meet the team

Richard Shipperbottom

Richard is one of the founders of Applied Acumen Limited. After stints at both GEC and GKN, Richard spent his early career with Honda Manufacturing, where as part of the specialist supply chain development team he contributed to the creation of what remains the true benchmark lean enterprise global supply chain. His enthusiasm for teamwork and technology led him to establish and run the Works Racing Team with 2 colleagues, and shortly thereafter he was invited to join Honda’s Euro Motor Sport Committee coordinating Honda racing activities across Europe.

Since 1995 Richard’s consulting career has seen him working with world class management teams across the globe, covering mines in India, unionised plants in the US, factory relocations across Europe, and developing cutting edge retail supply chains in the UK. Whilst Head of UK Operations, IMR became Europe’s leading change management consultancy before being sold to MCG. Richard went on to establish Applied Acumen with his IMR colleague Keith Armstrong as an antidote to the multitude of discredited and poor value consultancy offerings on the market.

Whilst Richard has continued to deliver outstanding profit improvement programmes, organisation training and turnarounds for a select group of clients, he has also taken a keen interest in sustainable development, corporate responsibility and good governance, and has developed several models for practical use by clients. He is a Member of both the European Corporate Governance Institute, and the World Council for Corporate Governance, and is a Fellow of the RSA.

Keith Armstrong

Keith is one of the founders of Applied Acumen Limited. He started his early career at Bass plc before working for the Mars Group, consolidating his grounding in world class manufacturing and processing prior to joining the first of many subsequent turnaround teams.

A spell in the automotive industry supplying the likes of Toyota and Honda led to Keith joining Acumen co-founder Richard Shipperbottom at Paris based change management consultancy IMR. It was there that he formed a Centre of Excellence for Manufacturing, advising companies across Europe in WCM techniques.

Keith has since completed an MBA at Warwick, consolidating his strategic as well as financial credentials to bolster his considerable expertise in behavioural change and cultural transformation developed at IMR. This potent combination of skills has enabled our clients to quantitatively link people performance directly to the bottom line, and identify which buttons to press when implementing rapid change to ensure changes are sustained, and people are motivated to perform at a world class level.

As an indication of how powerful this approach can be, in 2007 Keith picked up an XpertHR Innovation Award for our work with Park Lane College in Leeds – an award historically the domain of FTSE 100 companies, and unheard of in the education sector. He is a keen supporter of local enterprise and education, and provides pro bono advice and support to local schools and a number of start-up businesses in the region as part of our wider corporate social responsibility programme. Keith is a non-executive Director of Artsmix, and a Fellow of the RSA.

Steve Beacroft

Steve has been consulting for over 15 years and has worked across the globe in some of the most challenging situations. An expert in procurement, operations improvement and leadership development, he has extensive experience in both light and heavy industry, and fmcg food.

Clients for whom steve has delivered include Mayflower Corporation, Youngs Bluecrest Seafoods, British Pepper & Spice, Macraes Seafood, WS Industries (power transmission equipment), and many more.

Stephen Green

During an early and distinguished career in consulting, working with amongst others HBOS plc, Abbey, Homeserve, BAe, Boots, Burberry, Legal and General and Harper Collins, Stephen so impressed his clients that one, SC Sorensen - a subsidiary of one of Denmarks largest industrial groups, asked him to become their Operations Director.

Having operated on “both sides of the fence”, Stephen was impressed with Applied Acumen’s approach, and since joining has delivered exceptional work for such clients as Bakkavor and the Adelie Group.

Derek Cunningham

Derek came into consulting following an early career in the packaging industry. He is an excpetional financial performance analyst and systems specialist, but unusually combines this skill with first class change management ability.

Derek continues to build on his portfolio of impressed clients, that so far include logistics group TDG, Vision Capital, Moy Park, United Biscuits and the Adelie Group.

Jeremy Burrett

Jeremy has been consulting for over 20 years following a successful career in industry where he has amongst other things owned and ran his own large engineering business before selling up and joining Cap Gemini as a managment trainer.

His work has spanned the globe, working across many industries and his experience has been valuable to a great many management boards, including Vodafone, Trinity Mirror Group, British and Network Rail, Northcliffe Newspaper Group, Rank Hovis, Lyons, Kerry Foods, Kleeneze plc, Dubai Airports and many more.

Matt Taylor

Matthew has spent his entire career in manufacturing industry devising, implementing and leading transformations aligned to clearly stated business objectives. He has managed teams in UK, Europe, China, India, Mexico and USA and by tailoring his approach to local culture has successfully driven value adding change in each region.

He has found that inside many organisations tactical effort is ineffective because of a lack of meaningful vision and strategy and by rectifying these shortfalls has consistently achieved outstanding and sustained results.

His engineering sector experience gained in blue chip organisations such as Nissan, Black and Decker and Cummins has built up a fund of best practices which, coupled with his own skills, enables him to deliver true business value to all organisations.