Dr. Patrick McLaughlin
Course Director for the Operations Excellence in Manufacturing, Cranfield
Dr Patrick McLaughlin is a Chartered Engineer and Eur Ing. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the Higher Education Academy. He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Production Management and a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA), both from Cranfield. In a career that spans manufacturing engineer, manager and director, he has worked in both multinational and SME businesses. Experience with a range of manufacturing processes and working for a number of different companies allied to experience in several industries has provided a strong background in managing manufacturing operations, including managing growth, downturn, restructuring and relocation of manufacturing facilities.
He has worked in manufacturing industry at director level for over 20 years, and been responsible for several plant-wide lean manufacturing implementations. He has experience of implementing and managing lean manufacturing in automotive, capital goods, industrial equipment and consumer durables. This experience includes responsibility for integrating the design and development of new products into a lean operations environment, and developing a continuous improvement culture to facilitate performance gains in a lean implementation. Recently he led a research based organisational change in a design and manufacturing business to develop an innovation culture that facilitated discontinuous new product innovation.
At Cranfield University he is Course Director for the Operations Excellence MSc programme, and leads the National Manufacturing Debate and National Apprenticeship Competition. He teaches in the areas of Manufacturing Strategy Development and Deployment, Innovation Management, and Operations Excellence. His research interests include the application of cellular manufacturing techniques to maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations to drive productivity improvements; the impact of organizational culture on employee engagement and behaviour in operations environments; and the development and management of innovation within a manufacturing environment.