Achieving Efficiency and Productivity Through Quality and Lean Practices

Do you aim to enhance your organization's quality, efficiency, and competitiveness? Our Quality Management and Lean programs offer practical tools for quality assurance, process improvement, and continuous improvement. You will learn how to identify improvement areas, solve problems, and systematically lead change.

Our programs help you understand the big picture and develop quality and lean thinking analytically: this means not only contextualization, but also gaining new knowledge as well as identifying, developing, experimenting with, and applying feasible ideas.

What kind of training or development are you looking for?

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Customized Competence Development Solutions

With over 50 years of experience, Aalto EE develops world-class competence development solutions that utilize Aalto University’s multidisciplinary faculty and approach.

We co-create with organizations' impactful and inspirational training solutions and help our customers to address current and future business challenges.

 

Aalto EE's customized solutions are an impressive way to renew organizations and competencies, ensure strategy implementation, and build a new competitive advantage. Together with our corporate clients, we design and implement customized training where all aspects are always organized according to the customer's needs.

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Psychologist Mona Moisala suggests that knowledge workers should hear what neuroscience has to say and give up the detrimental demands of our seemingly efficient ways of working. Do you dare to take a nap during the workday?

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Does Generative AI Make Work Smarter or Harder?

Professor Henri Schildt from Aalto University says that generative AI makes employees more productive, creative, and eager to learn. He himself asks the AI for criticism or tips on simplifying complicated things.

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What can be achieved through the new learnings?

  • Improved productivity and profitability: Quality management systems, Lean principles, and Lean Six Sigma methodologies enhance organizational efficiency, reduce waste, and ensure optimal resource utilization, directly impacting profitability.

  • Competitiveness and customer satisfaction: Systematic quality improvement ensures that customers receive consistent products and services that meet their needs, thus increasing customer loyalty and market position.

  • Data-Driven decision making: Lean Six Sigma brings statistical analysis and fact-based decision-making to the organization, minimizing guesswork and delivering better results.

  • Continuous improvement culture and personnel competence: Lean thinking cultivates a culture of problem-solving and improvement, ensuring staff skills remain current and driving organizational evolution.

  • Strategic advantage: Effective quality management aligns organizational strategies with operational practices, embedding quality into the organizational DNA for long-term success.

Meet Our Faculty

Jari Ylitalo

Jari Ylitalo, PhD, is a University Lecturer in Leadership at Aalto University School of Science and Aalto Ventures Program.

He teaches, in particular, master's students on leadership, teamwork, and self-management.

Ylitalo's pedagogical approach emphasises a dialogical and resource-oriented approach. He also works as a supervisor, coach, and workplace facilitator. He has a long and diverse experience in coaching and developing leaders, management teams, and organisations in both corporate and public organisations.

Ylitalo's research has focused on leadership and leadership development, with a particular emphasis on the effectiveness of guidance, resource-centred and dialogue-based development approaches. He has also studied the social dynamics and development of cooperation and partnerships between companies and organisations, as well as network management and the development of a network approach.

Mika Koivisto

Mika Koivisto is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, CEO and Partner at Nordic Business Improvement Oy. He has acted full time with Lean Six Sigma from 1999 and onwards.

Koivisto has led projects, supported thousands of improvement initiatives, provided training, and been responsible for global organizations' Lean and Six Sigma deployment.

Since establishing his own company in 2009, Koivisto has been providing training in his areas of core expertise: statistical methods, Design for Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma. He has profound knowledge of development methods and can apply them to a diverse range of practical processes and situations. Koivisto is highly esteemed for his expertise and productive, practical approach.

Mika Koivisto completed his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training in 1999 and became a certified Master Black Belt on Nokia's first MBB course in 2000.

Henri Schildt

Henri Schildt is a Professor of Strategy at Aalto University School of Business and Aalto University School of Science.

Professor Henri Schildt’s research interests span technology strategy, organizational change, and strategy process (with specific interest in reasoning under uncertainty and the use of data analytics). He is currently heading two research programs on data-driven management and the management of digitalization in Finnish manufacturing companies.

He is a tenured professor with a joint appointment at the Aalto University School of Business and the School of Science’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.

Henri Schildt completed his PhD at Helsinki University of Technology in 2007.

Toni Puhakka

Toni Puhakka is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Senior Adviser at Nordic Process Improvement Oy. His speciality areas are Design for Six Sigma and LSS coaching to achieve considerable savings and benefits.

