Meet the team

Tim Baines

Professor and Executive Director

Tim is the leading scholar on servitization and advanced services and spends much of his time working hands-on with both global and local manufacturing companies to understand its application in practice and help to transform businesses. He spent ten years working in manufacturing businesses, beginning his career as an apprentice. His background gives him a personal understanding of the challenges faced by the industry and of the need for practical, relevant guidance on implementing change strategies.

His book Made to Serve: How manufacturers can compete through servitization and product service systems has been described as, ‘essential reading for any companies or executives looking to explore this option for their business’ and provides a practical guide to servitization, based on in-depth research with leading corporations such as Xerox, Caterpillar, Alstom and MAN Truck & Bus UK.

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Paula Cresswell

Partnership Development and Operations Manager

Paula supports the development of the Advanced Services Partnership at ASG Ltd and is also the company’s operational lead. She has a background of working in and with the manufacturing industry across a range of multinationals and SMEs in sectors as diverse as automotive, food and drink and robotics. Her career has been focussed on bringing the knowledge and benefits of education and academic research to industry which has been recently recognised by her appointment as Visiting Industrial Fellow at Aston Business School.

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Ian Machan

Managing Director and Industrial Fellow

Ian is the Managing Director of the Advanced Service Group Ltd. Ian leads the advisory services of the business, that helps manufacturers grow their revenues through the implementation of Advanced Services.

Ian's deeper expertise, developed throughout his 40 years working with manufacturing businesses, are in supply chain, strategy and continuous improvement. He has worked with private equity and venture capital organisations. An experienced university industrial fellow, he has worked with postgraduate organisations at two institutions.

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Kawal Kapoor

Partnership Research Manager and Senior Industrial Fellow

Kawal manages research activities for the Advanced Services Partnership, which includes publishing in high-impact peer reviewed journals and developing executive workshops and practitioner-oriented mini guides on servitization. Her research expertise is in service-oriented value networks, platform ecosystems, forcefield analysis, service business models and diffusion of product and service innovations.

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Iain McKechnie

Director of Strategic Partnerships

Iain is responsible for building partnerships with industry and for securing government funding to improve the level of industrial / strategic engagement with servitization and advanced services.

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Kristina Anders

Marketing Manager

Kristina manages our Marketing and Communications, promoting the work, research and programmes of the Advanced Services Group to engage with the business, manufacturing and academic communities.

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Ali Ziaee Bigdeli

Professor of Industrial Service Innovation and Director of Research

Ali is Professor in Industrial Service Innovation at the Advanced Services Group. His interests lie in the organisational change and business model innovation brought about when companies move towards providing outcome-based offerings rather than just selling products on a transactional basis, or servitization. He has been successful in securing ~£5.5m funding from UKRI, EU, and industry, including: Principal Investigator (PI) of the ESRC-funded project ‘Pathways towards Servitization: A trans-national study of Organisational Transformation’ (ES/P010148/1), and Co-I on two Innovate UK projects: ‘Next generation rice processing’ (ES/P010148/1) and ‘Digital Servitization Demonstrator’ (TS/T011165/1) under the Manufacturing Made Smarter theme. In the past seven years, he has been extensively engaged with both multinational and small/medium sized manufacturing firms in order to understand servitization in practice, and also help the acceleration of the adoption and implementation of advanced services. Visit his website: www.bigdeli.uk

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Gill Holmes

Senior Research Manager

Gill manages our research projects and is Project Manager and Impact Co-ordinator for our ESRC funded 'Understanding how servitization can impact UK economic productivity and environmental performance' project which works with colleagues from Aston School of Engineering and Technology and Warwick Business School. She is an experienced manager, who has worked in a number of manufacturing industries and in several marketing and research management postings in leading UK universities.

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Andreas Schroeder

Professor

Andreas’ research and teaching interests lie in the systems and strategies needed to help businesses grow through the use of information technology (IT). His interest in servitization focuses on the value from the data that accumulates as part of the service provision.

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Parikshit Naik

Commercial Director and Industrial Fellow

Parikshit is the Commercial Director of the Advanced Services Group. He leads the development of all commercial opportunities for the business as well as the marketing and outreach of our brand.

