User:KeithLaunchbury

Keith John Launchbury (February 29, 1952) is a business scientist.

He was President and Chairman of the Board of APICS in 1991, and was Chair of the Curricula and Certification Council from 1995 – 1998. He was the main proponent of the CIRM curriculum for APICS, and served as the project manager for the development and implementation of the program.

He is a widely known and recognized speaker and educator in the field of business operations and supply chain management. He is Certified in Production and Inventory Management at the Fellow level (CFPIM), in Integrated Resource Management (CIRM), and is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP). He established his company, Keith Launchbury and Associates in October 1983. He is the author of two books, “Getting Better: My Journey Through Transverse Myelitis, and Lessons for Health Care Professionals, Patients and Families” and “Business Intelligence: Lessons I learned from the Oxymorons at work!”

Contents

• 1. Education

• 2. Personal Life

• 3. Work

o 3.1 Pirelli General, Northern Telecom and AES Data o 3.2 Keith Launchbury & Associates o 3.3 End 68 Hours of Hunger

• 4 Bibliography

o 4.1 Books

o 4.2 Media Publications

Education

Born in Oxford England on February 29, 1952, the second son of John Charles and Beryl Joan Launchbury, he lived in Oxford until the age of 11. His father John was a confectioner and tobacconist who had a shop on the High Street of Oxford. At the age of 11 Keith obtained a scholarship to Magdalen College School, but shortly after he started his studies, his father moved the family to Brockenhurst in the New Forest to take over a business on Brookley Road. Keith transferred to Brockenhurst Grammar School, which transitioned into a sixth form college during Keith’s time there.

After completing his A levels Keith went on the study Applied Physics at Brunel University in London, and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Technology degree. During his course, he completed three six month industrial training projects, with the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE) at Christchurch, Dorset, the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) at Portland, Dorset and British Oxygen in Crawley, Sussex. After completion of his degree, he spent two months at the Goethe Institute in Passau, Bavaria, studying German, and obtaining a Certificate in fluency in the German language. After completing this course he returned to the UK and enrolled in an 18 month graduate training program with Pirelli General in Southampton, Hampshire. As part of this program, he completed a five week course in Industrial Engineering from the Cranfield School of Management. Later he would go on to become Certified in three different business programs by APICS, He holds a CFPIM (Certification in Production and Inventory Management at the Fellow level), A CIRM (Certification in Integrated Resource Management) and he is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP)

Personal Life

Growing up as the son of a small business owner, Keith was introduced to the elements of business at a very early age. When he was 4 years old, his father took him to see a manufacturing operation producing sweets and candies. When Keith was 7 years old, he was encouraged to help in his father’s shop, where Keith developed not only his taste for chocolate but also for business. At the age of 15, Keith wanted to go with his school friends on a Mediterranean cruise, his parents explained that they had four children and that they could not pay the fee. Keith decided he would work to earn the money required, with the money he earned working three jobs, delivering daily newspapers, working in his father’s shop and caddying at the golf course, he saved enough money to pay for the trip, so his parents gave him some spending money to take with him. This trip stimulated his taste to see the world, which would also become another one of his lifelong passions.

At the age of 22 he married Lynn York, and together they had two children, Richard and Sarah. When Richard was three months old, Keith moved his family to Montreal, Canada, where he had accepted a position with Northern Telecom where he worked for two years before joining AES Data. He got a promotion, his own office and a chance to recruit his own team of programmers and system analysts. In 1983 Keith’s marriage to Lynn ended.

By the summer of 1983, AES was in survival mode, and during the budget discussions, it became obvious that the company did not have much of a future. In September, the entire department was eliminated, so Keith and his team looked for new opportunities. In October 1983, Keith went to the APICS conference in New Orleans, and it was there that he met Ken Holness, who offered him a job as an independent consultant to help support and educate people in those companies who had recently purchased the Data 3 manufacturing resource planning system. Keith established his own Business, Keith Launchbury and Associates at this time. The first six months required that Keith live in Mississauga, Ontario and support Ken’s clients in Ontario, which Keith did for six months, before moving back to Montreal to establish his own territory and sell and support the Data 3 software in Eastern Canada.

During this time, Keith had become more and more involved with APICS, a professional society for planners and managers in business. He had been elected to the position of Regional Vice President for the whole of Canada, so he spent quite a few weekends at meetings. Keith rose through the ranks in APICS, holding numerous volunteer roles until in 1991 he was elected as International President of the 72,000 member society.

In 1990, during a new member reception at the International Conference in New Orleans, Keith was speaking to the 500 new members whose attendance at Conference entitled them to one year's free membership, and he met Claire Bloom, a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy, who became his wife in 1992 at an APICS Executive Committee meeting in Grand Cayman.

Keith and Claire have been happily married for over 20 years and have lived in several parts of the US, before settling in New Hampshire to be close to the majority of their family of 4 children and their families including 8 grandchildren.

