Mike is Executive Director for the Center for Quality People & Organizations (CQPO). Mike Hoseus brings both manufacturing operations and specialization in Human Resource experience to CQPO. CQPO is an organization developed in 1999 as a vision of Toyota Motor Manufacturing to share Lean Quality philosophy and human resource practices with education, business, and community organizations. CQPO current projects with Toyota include New Hire selection and training process, Team Leader and Group Leader post promotion training, Quality Circle Leader and Manager training, and Global Problem Solving for all levels. Mike is an adjunct professor with the University of Kentucky’s Lean Manufacturing Program. Mike is co author with Dr. Jeffery Liker (Author of the Toyota Way) of Toyota Culture. Mike is an adjunct professor with the University of Kentucky’s Center for Manufacturing and a member of the faculty of Lean Enterprise Institute. Mike is also president of Lean Culture Enterprises. Prior to CQPO, Mike was a corporate leader for 13 years at Toyota Motor Manufacturing’s Georgetown, Kentucky, plant both in Human Resources and Manufacturing. As Assistant General Manager in Human Resources, his responsibilities included personnel, safety, HR development, employee relations, benefits, training, and manufacturing/human resource teams for a plant of 8000 team members. His major initiative was development of the enhanced relationship between Human Resource and Manufacturing Mike’s operational responsibilities in manufacturing started in 1987 as a front line supervisor in vehicle assembly. This included all aspects of safety, quality, productivity, cost and morale for operations. With experience as Assembly Plant Manager and eventually Assistant General Manager, his responsibilities increased to include both assembly plants including operations, maintenance, and engineering. He is a Certified Trainer in Global Problem Solving & Waste Reduction, Standardized Work and Kaizen Events.

Based on his broad experience, Gustavo is expert applying a suitable approach for Continuous Improvement needed on the different organizations from a Business results optic, becoming an effective Coach for Top Management and support for The Toyota Way roles.

Gustavo has learned The Toyota Way directly from its Author, Dr. Jeff Liker, and has applied it on Gemba as a Team with many Executives from Toyota specialized on General Management, TPM, Lean Mfg Tools, and Supply Chain. Gustavo has taught the Toyota Production System at all organizational levels and has applied over 50 companies of different sizes: Lean Leadership Systems (Hoshin Kanri, FMDS, and 8-Step Problem Solving), Toyota Kata for development, Supply Chain Management, TPM, Lean Manufacturing tools (5S’s, SW, SMED, Jidoka, Poka Yoke, Heijunka, JIT, etc.), and Lean Office approach. On Six Sigma, Gustavo as Master Black Belt has trained and certified +500 Black Belts, Green Belts, and Yellow Belts.

Gustavo has +20 years of experience on Continuous Improvement, Manufacturing, Process Engineering and Quality in large companies: Motor Wheel (Automotive), Kodak, Philips, Daltile, American Standard. He has +12 years of experience as Vice/President Staff as Continuous Improvement Director for American Standard México and Master Black Belt Champion for Daltile México. He has deployed programs that have achieved +$110 Million USD in savings with +3,000 projects on all departments: R&D, Engineering, Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality, Logistics, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Energy. Over his 22 years experience, Gustavo has been exposed to many different organizations applying suitable Lean approaches on a variety of systems with diversity on leadership styles.