Parikshit is a published author on the topic of servitization and an expert in developing service-led business models and designing and deploying advanced services. With experience in leading multi-stakeholder Innovate UK projects focused on outcome-based business models, he has supported several businesses to think differently about their customers and to design attractive, customer-centric outcome-based services. He has a background in engineering and innovation management, along with a PhD in IoT-enabled servitization.

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Chris Owen

Senior Teaching Fellow

Chris has held a number of roles in operations and supply chain management and operations competency. He has a particular interest in applying Lean principles to improve business performance in a wide range of situations.

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Shriram Dusane

Advisor

Shriram is responsible for educating and guiding organisations in developing and designing service-led strategies, outcome-based business models and advanced services using Servitization-specific proprietary tools and frameworks. He is a chemical engineer and MBA holder with over five years of experience in product and application, techno-commercial support and business management.

With his experience in the process industries and expertise in Servitization, he brings a unique perspective to any project he works on and supports organisations to create sustainable and profitable value propositions.

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Sandra Benbow

Senior Industrial Fellow

Sandra is a Senior Industrial Fellow and business consultant based in Germany with a track record of accelerating company transformation through business model innovation and new technology adoption. As the Programme Manager for the Advanced Services Growth programme she supported 80 UK-based SMEs to increase GVA by £19.2M and create 70 new jobs. She has specialist knowledge of advanced services and servitization in the manufacturing sector and holds an MBA with distinction from Aston University. Sandra supports our advisory services, including organisational development workshops, executive education and commissioned projects, particularly in Europe.

She is an Enterprise Educator and Business Mentor and has advised over 400 start-ups in the UK. She specialises in business ideation, lean start-up methodology, customer value proposition design, customer segmentation, business model innovation, business planning, pitching, and networking.

Sandra is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Digital Innovation Expert. ITU is the United Nations specialised agency for information and communication technologies. This role invoes undertaking comprehensive country reviews and advising governments on strengthening the national approach towards the ICT centric innovation ecosystem.

As a cleantech enthusiast, Sandra is currently supporting a UK-based engineering company to commercialise a revolutionary electric vehicle charging technology set to disrupt the global market.

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Ahmad Beltagui

Associate Professor in Service Operations and Innovation Management

Ahmad is Associate Professor of Service Operations and Innovation Management at Aston Business School. As a member of the Advanced Services Group he regularly works with businesses, large and small, in support of the transformation from product focus to a sustainable, digital and customer-centric strategy.

He is an expert in design and innovation, with a particular focus on researching the application of digital technologies and human-centred design to create outcome-based service business models. He has received funding for research on digital twins, 3D printing and is presently leading a project drawing insights from history to inform the current digital/sustainable industrial revolution.

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Daniel Andrews

Research Fellow

Dan's expertise lies in the use of visual, interactive and/or digital tools and programmes to capture and display stories.

He is also experienced in the conceptualisation, design and creation of multimedia games. He teaches a number of programmes and courses on business games and gamification for industry.

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Tom Palmer

Retired from Rolls-Royce

Tom is the Former Group Director of Services Strategy at Rolls Royce. He brings a unique combination of capabilities and experience at the highest level of digital and Services transformation to The Advanced Services Group.

He has led all significant aspects of the development of Services within Rolls-Royce including the digital transformation, the financing of the service assets, the development of the service strategy, the move to a service-oriented organisation structure, and more recently, the move towards a platform business model and placing services at the heart of the company's sustainability strategy.

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Paul Jennings

Retired from JCB Finance Ltd

Paul was the CEO of JCB Finance Ltd for 10 years until 2022 and has successfully led the business through the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. The company has surpassed £1Bn of balances with customers in 2019 – a remarkable feat for a finance company based in leafy Staffordshire and not within the City of London.

Paul has recently been awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the London Institute of Banking and Finance and is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. He has been an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers since 1980. He has also recently retired as a Board Director of the London based Finance & Leasing Association and Chair of their Asset Finance Division.

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Andrew Harrison

Consultant | Retired from Rolls-Royce

Andrew Harrison is a recently retired professional aerospace engineer with more than three decades experience in both senior technical and managerial roles spanning the entire product life cycle of a jet engine from capability generation through to in-service support.

