Carolyn Lum

Vice President, Operational Excellence Philip Morris International

Carolyn Lum is currently Vice President of Operational Excellence at Philip Morris International in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has more than 35 years of experience in the areas of Manufacturing Operations, Lean, Continuous Improvement, Product Engineering and New Product Introduction. At her last position as Senior Vice President, Business Transformation and Head of Continuous Improvement at Philips, Carolyn made a breakthrough in 2015 by bringing daily management, structured problem solving (PRIDE) and Kaizens into all parts of the company. She was one of the key drivers in bringing a structured approach to reverse a negative trend in order-in-take (OIT) and turn it into a positive one. Carolyn was one of six winners of the Philips CEO Awards in 2018, recognized for her and her team’s contributions to Operational Excellence company-wide. Previously Carolyn worked at Danaher Corporation as a Site Lead and more recently as the Senior Corporate Director – Danaher Business System. In this role, she managed a group tasked with supporting Danaher companies in North America, Europe and Japan with the implementation of the Danaher Business System and was also Director of the DBS University in Europe. Prior to that, Carolyn worked at PerkinElmer Optoelectronics as the NPI Program Manager and also as a Site Leader for their Lighting Production Facility in Fremont, California. She started her career at General Motors as a Product and Manufacturing Engineer, Operations Manager and Lean Implementation Change Agent.