Thomas E. Farmer of Pratt & Whitney

Becomes LAI Industry Co-Chair

April 28, 2008

Thomas Farmer, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, has become the industry co-chair of the Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at MIT Executive Board. Farmer will join MIT Institute Professor Sheila Widnall (MIT co-chair) and Blaise Durante, Secretary for the Air Force, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, (government co-chair) in this critical leadership role.

The Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at MIT, together with its Educational Network (EdNet), is a unique and powerful research consortium that offers its organizational members from industry, government, and academia the newest and best thinking, practices, and lessons learned related to lean enterprise transformation. LAI enables the focused and accelerated transformation of complex enterprises through collaborative stakeholder engagement in developing and institutionalizing principles, processes, behaviors, and tools for enterprise excellence.

“We believe that LAI’s research, model guided by members and based on real-world challenges, enables our members to successfully transform their enterprises,” says MIT professor and LAI Co-Director Deborah Nightingale. “We are delighted to welcome Tom Farmer as our industry co-chair. His leadership role at Pratt & Whitney gives him invaluable perspective on the sorts of enterprise-level challenges the LAI consortium addresses.” Farmer says, “Pratt & Whitney and UTC have been associated with LAI for over 15 years. The research and technologies of this organization will continue to be sought out as guides for the future development path of both industry and the services associated with aerospace.”

Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture, and service of aircraft engines, space propulsion systems, and industrial gas turbines. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company providing high technology products and services to the global aerospace and commercial building industries.

For more information please visit http://lean.mit.edu and www.pw.utc.com.