Over the last 15 years of his industrial career and as a member of the Rolls-Royce engineering Fellowship, Andrew led the creation and implementation of Rolls-Royce’s differentiating Design for Service capability, which targeted increased product reliability while reducing the cost of ownership and support service delivery.

Andrew was also actively engaged with the leading UK academic institutions and was a founding and leading member of the UK National council for Through Life Engineering Services, which provides strategy and direction for UK Industry, academia and Government in this area.

Andrew remains an Honorary Professor at Aston University Business School, providing a wealth of practical experience and subject matter expertise to support the development and delivery of education and consultancy services in the areas of Design for Service and Service knowledge management.

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Michael Hulme

Managing Director at Alstom

Mike Hulme started his career at British Nuclear Fuels Sellafield, where he subsequently held various engineering and operational roles. He joined Alstom in October 2001 as Validation Manager and has held several senior positions in the company, including Engineering and Tender Director and Vice President Services.

Mike has been responsible for the strategic approach of key transport solutions including rolling stock supply and associated maintenance services. He has played a pivotal role in the introduction of advanced services contracts to Alstom, such as the availability-based contract with Avanti on the West Coast Mainline.

Additionally he has been instrumental in the application of modern, digital tools and processes to drive excellence in service operations bringing added value to the passenger.

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Jim Euchner

Jim Euchner is Partner at Outside Insight Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that helps clients accelerate value capture from innovation. He was previously Vice President of Global Innovation at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, where he led the development of new businesses and helped launch five businesses on three continents. Prior to his work at Goodyear, Jim held positions as Vice President of Growth Strategy and Innovation at Pitney Bowes, Inc. and Vice President, Network Systems Advanced Technology at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon).

In addition to his consulting work, Jim is Honorary Professor at Aston Business School (UK), where he is industry co-chair of the Aston Advanced Services Partnership. He is also Editor in Chief of Research-Technology Management, a peer-reviewed journal for practitioners of innovation, technology and research management. Jim is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the Nissan Autonomous Vehicle program and a co-founder of the MIT Innovation Laboratory, a consortium to nurture innovation in organisations.

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Desmond Evans

Retired from MAN Truck & Bus UK

Des, former Managing Director of MAN Truck & Bus UK Ltd is a passionate advocate of servitization in the transport industry. Together with the UK MAN Team, he transformed the business model of MAN Truck & Bus UK Ltd and helped the company become one of the country’s leading providers of advanced after sales and fleet management services for the haulage industry. His knowledge of what does and doesn’t work in practice, as well as tools, techniques and tips for implementing services strategies are key assets to the Centre’s work with industry.

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Alec Anderson

Managing Director at Koolmill Systems

As Founder and Managing Director of Koolmill, Alec has developed an innovative cereal processing technology. Koolmill is the Industrial Lead in a 2-year, £2 million Newton China Agriculture Challenge project to develop the world’s first Industry 4.0 auto-tuning, digital rice mill.

Alec sits on the IMechE Food & Drink Engineering Committee, is a Visiting Industrial Fellow and Guest Lecturer at Aston Business School, as well as designated as a Foreign Expert by the Chinese Government.

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Charlotte Horobin

CEO at Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce

Charlotte is CEO of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce and an advocate for manufacturing. In her previous role at Make UK, Charlotte focused on engaging manufacturers by providing bespoke introductions, providing industry insight, attendance at events & networking, promoting their business and ensuring their views are heard. Charlotte also is a Trustee of the WMG Academy for Young Engineers, business led schools for 14-19 year olds who are interested in STEM career, she’s a Careers and Enterprise Advisor in Lincolnshire and is a Senior Industrial Fellow with The Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School.

She gained her undergraduate degree from The University of Leeds in Biomedical Science before completing her Masters at The University of Nottingham. Before joining Make UK (formerly EEF) in 2013, Charlotte worked in food manufacturing where she focused on business development and food safety management.

