Jim Lenhardt

lenhardt@whitehallgroupllc.com

Jim Lenhardt has over 38 years of manufacturing experience in a multitude of assignments. His expertise includes roles as Vice President of Operations for an electronics company, Lean Implementation Manager, Supplier Development Manager and Manager of Plant Materials Management and most recently a focus on helping companies create robust Quality Systems.

Jim’s greatest skills are in Lean Manufacturing, problem solving and analyzing and assessing Quality Systems in manufacturing plants. In regard to Lean, Jim was responsible for delivering lean training for Delphi which included a concentrated focus on Value Stream Mapping. Throughout Jim’s career, the application of lean principles have produced double digit improvements in cost reductions and quality improvements in locations around the world.

Jim is also an expert in Toyota’s Problem Solving process commonly described as the 3 Legged 5 Why approach. This method is one of the differentiators that makes Toyota such a successful company. In the approach, the problem is analyzed from three perspectives, (1) How was a bad part made? (2) How did the bad part escape the inspection process and get to a customer and (3) How is the system of management weak such that an operator was placed in a position to fail? This “3 leg” review process enables a company to fix the problem and increase profitability, better protect their customers to increase customer satisfaction and strengthen their approach to copy the benefits companywide thereby leveraging the gains.

In the last four years, Jim has conducted over 50 Supplier plant Quality Systems assessments to ascertain their effectiveness and if required, assisted in implementing system improvements. His support in this process has included training and workshops that allow companies to change their Quality approach with a bias for system sustainability and reliability of their basic Quality Systems.


The Whitehall Group team brings the right mix of experience, expertise, and client-side perspective to each and every assignment.