Hank Buccella has over 25 years of executive/senior leadership experience at some of the top-performing organizations in the world, including Toyota and the Cleveland Clinic. His experience includes a strong focus on building high performing organizations that deliver high quality, low cost and highly engaged workforces. Within manufacturing and healthcare, his experience spans all aspects of operations, including; defining and operationalizing ideal cultural elements, strategy deployment, facility and process design, production planning/patient scheduling, supply chain design and management, revenue cycle, safety/quality/patient experience, daily visual management, leader rounding and financial target achievement.
Hank’s exposure to operational excellence began in 1997 when he became part of Toyota’s plant start-up team in Princeton, Indiana. As part of his 11 years at Toyota, he helped to launch three assembly plants and continuously honed his Lean teaching and application skills under the guidance of Toyota’s Japan & US-based Sensei. After leaving Toyota, Hank went on to lead Lean transformation efforts from senior and executive positions, within manufacturing and healthcare organizations; providing expertise, direction and leadership as Swagelok, Cleveland Clinic and Inova progressed through their Lean journeys.
Through detailed planning and disciplined execution of Just-In-Time materials management practices, Hank’s external & internal logistics group at Toyota’s San Antonio Tundra plant managed the start-up of 21 on-site suppliers (supplying 2400 unique parts and sub-assemblies) to achieve zero production delays due to part shortages.
At the Cleveland Clinic, Hank’s Continuous Improvement (Lean) group partnered with the organization to generate over $31 million in “bottom-line” savings (’14 & ’15), and at Inova, his Lean team helped to save over $11 million (’16). All achieved through engaging these organizations in building Lean systems and daily practices to drive waste down and value up.
While at Toyota, Hank was recognized as one of the top emerging logistics and conveyance leaders and was asked to join the Toyota global benchmarking group that focused on creating common JIT materials systems across all of Toyota’s manufacturing sites (North America, Japan, China, Thailand). At the Cleveland Clinic, he co-authored the “Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model” that represented an industry best practice for capturing Lean principles and practices in a format that was simple, deployable and measurable. At IBM, Hank was given an innovation award for his work to merge Lean process / behaviors with technology through design / build / deployment of a real-time flow management (Andon) system in the emergency department at Rush University Medical Center Emergency Department.
In his most recent roles, Hank has worked with the executive through frontline teams at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago), Emory University Hospitals (Atlanta), Pacific Gas & Electric; and currently Xcel Energy (Minnesota) to define and deploy their operating systems.
Hank lives in Hudson, OH with his wife and four sons. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and The Ohio State University (MBA).