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Paul Jackson

Managing Director at Your Business by Design Limited

Paul is a serial entrepreneur, with a career spanning five decades, having set up his first business after graduating from Aston University in 1985. A widely published author in industrial trade journals since 1985 and international conference speaker, Paul is recognised by many as a leading expert in UV light health and safety. A recent Aston University MBA, graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Programme and Senior Industrial Fellow at Aston Business School, he has also recently completed a doctorate on the topic of capabilities required by SMEs for servitization.

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Ian Hughes

Ian has more than 20 years senior management experience of growing services business in the food manufacturing industry. In the last 15 years, his key focus has been on services innovation delivering advanced outcome-based solutions and servitization.

Ian has worked for Tetra Pak holding a number of global roles since 2008, such as Director Expert Services and Director of Service Solutions, designing advanced services strategy, developing the internal global capabilities and deploying advanced solutions to an international customer base.

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David Mackerness

Director at Kaer Pte Ltd

Dave graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from University College London and a Master’s in Virology from Imperial College London.

After a short stint in medical communications, Dave relocated to Singapore with Publicis Group to support P&Gs regional healthcare portfolio as a strategic planner and Dave is Director at Kaer in Singapore. He joined Kaer in 2005 to accelerate the transition to clean and renewable cooling.

With a background in FMCG marketing and two decades of experience in the real estate industry, Dave specialises in customer insights that drive Kaer’s product development roadmap and digital experience platform. As the lead of Kaer’s Customer Success team and the product owner of Kaer Connect (Kaer’s digital CX tool), Dave is responsible for delivering Kaer’s brand experience across their regional Cooling as a Service (CaaS) portfolio.

Dave is a founding member of the SET Alliance Committee and serves on the British Chamber of Commerce’s Built Environment Committee.

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Katja Dmitrijeva

Visiting Industrial Fellow

Katja is a sustainability transitions expert with over ten years of inter-disciplinary project experience. She specialises in organisational change management and industrial development for sustainability. Katja holds a PhD in Management, a MSc in Environmental Management and Policy and a MA (Hons) in Town and Regional Planning. Based in Zurich, Katja supports the ASG advisory services, including organisational development workshops, executive education and commissioned projects.

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Dimitris Karamitsos

Senior Energy Efficiency Business Developer Specialist at BASE

Dimitris is a Senior Energy Efficiency Business Developer Specialist at the Swiss organisation Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE). With more than 13 years of professional experience in the field of energy, entrepreneurship and sustainable technologies, Dimitris has experience in business model innovation, valuation principles and project execution.

Within BASE, Dimitris plays a key role in accelerating the deployment of Servitization worldwide, including the Cooling as a Service (CaaS) model.

Dimitris is part of the founding team of the Servitization for Energy Transition (SET) Alliance – aiming to further engage both private and public markets to adopt the model and accelerate the path to a more climate resilient and circular future. He holds an MEng Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College and and MSc of Management, Technology and Economics from ETH Zürich.

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Raveen Menon

Research Fellow

Raveen has a background in Production Engineering and research focused on services, he works with manufacturing firms to understand their challenges as they make the move towards servitization and advanced services.

He is a post-doctoral research fellow, and he works in the areas of services, service supply chains and sustainability. He is an empirical researcher well acquainted with qualitative and quantitative research. Building on supply chain fit and service-dominant logic, Raveen’s Ph.D. dissertation – Strategic Fit of Service Supply Chains – develops and validates a strategic framework in service supply chains.

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Peter Bruch

Peter is a Chartered, Graduate Mechanical Engineer, having completed an accelerated Apprenticeship. His specialism is company turnarounds and site relocations, launching and growing profitable new business’. A resourceful, experienced Managing / Operations Director across the Automotive, Aerospace, Engineered Product & Marine sectors, successfully enjoying site P+L and global Sales & Engineering responsibility.

Over 8 years ago, whilst leading his last company, Peter was introduced to Servitization and Advanced Services by the Advanced Services Group at Aston University. It was a very interesting concept to understand and apply to a machine-to-print engineering company, the Glass Factory concept was created, and the business made great strides to achieving the reality.

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Richard Glover

Senior Industrial Fellow

Richard has many years experience in managing large Field Service operations and was latterly the International Director of Technical Service at Xerox. He has significant experience in managing and transforming Service operations in an outcome based model. Richard is working alongside the ASG team as a Senior Industrial Fellow.

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