Lean Six Sigma Certificate:
Instructors

Kannan Ramanathan

Kannan Ramanathan has an MA in Economics and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Pune in India. After working for 12 years as a consultant for various airlines, he returned to school and obtained a PhD in Business Strategy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a certified Black Belt and has extensive experience in Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, and Risk Management with various businesses of General Electric as Black Belt and Master Black Belt.

Kent C. Newton, P.E.

Kent has 34 plus years of manufacturing snd operations support experience with Texas Instruments and MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. He became involved with the Theory of Constraints in 1992 as a Practitioner, working with the Silicon Materials Department, inside Texas Instruments.Results greater than 50% inventory reduction, 75% lot cycle improvement and 25% more throughput from existing resources earned the JONAH Excellence award from Texas Instruments. Similar results were obtained in operations of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc.after a joint venture with TI and MEMC transferred TOC knowledge to MEMC. Kent has taught TOC concepts and TOC Thinking process tools in Italy, Malaysia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan as well as in US operations. Recent focus has been on Drum-Buffer-Rope Scheduling and Critical Chain Project Planning in US operations. He has written several articles and papers and has presented his TOC success story to the APICS Constraint Management SIG. Kent holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida. He is a certified Jonah through Baylor Univeristy and the Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute and certified by TOC-ICO (International Certification Organization). Kent retired as the World-Wide Theory of Constraints Manager from MEMC in Jan 2002 and established Newtown Associates, continuing to promote Constraint Management Methods through Workshops and contract assignments.

Divakar Rajamani

Dr. Divakar Rajamani is a Professor and Managing Director of the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks at University of Texas at Dallas. Divakar has had a ten-year career in industry at such companies as i2 Technologies and General Motors, where he worked in a consulting capacity. His areas of expertise include Lean Manufacturing, Product Lifecycle Management, Factory Planning and Transition Planning. He also served on the faculty of the University of Manitoba from 1990-1996. He has published in the operations research field and co-authored a book on, Cellular Manufacturing Systems: Design, Planning and Control, which was published in 1996.