Ian Nicholls

CEO explic8

Ian graduated from University College, London, with an honours degree in Biochemistry and spent the early years of his career in senior management positions in the food industry with companies such as RHM, Mars, a Danish meat company where he was Operations Director and ABF as a CEO, delivering year-on-year profitable growth through sales development and operational performance improvement before moving into consultancy. Ian has also worked as Group Operations Director for a pan-European group of 12 companies where he turned the largest label printing site in Europe into a profit after three years of losses and for a Legal, Educational and Confidential printing, publishing, multi-media and fulfilment group of companies where he delivered record profits for three consecutive years. He is a manufacturing professional practiced in modern manufacturing principles (such as Lean Manufacturing and Six-Sigma tools and techniques) and has created innovative improvement cultures where employees are engaged, change is embedded and significant business outcomes (such as eliminating waste, achieving right first time quality, driving up customer service and improving plant efficiency) are delivered. Ian is also an internationally published, best-selling author and lecturer, having written numerous newspaper and magazine articles, white papers and four books, three of which are about Quality Management Systems. Ian's other book is a Supervisory Management Training Manual which has been translated into 9 languages and is on sale in 13 countries.