Puhakka has close to 20 years of experience in LSS from the global business environment. Since 2016, Puhakka has worked as a trainer and consultant at Nordic Process Improvement in Lean Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma training and coaching programs, as well as as a project manager and mentor for project leaders in various business areas. Prior to his current role, he spent more than 14 years in R&D and manufacturing process development across a wide range of business areas.

Puhakka holds a Master of Science degree in technology. He received his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt qualification in 2015 and a Design For Six Sigma education in 2010.

Pekka Töytäri

Pekka Töytäri is Professor of Practice in Product and Service Systems Sales at Aalto University.

In addition to his academic career, Töytäri is the owner of Efecto Oy, where he coaches and consults companies in developing customer relationship management.

Pekka Töytäri's research and coaching expertise in the area of customer relationship management is particularly related to understanding customer value, developing customer-centric value propositions, customer-centric value proposition design process and tools, customer value concretisation and calculation, and understanding, describing, and analysing customer behaviour. In his research, Töytäri has found that systematic customer insight creates the conditions for correct customer selection, effective customer encounters, communication of tangible customer value, and co-creation of value.

Töytär holds a PhD in technology from Aalto University's School of Basic Sciences and a doctorate in value-based selling, pricing, and sales management from the Department of Production Economics.

Max Finne

Max Finne is an Assistant Professor of Information and Service Management at Aalto University School of Business.

Max Finne is an operations, projects, and supply chain management expert. He has specialized in servitization, Industry 4.0, service network management, professional service operations, inter-organizational collaboration, learning analytics, and flipped learning pedagogies. Finne has taught in several Warwick Business School’s prestigious Executive, Full-time, and Distance Learning MBA Programs before joining Aalto University. Even the most demanding student cohorts highly appreciate Finne’s teaching and have awarded him the highest student feedback of the whole teaching team on many occasions.

He has carried out close research collaboration with companies such as ABB, Costain, Finnair, Fujitsu, KONE, NCC, and Skanska. He delivers innovative and engaging teaching with a high impact on learning, showcased through his winning the distinguished Nigel Slack Teaching Innovation Award in 2015, 2016, and 2018.

Max Finne has been awarded Postgraduate Certificate in Academic and Professional Practice with distinction (1st-class honors) from the University of Warwick. It gave him full pedagogical qualification to teach in the UK Higher Education and recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Risto Lintula

Risto Lintula is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Partner at Nordic Process Improvement Oy. He is specialized in management systems and change programs.

Lintula has experience in supporting various fields of business for over 30 years in Opex and Lean deployment, improving customer driver value chains and flow systems.

Lintula is a result-oriented developer, facilitator, and corporate sparring partner. Since 2006, he has been working as a consultant, trainer and adviser, and on Boards of Directors. His particular areas of expertise are strategic development, business development and fruitful implementation, Lean and Six Sigma applications, analytical problem-solving methods, processes, and management systems.

Lintula has degrees from Helsinki University of Technology and Leeds Business School. He completed his Master Of Quality in 1994 and Lean Six Sigma BB in 2006.

Jarmo Kortelahti

Jarmo Kortelahti (Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Kaizen Leader) is an experienced consultant, advisor, and leader with over 20 years of experience in management consulting and business development within organizations.

His experience includes major business transformation programs, business process and productivity improvement, and customer experience development. He also has over 10 years of experience in senior management positions in large international companies (e.g., Telia, Nokia, Microsoft). He is a change leader with a strong customer and people-oriented approach.

Jarmo Kortelahti specialises in digital transformation, improving customer experience and productivity, and driving growth in an international and multicultural business environment. He has led and coached over 100 development projects and trained over 500 executives and employees in Europe, the USA, Central Asia, and China.

Katri Kauppi

Katri Kauppi is a tenured Associate Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at Aalto University School of Business.

Kauppi has previously worked at Nottingham University Business School and Manchester Business School in the UK where she has also taught in Global MBA-programmes in e.g. Dubai, Shanghai, Hongkong and Miami. Prof Kauppi teaches in the areas of sustainable supply chain management, procurement and sourcing as well as supply chain risk management

Prof. Kauppi’s research interests include organizational purchasing behaviour, supply chain failure causes and consequences, social sustainability certifications, climate change risk mitigation in supply chains as well as public procurement. Prof Kauppi’s has received several recognitions from her research work and also the World Culture Council Special Recognition Award for a young scientist who early in their career has made an international impact through their research.

Contact Us

Tupuna Tapanainen

Program Director +358 10 837 3821 tupuna.tapanainen@aaltoee.fi

Matias Kiuru

Relationship Specialist +358 10 837 3802 matias.kiuru@aaltoee.fi

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