NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
MANUFACTURING MANAGEMENT
Jim Platts
Fellows
2003
Personal Information
University of Cambridge, Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering
Visiting Smartlink Fellow: 26 July - 6 August 2003
Background
Dr Jim Platts spent 23 years in industry, was a partner in the consulting engineering practice Gifford and Partners, 1981-6, MD of Composite Technology Ltd 1986-9 and is now a lecturer in the Manufacturing Engineering Group at the University of Cambridge.
Research Interests
- The development of skill and competence in design and manufacturing
- Optimum performance component design in composites
- Advanced production processes for composites
- Advanced metal wing production processes
- Automating the gemstone industry
- Ethical leadership
His main interests are design and manufacturing, particularly skill-based manufacturing, and a concern for ethical leadership.
Topics for seminars and workshops
2003 visit:
See the Manufacturing and
Values page in the Smartlink library.
2001 visit: Meaningful manufacturing: Transformational Work
With current heightened global awareness of the moral and ethical responsibility business leaders carry, focused discussion on good corporate governance and good management in industry is important for industry leaders, worker representatives, community leaders and politicians and students of industrial engineering and management. Jim Platts has many years experience of this approach and so these seminars and workshops will be looking at the practicalities of implementation, not at empty rhetoric. The seminars are designed to prompt discussion and deep thought on these issues, and to provide a structure for further reflective thought and action. The extended time of a workshop allows for engagement with the realities of these issues as they appear in the participants' own places of work, through guided small group discussion, consultation and plenary feedback.
The aim of the Care and Growth model of transformational leadership is that whenever somebody leaves the company they are larger than they were when they joined it. The core of transformational leadership is the art of husbandry in which the process grows the people who do it, the product grows the people who receive it and the profit grows the community. This is a balance of professionalism (doing the right thing) and craftsmanship (doing things right) under a sustained umbrella of intent which is itself the measure of mature leadership.
Contact Details
email mjp@eng.cam.ac.uk