Diane Gilbert Email & Phone Number

As Founder and President, Diane provides ongoing consultation, facilitation, and training for client's who are implementing continuous improvement methodologies throughout their organization. Provides direct facilitation of continuous improvement events to enhance successful outcomes. Trains, coaches, and mentors facilitators to transfer capability. Provides periodic advice to client management regarding continuous improvement implementation, management behaviors in dealing with change, and the periodic assessment of organizational learning opportunities.

As Co-Founder and Principal, Diane co-developed MBSS Solutions’ whole-person approach and interactive Lean Six Sigma curriculum. She provides on-going consultation and Kaizen facilitation for clients. She has been responsible for facilitating the evaluation of the clinical process for equivalency testing of generic drugs, customer transaction process and the process for capture of leads from trade shows. She led the development of value stream maps and identified action plans to eliminate non-value added activities and improve the cycle time for these processes.We have mentored, coached and trained over 1,500 Black Belts, Green Belts, Lean practitioners, project sponsors and leaders at all levels of organizations using various Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies. They have collaborated with organizations to reduce waste and save over $40 million while improving service to customers, patients and taxpayers. These organizations have matured their Continuous Process Improvement implementations with our support. As a result, many have built within their organizations the capability to perpetuate continuous improvement methodologies and generate significant savings without the need for full-time consulting assistance.

Green Belt training, project coaching

Engagement Director at a water utility responsible for delivering an organizational assessment, training of organizational leadership and Kaizen leaders in Lean tools and methodology for identifying/selecting key areas of opportunity. Director of George Group Academy - Responsible for capability development of new employees in the methodology of Lean Six Sigma and consulting skills used by George Group.Director of the Army Lean Six Sigma School House. Responsible for 26 FTE's delivering Master Black Belt, Black Belt and Green Belt training to Army personnel around the world. Developed and maintained a trusted advisor relationship with the Army Program Management Office for the Army LSS Deployment.

Diane was one of Breakthrough Management Group’s Master Instructors responsible for maintaining and developing DMAIC curriculum. At BMG, Diane taught and mentored in Six Sigma and Lean with a variety of clients to solve complex transactional problems. Her experiences were in a number of service-based companies, such as property & casualty insurance, health care organizations, health care plan providers, securities and consulting. Healthcare: Diane has led several Kaizen events and coached six sigma projects within the hospital environment. Accomplishments include reduction of wait time from admission decision to in hospital bed by 60 minutes, reduction in defect rate of blood labs due by 7:00 a.m. by 30% and reduction of occurrences in the operating room of surgery delays due to improper equipment by 20%. Insurance: Diane mentored projects achieving significant results within the Healthcare and Property & Casualty insurance environments. Accomplishments include reduction of cycle time for settlement of disputed claims to improve the percentage of disputes settled within 45 days from 58% to 91%, improved the claims front end scanning process cycle time from 11 days to 3 days and improved the arbitration win rate from 46% to 81%.

Diane was a Master Black Belt at Caterpillar, Inc., where she led the Product and Service Support Division's Six Sigma program to achieve over $18 million in annualized benefits over two years. Her role was to both instruct and mentor Black Belts and work with senior level management to transform the corporate culture and embed Six Sigma philosophy. She trained students in multiple levels of the Six Sigma methodology. Students were from multiple disciplines, such as Manufacturing, Engineering, Human Resources, Logistics, Product Support, Marketing, Information Technology and Purchasing. At Caterpillar, Diane’s project achievements focused on transactional process improvements including: improved pricing techniques to establish the price/value relationship of service parts; implementing a comprehensive project prioritizing process; improved utilization of graphic technology for producing service manuals and product support literature; development of a marketing strategy to regain lost business in large truck rims; development of a process to integrate data from acquired companies into a corporate data base; a rationalization process for establishing a cohesive organizational structure; and development of a Sales and Operations Planning process for a service parts business.

Diane managed the Caterpillar Service Technology Group's Availability and Inventory Management cell. The cell consisted of eight employees with five to thirty years of experience. During Diane's tenure as manager of this cell, they achieved an improved on-time delivery of customer orders from eighty-nine to ninety-three percent, integrated a workload reporting process resulting in a backorder reduction of forty-two percent and a new product availability process control system which reduced defects to customers by ninety-two percent. Diane was instrumental in developing three management employees to achieve promotional job changes.

As a research analyst, Diane led the development of the forecasting and stock control module for service parts distribution replacing a thirty-year-old computer system. Diane led the development of a redeployment process which resulted in a $10 million inventory reduction and a one half percent increase in order fill rates. Diane researched and defined policies related to identification and disposition of surplus inventories resulting in a scrap reduction of $4 million annually.

Materials Planner for Connector Castings, a brass and aluminum manufacturer producing castings and assemblies for the electrical industry. One of Diane’s first experiences with Lean Manufacturing at Connector Castings was reducing inventory by 40% using lean techniques such as pull and flow. Diane initiated and maintained a Wide Area Network (WAN) for running manufacturing, accounting, and Customer Order Tracking Systems that is still used today.

Ms, Engineering Management

Bs, Engineering Management

Activities and Societies: Rollamo - Editor-in-Chief of college yearbook, Alpha Chi Sigma