Our Team, Dan Blackwell | Firefly Consulting

Dan’s three decades of continuous improvement experience are characterized by strong, sustainable results delivered in multiple industry environments and corporate cultures. Industries served include: banking, advertising, government, distribution, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, consumer products, semiconductors, defence, electronics, food and beverage, and automotive.

Dan has extensive experience in conducting due diligence, as well as project identification assessments to identify high value opportunities. As a trusted advisor, he regularly partners with senior leadership to design improvement initiatives that align with corporate strategy and are supported by company culture. Having worked with diverse clients and cultures in 18 different countries, Dan incorporates proven solutions into each unique opportunity and is adept at developing internal resources to optimize their problem-solving expertise.

In addition to being certified as a Master Black Belt, he is also a Lean Master and Kaizen expert, and has trained and coached over 1,000 experts across 5 continents.

Previously, Dan was a director with George Group Consulting, and an industrial engineer and Lean expert with Texas Instruments.

Education

Iowa State University
BS Industrial Engineering
Certified Master Black Belt

Notable Achievements

Led consulting projects at the largest division of a $10B industry leader in health insurance. Projects focused on organizational design, workforce modeling for growth, and case teams for streamlining claims processes. This resulted in 80% of claims projects being completed in a day or less from a baseline average of 12 days.
Implemented inventory optimization and warehouse process management for a $250M tier 1 automotive supplier. Results at one $50M plant saved over $3M annually through batch size reduction, process improvement, and reduced finished goods inventory.
Implemented planning and scheduling, purchasing, and shop floor operations improvements for a $150M truck accessories company. Helped achieve a 38% reduction in total inventory in four months.
Conducted an assessment of a cell phone repair company navigating a high growth period. Identified a 22% gap in quality yields, a 77% gap in first pass quality, and bottleneck operations that limited capacity by 25%. Further identified opportunities to improve lead time to the customer by 80%.

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Operations Consulting

We have consulting experience with engagements as diverse as mergers and acquisitions, operations strategy, supply chain acceleration, shop-floor process improvements, and call center efficiency improvement.

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Assessments

Assessments are customized to meet your goals, leveraging our frameworks and knowledge of best practices from years of industry experience. Recent work has been in financial services, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and supply chain.