National Board & Management Team

Barry McCarthy

AME President

Explicador at Protyponous

Barry's career highlights include Plant Manager and Continuous Improvement Manager at Goodman Fielder and his most recent position with Toyota.  Barry has worked with the Manufacturing, Sales and Corporate Arms of Toyota in Australia.

With a grounded engineering background Barry has also implemented continuous improvement in food processing, manufacturing, packaging, printing, and front of house food service and management.

In addition to the practical experience Barry has completed a Master degree in Applied Positive Psychology, Graduate Diploma in Business, Diploma of Training and Assessment, Diploma in Competitive Systems and Practices. Interestingly Barry’s first degree was civil engineering.

Tim Odokeychuk

AME Vice President

Founder of TWO Consulting & LEAN dot Group, Director at EastWest Advisers

Tim is an experienced business excellence professional who cares deeply about challenging the status-quo in pursuit of business excellence and sustainable growth.

With extensive end-to-end experience using proven continuous improvement, innovation and organisational development methodologies, Tim is as proficient as he is passionate.

Spending his pre-entrepreneurial career with a global industry leader, Tim worked his way up from the shop floor to leading improvement projects in over 25 independent operations resulting in millions of dollars in savings and increased levels of quality, safety and customer satisfaction.

Tim holds a leading professional certification, ASQ Certified Manager of Quality / Organizational Excellence, demonstrating his knowledge, proven application and operational excellence leadership abilities to a global standard. 

Mitra Burns

AME National Secretary

Mitra was introduced to Lean in 2004 when she started at Kenworth Trucks. Since then, Mitra has expanded her expertise in Lean through building capabilities & PDCA thinking in a number of organisations.  Mitra's most recent role was National Lean Supervisor at Australian Red Cross Blood Service where she was responsible for development and deployment of the national strategy to embed Lean culture throughout the Blood Service.  

Andrew Brown

AME National Treasurer

Principal Consultant at Business Improvement People, Director at Focusivity, Teacher at RMIT Business

Andrew commenced his career in accounting before moving into more diverse roles like business planning, business strategy, capability development and training.  As a Toyota certified trainer in TBP he had the privilege to train many team members and management in Toyota Australia. The training focused on improving business processes, employee capability and organisational capability. 

Peter Ballas

VIC State President

Head of Business Excellence at Note Printing Australia

Peter has strong experience across Continuous Improvement and Operations management. As Head of Business Excellence for Note Printing Australia, he is focused on a clear, quantifiable vision to help align all areas of the business.  With many years of Operations leadership, Peter has a unique perspective through his choice to transition into Business Excellence.

Ross Kennedy

AME NSW State President

President & Founder of CTPM – The Centre for Australasian TPM & Lean

Ross founded CTPM in 1996 after more than 20 years of manufacturing and operational experience covering maintenance, production, operations and executive roles along with 5 years of international consulting experience. Ross has been actively involved with Lean since 1985 and the application of TPM since 1990. In 1998 he developed and launched CTPM’s Australasian TPM Methodology. In 2007 he developed and launched CTPM's Australasian TPM & Lean Methodology. He is recognised as Australasia’s leading authority on TPM and Lean.

Ross has assisted sites throughout Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and China to strive for and achieve Operational Excellence.  His sector experience includes Manufacturing, Mining, Process Industries, Utilities and Services.

In August 2017, Ross published his first book "Understanding, Measuring and Improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness: How to Use OEE to Drive Significant Process Improvement".

Simon Flack

AME QLD State President

Business Improvement Manager at Darwalla Group

Simon’s interest in continuous improvement was sparked during his 21 year career with the RAAF. He completed his Master of Business Administration whilst he was part of the Air Force Improvement Team, before joining Rio Tinto as the Lean Improvement Specialist in the coal division. He consulted to Chevron and Conoco Phillips whilst being part of the Canadian based RLG International, before joining Darwalla as the Business Improvement Manager in 2017.

Laura Robertson 

AME National Manager

Laura has more than 20 years experience in business and event management with expertise in office management, event management, membership, marketing and account management. Her experience has covered a broad range of industries including sports, healthcare, education, not for profit and hospitality.  As the National Manager Laura plays a critical role in managing the day-to-day running of AME.