About Us - Professional Experience
Steve Murphy - Managing Director
Steve’s passion for manufacturing started early when, at the age of 15, he did some work experience at the GEC factory at Trafford Park, now sadly the Trafford Shopping Centre. In it’s heyday the cathedral of British manufacturing employed 54,000 people and it inspired Steve to devote his career to manufacturing and a deep seated desire to drive improvement and excellence in to British producers.
He graduated in the mid 1980’s with Frist Class degrees in Engineering and Business Studies and started his working life in the automotive industry at a fascinating time of change; coming to grips with the twin challenges of ‘new’ manufacturing systems such as Kanban and Just In Time along with the opportunities presented by new technologies such as robotics and advance CNC. Steve’s Engineering specialism had been in the technologies of Flexible Manufacturing Systems and Distributed Numerical Control, but in the real world he soon became fascinated by JIT and what we now call Lean Manufacturing.
By the end of the 1980’s he’d already made a number of life changing trips to Japan and decided to move into consultancy as a way of broadening his industrial experience and to convert the lessons of what at that stage were still essentially automotive industry techniques in to something of use in other sectors such as the process industries and specialist manufacturing for aerospace and defence.
As head of Coopers & Lybrand's Operations Improvement team and the firm's leading Business Process Re-engineering practitioner in the Industrial sector Steve delivered Manufacturing Excellence programs for a wide range of businesses and wider Corporate Transformation programs for Blue Chip Industrial clients around the world.
By 2000 the time had come to move back in to industry and begin the second phase of his career – delivering transformation while at the helm. Balancing the day to day pressures of serving customers and managing the P&L with the need to drive radical change programs, open new markets, introduce new products and services and where necessary coordinate large scale downsizing and footprint rationalisation. Steve’s now completed this cycle for many businesses, both within a FTSE100 corporate environment and with smaller Private Equity backed businesses.
Most recently he formed Northlight Associates to provide a platform for like-minded professionals with a complementary range of skills and experience, to provide pragmatic results oriented services to industrial clients. As the network builds we’re delivering change programs that range from corporate strategy and financing, through commercial revitalisation to operational excellence.
As head of Coopers & Lybrand's Operations Improvement team and the firm's leading Business Process Re-engineering practitioner in the Industrial sector Steve delivered Manufacturing Excellence programs for a wide range of businesses and wider Corporate Transformation programs for Blue Chip Industrial clients around the world.
By 2000 the time had come to move back in to industry and begin the second phase of his career – delivering transformation while at the helm. Balancing the day to day pressures of serving customers and managing the P&L with the need to drive radical change programs, open new markets, introduce new products and services and where necessary coordinate large scale downsizing and footprint rationalisation. Steve’s now completed this cycle for many businesses, both within a FTSE100 corporate environment and with smaller Private Equity backed businesses.
Most recently he formed Northlight Associates to provide a platform for like-minded professionals with a complementary range of skills and experience, to provide pragmatic results oriented services to industrial clients. As the network builds we’re delivering change programs that range from corporate strategy and financing, through commercial revitalisation to operational excellence.
Tel: +44(0)7795 040509
Fax: +44(0)1440 786885
email: steve.murphy@northlightassociates.com
Skype: stevemurphy.northlight
Fax: +44(0)1440 786885
email: steve.murphy@northlightassociates.com
Skype: stevemurphy.northlight
