly noteworthy that some of these staff members had been temporarily unemployed due to the pandemic but were able to be retrained within a short period. An exceptional achievement, made possible by Arjan de la Rie — himself a Green Belt for twenty years — and Kurt Maegherman as one of the project leaders.

Following the main programme, all attendees received a copy of the book. Afterwards, there was an opportunity to chat during a networking reception. Additional copies could be purchased on the spot at a discounted rate. All proceeds went to the 1000 km for the Belgian cancer fund, an initiative in which Stanwick will soon be participating again.