In July 2010, Keith was struck with a rare spinal cord disorder called Transverse Myelitis. It happened as he was traveling with his wife to teach classes in California. Keith lost the use of his legs due to the paralysis caused by the demylenization of his spinal cord. Keith spent 42 days in three different hospitals in San Francisco. Claire was with him every step of the way, and she helped enormously as he underwent a rigorous process of steroids, plasma-pheresis and rehab. His positive attitude helped in his recovery, and the complete story is documented in their book, “Getting Better”,(ISBN reference) which is designed to help others afflicted with the same condition to realize that recovery is possible, given the right treatment. Since he has made such a remarkable recovery, both he and Claire have presented sessions at medical meetings and conferences to describe their experience.

Work

Pirelli General, Northern Telecom, and AES Data

Keith learned the value of work and business at an early age. While attending school, he worked in various jobs to earn money, which he spent on travel with his school friends. He delivered newspapers, worked in his father's shop, caddied at the golf course and did gardening work, washed dishes and waited tables at a local hotel. After completing University, he worked as an industrial engineer at Pirelli General in their Telecommunications Cable Division, in Bishopstoke, Hampshire, before emigrating to Montreal, Canada to work for Northern Telecom, as a Logistics Engineer at the Cable Division in Lachine, Quebec. One of his first jobs, was to complete the Material and Labor Appropriation process, which was a manual version of material requirements planning, a process of detailed calculations that culminated in a document which could be used to order the material and people required to complete the planned production for the next few months. The process took days to complete, and when finished the managers would inevitably change the sales forecast and ask Keith to redo all the calculations. Keith decided this was a ridiculous waste of his time, and looked for alternatives. At his time, he joined the local chapter of APICS, discovered there was a software program that could do his work for him, told his company, sold them on the idea, and then implanted the system successfully. After completion of this challenge, he took an opportunity to join a small but rapidly growing company building word processors. He joined the company when they had 50 employees, and saw the company grow to 2000 in three years. He rose through the ranks in the business systems area, until he became Manufacturing Systems Manager for the whole company He recruited and trained a group of system analysts and programmers to design and develop system applications, and implement the systems in all of the global business operations. Keith developed and implemented user training and training programs to support the manufacturing planning and control applications. In 1983, the company started a rapid decline due to increasing competition from the manufacturers of personal computers, so in October, Keith started his own business.

Keith Launchbury and Associates

Keith Launchbury and Associates was founded in 1983 as a business consulting and educational company set up to help companies define, select and implement Manufacturing Resource Planning systems. Keith formed alliances with three different organizations, Data 3 systems, IBM and Touche Ross. As his reputation grew so did his business, he had many successful installations to his credit, and he took on associates to help him, notably, Jean-Daniel Cusin, Marc Beaudoin, Janet Leroux and Bill Barnard.

In 1991 his involvement with APICS as President required Keith to speak at 110 meetings, conferences and seminars all over the world. His knack for using humorous business anecdotes and stories to illustrate powerful learning concepts, became his hallmark, and in 1992 Keith moved his business from Canada to the US to support his growing list of clients.

Keith’s business grew as he combined his passion for teaching with his passion for travel. In 1992 his new wife Claire was stationed in Seoul, South Korea for one year, and while she was there she met Mr. Sung In Lee and Mr. Keun Chan Moon, who were interested in starting their own APICS organization. Keith traveled to Seoul, met with them and chartered the new KPICS affiliate. He spoke at their first meeting, and then started teaching the first education classes for the LG corporation at their own University in Inhawon.

Keith also taught the first wave of CPIM classes in Bangkok, Thailand and conducted Instructor training courses for the first CPIM instructors in Thailand. He designed the world’s first dynamic Sales and Operations Planning system for Futurion.

Keith Launchbury & Associates has provided consulting, education and training courses to hundreds of companies and thousands of students worldwide.

End 68 Hours of Hunger

When Claire became aware that there was a problem with schoolchildren in the local area not having sufficient food on the weekends, she started a program to remedy the situation. The solution was to raise funds from local people to buy food and give the children backpacks or bags of food every Friday. Keith helped her establish and name the program End 68 Hours of Hunger. The program started feeding 19 children in three schools in one town in 2011 and has since grown to feed hundreds of students in many school districts across New Hampshire and Maine. Keith is an active member of the Board of Directors, and he continues to spread the word so that more hungry children can be fed. The goal of the program is to end childhood hunger in America one school at a time.

Bibliography

Books

• “Getting Better: My Journey Through Transverse Myelitis, and Lessons Learned For Patients, Families and Health Care Professionals”

• “Business Intelligence: Lessons I Learned From The Oxymorons At Work”

Other media publications

• Keith J Launchbury and Jean Daniel Cusin, The World Class Manufacturing Checklist • Keith J Launchbury and Carol A Ptak; Enterprise Resource Management 1. Keith J. Launchbury: Interview published in "Wall Street Journal" Retrieved on: October 24, 1991.

• Biography of Keith J. Launchbury • Profile on Linked In