Laurence is a partner in McKinsey’s Operations Practice, based in London. He serves clients through his deep technical expertise and passion for solving complex operational problems. Whether optimizing a production line or reimagining a global supply chain, Laurence is dedicated to helping organizations achieve productivity improvements that have lasting effects on their businesses or organizations.
With a career spanning over two decades, Laurence has become a trusted adviser to global leaders, helping them improve the productivity of their operations within manufacturing, defense, supply chains, and asset-intensive industries.
Laurence specializes in multifaceted operations, advising companies that have complex manufacturing processes, e.g., chemical industry or businesses that have large numbers of dispersed assets, such as defense forces. His expertise spans manufacturing management, productivity in industry, capital project execution, contractor management, and advanced process control. He is known for his ability to translate proven manufacturing principles, such as Lean and Six Sigma, into innovative solutions that tackle today’s most pressing business challenges.
Laurence’s work has delivered measurable, lasting impact for organizations across industries in a variety of sectors, including:
- leading large-scale global productivity transformations for chemical manufacturers, driving significant cost savings and operational improvements in asset-intensive environments
- designing and executing the transformation strategy for a global confectionery manufacturer, optimizing production processes and supply chain operations
- enhancing the productivity of the British Field Army by applying agile principles and operational best practices to improve readiness and efficiency
Laurence is an expert in large-scale industrial training; a skill he developed out of necessity to help his clients improve performance of their operations. His work has been published in scientific journals, and he has spoken at global conferences on the subject. Laurence is also the architect behind McKinsey’s proprietary “Model Factory in a Box,” a groundbreaking training tool that replicates a fully functional lemonade production line and has been used to train over 25,000 operations professionals since its launch in 2015. This physical micro factory line produces 240 bottles of lemonade per hour and is used by clients as a training “sandbox” to teach operations management techniques to increase the productivity of their organization. Participants experience, not just see, the benefit of management techniques.
Laurence holds a master’s degree in manufacturing engineering from Durham University, where his thesis focused on computational scheduling optimization for complex production networks. Before joining McKinsey in 2011 as an experienced hire, Laurence worked as a production engineer at Parker Hannifin and GE Aviation, gaining hands-on experience of the realities of modern manufacturing.
When he’s not helping businesses transform their operations, Laurence channels his engineering skills into home brewing and has built an increasingly complicated automated home brewery in his basement and garden.