Yves Merel has successfully introduced and implemented Lean practices in three manufacturing companies with diverse activities: Wagon Automotive, FCI, and Constellium. At each company, he adapted the Lean methodology and tools to their specific priorities. In Wagon Automotive, he utilized the "hoshin" methodology and achieved excellent results in labor productivity and reducing stocks. At FCI, he focused on improving quality to meet customer expectations. With broader responsibilities at Constellium, he worked closely with his team to manage safety and achieved three years with no fatal accidents. Overall, Yves has proven himself a qualified leader of Lean programs, creating networks of specialists to drive practical measures and motivate improvements across management levels.

1. Freddy Ballé / Lean Senior Advisor
I first met Yves Merel when I was advising Pierre Vareille who was the CEO of Wagon
Automotive and Yves was the Group Lean Manufacturing Director. We worked together, as
we did later in FCI and Constellium, and I had the opportunity to appreciate his qualities to
undertake the challenges of introducing and implementing Lean in industrial environments
often impervious to a Lean turnaround.
Those three manufacturing companies have very diverse activities ranging from heavy
metallurgy for automobile business to electronics and finally to aluminum metallurgy and Yves
succeed in adapting to those very different worlds. He knew how to utilize the Lean
methodology and its practical tools corresponding to the specific priorities of each company
and, at the same time, deepened his knowledge and understanding of the Lean philosophy
which is not always easy to grasp.
With Wagon Automotive, he used extensively the « hoshin » methodology and obtain excellent
results in labor productivity and in reduction of stocks and work in progress.
In FCI, the top priority was quality product which was not at the level of expectations of
customers in electronics.Yves was a leader in correcting the situation in an environment which
had a lot of difficulties to understand the dimensions and the weight of quality in the judgment
of customers. This experience was for him the occasion to see the overall impact of a Lean
approach in engineering and development to avoid quality product deficiencies, often wrongly
attributed to production, in lines with manual operations or automatized ones. Those
improvements contributed to the image of FCI further than the strict product quality.
With wider responsibilities in Constellium, Yves spend nevertheless all the energy necessary
to work in detail with his team and the employees on the management of safety in plants which
had three deadly accidents in two years and none during the two following years.
Furthermore, in a moregeneral way, Yves accomplishmenthas been to link a systematic follow
up of Lean indicators to a very efficient presence on the field. He was able in each of his
assignments to create and train a network of Lean specialists and to lead them towards
practical measures adapted to the problems encountered, without abstract speculations and
relying on the induced motivation on the different management levels.
Finally, I consider Yves being a well-qualified leader of a Lean program at the top level of a
company and able to help it to reach exceptional results in terms of safety, quality, supply
chain, productivity and engineering.