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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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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Iain McKechnie

Director of Strategic Programmes

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

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Ali Ziaee Bigdeli

Associate Professor and Director of Research

Ali is a Reader (Associate 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.

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Eleanor Musson

Senior Partnerships Manager

Eleanor manages our business partnerships and communities, most notably the Advanced Services Partnership, a network of like-minded senior executives from global manufacturing businesses.

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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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Parikshit Naik

Business Development Manager and Industrial Fellow

Parikshit specialises in the development and innovation of business models for advanced services and holds a PhD in digitally-enabled servitization. With experience of participating in Innovate UK projects, he also runs organisational development workshops and commissioned projects as part of our advisory services.

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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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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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Andreas Schroeder

Associate 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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Ahmad Beltagui

Senior Lecturer

Ahmad's research concerns a broad range of topics related to design, innovation and service management. In particular, Ahmad is currently investigating the impacts of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing on business and society.

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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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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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Gill Holmes

Senior Project 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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Jill Forrest

Business Engagement Coordinator

Jill has extensive project support experience and manages events and relationships with partner organisations to promote servitization to the business and academic communities.

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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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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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Jim Euchner

Visiting Professor

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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Neil Tumber

Neil acts as the bridge between partner organisations and the research team. An engineer by training, he has enjoyed leadership roles in manufacturing and operations across many industries from utilities to FMCG in a variety of organisations including SMEs and large multi-nationals. He has a particular interest in how open collaboration leads to sustainable value.

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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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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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Paul Jackson

Managing Director at UV Light Technology

Paul is a serial entrepreneur, with a career spanning five decades, having set up his first business after graduating from Aston University in 1985. His current business, founded in 1997, UV Light Technology Limited, is a Birmingham based manufacturer of ultra-violet light equipment for industrial and medical applications. He has driven high growth through product, service, and organizational innovation, whilst always generating profit and strong cash flow. The company take pride in combining guaranteed product performance with safe operation through their trademark advanced service - OptiMinUV® Outcomes.

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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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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Luke Benton

Managing Director at MNB Precision

Luke is Managing Director of MNB Precision Ltd, a Birmingham manufacturer. He has made significant changes to his business as a result of his work with Advanced Services Group. Luke is a passionate advocate of the work of Aston Business School and it is fitting that he joins us as a Visiting Industrial Fellow to be able to share his experiences more widely with the Aston community.

Luke and his brother Elliot have led their inherited manufacturing firm from loss making to profit making within 3 years. They have accomplished a stratospheric increase in turnover from £3.5M to over £20M. Garnering a place in the prestigious Sunday Times Fast Track 100, finishing 30th fasting growing company in the UK.

Luke and Elliot have taken real life lessons learnt and applied practical solutions to a failing business to gain real tangible success where it matters.

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Lee Cassidy

CEO at Tactile Technology

Lee is the CEO of IT services company Tactile Techonoly. He started his career as a Flight Simulation Engineer in the Royal Air Force. He then moved into mainstream technology for vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems before starting his own business in 2004.

In his words, ‘Throughout my time in technology two key things have driven me, Innovation and Disruption. I have always worked with highly innovative technologies and ones with the ability to disrupt, providing a major and positive impact on the organisations adopting them.'

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Liz Smith

Managing Director at L G Davis

Liz is the Managing Director of L G Davis, a manufacturing print company based in Birmingham. While studying for an MBS at Aston University, she was introduced to the Advanced Services Group and servitization. She soon became passionate about implementing this and she has helped her company to embrace and adopt servitization in its solutions for customers. Liz is also an active member of the SME Transformational Round Table.

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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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Charlotte Horobin

Senior Industrial Fellow

Make UK is the largest voice supporting UK manufacturing, Charlotte’s role as Region Director is to engage Make UK’s members and assist them in advancing as a manufacturer by providing bespoke introductions, providing industry insight, attendance at events & networking, promoting their business and ensuring their views are heard. Another key part of her role is to engage with regional stakeholders ensuring manufacturers’ interests are represented to LEPs, the West Midlands Combined Authority, Midlands Engine and the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Combined Authority. 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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Stefan March

MOE Business Development Manager at MTC

Stefan is the MOE Business Development Manager at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC). Operating across the West Midlands, Stefan’s role brings him into daily contact with manufacturing SMEs and he spends the majority of his time helping them to reduce waste and improve productivity.

Stefan was the first Visiting Industrial Fellow to join the Advanced Services Group and, given his significant manufacturing experience and knowledge, he brings a wealth of expertise to The Advanced Services Group.

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Greg Parker

Honorary Senior Industrial Fellow

Greg has over 25 years of experience in manufacturing, product management, and services, most recently as Senior Director, Product Management and Business Development with Johnson Controls Security Solutions.

Greg has significant experience of successful leadership of service businesses and servitization initiatives, and has won numerous career awards from Trane including the President's Award for Growth, The President's Award for operational Excellence in Service (twice) and the Chairman's Award for Operational Excellence.

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