Chris Honda is a Senior Advisor for FTE Performance Consulting with over 39 years of combined experience across Operations Management, Lean Manufacturing Implementation, Quality Assurance and Business System improvement. Chris has demonstrated ability to drive effective business performance management and improvement across a variety of industries and organizational environments. Throughout his career Chris has been a champion of lean methodologies and process improvement to drive business results.

Notable experience and accomplishments:

• Drove quality and throughput improvements for a supplier of automotive powder metal components.  Chris worked to execute process improvement activities, resulting in 50% reduction in powder press changeover time and improved delivery performance.
• Directed lean implementation effort across several government divisions within the State of Illinois to streamline business processes through the deployment of lean tools and processes. Accomplishments included the elimination of $11M in project cost overruns and the implementation of project launch gates to ensure 100% readiness.
• Supported and directed the development and deployment of the global Production System for a leading heavy equipment manufacturer through development of enterprise systems, methods and tools, the use of global deployment support teams and the management tracking processes for business metric and systems deployment.  In total, Chris supported deployment in over 50 manufacturing locations globally.
• As General Assembly Shop Director for GM Europe, Chris led process improvement and lean deployment across 10 plants to consistently achieve quality and delivery goals and reduce hours per vehicle by 10%.
• Directed and supported launch planning and execution for lean greenfield General Assembly plants in Eisenach, Germany and Gliwice, Poland.  Chris continued support post launch as Operations Manager achieving world class performance in safety, velocity, and cost.

Prior to joining FTE’s Global Advisory Network, Chris consulted for an automotive supplier working to improve manufacturing performance and various government agencies working to improve business processes.  Over  his extensive career, he has held multiple global leadership positions at leading OEMs in the heavy equipment and high volume automotive industries. Other notable experience includes global lean production system deployment, launch manager, lean advisor for two global lean greenfield launches, and several operations management roles.

Chris has a degree in Engineering and has both taken and delivered extensive training in TPS and 6 Sigma.