Frederick Portal, MBA, Adjunct Professor

Frederick Portal, Adjunct Professor of Operations Management since 2006, studied Engineering Production & Economics at Birmingham University graduating with double honours, then studied Manufacturing Management at IMD Switzerland and an MBA from the Open Business School in the United Kingdom. Frederick is a Chartered Engineer, a Lean Sensei and a Six Sigma Black Belt.

Initially working near London he first experienced the power of lean as the driving force in a turnaround to transform an ailing manufacturing business into a profitable concern ever since the global leader. Next he moved to Switzerland in Operations Management for Ralston Energy Systems (Energizer Batteries), then as Chef de Fabrication (Operations Director) at SAPAL, the world’s leading confectionary equipment company also in Switzerland before moving to Delphi Luxembourg, where his career span from Strategic Planning, Manufacturing Engineering, Production Management and finally to  the deployment of lean sigma across European and South American operations and  Technical Centers for Delphi, pioneering  lean deployment  in transactional processes such as Product Development, Procurement, Customer Service or Financial Reporting. He now works as an Operations Consultant to businesses where his 3 decades experience applying lean principles helps them towards Business Excellence in quality, delivery, cost and speed to market.

This same passion for lean is the central theme of Frederick’s teaching and students are challenged and accompanied on a journey to learn to apply lean sigma and other improvement methodologies to their own business situations to achieve radical improvements.