Two senior managers from industry have joined the Oliver Wight Group as consultants this month, bringing extensive knowledge and experience of the distribution, medical and pharmaceutical sectors to the organisation.

Steve Rowntree was previously Head of Supply Chain for Abbott Laboratories' Vascular Devices division in Ireland, whilst Kirsty Braines leaves behind her role as Global Logistics Implementation Manager for Caterpillar Logistics Services.

Oliver Wight EAME President, Andrew Purton, says, "We are delighted that Kirsty and Steve have joined us. They are both very senior figures and they bring a wealth of experience gained from working in some very big and successful, global organisations."

Kirsty Braines has an honours degree in manufacturing engineering from Birmingham University (1992) and is a 6 Sigma black belt. Her career includes management roles at British Steel and Perkins. At Caterpillar, she managed the simultaneous implementation of an SAP system in three separate US locations, and was responsible for the roll-out of a business improvement programme to the entire Caterpillar Logistics Services Division - the first site achieved Class A status at the end of last year.

Steve Rowntree has worked for Abbott in a variety senior management positions, both in the US and Europe. He successfully led many Abbott sites to Class A accreditation, through the implementation of multi-million dollar saving business excellence programmes. Steve graduated from The University of Greenwich in 1988 with a BSc honours in Applied Chemistry.

Through the Oliver Wight organisation, the two new consultants will be applying their own experience and knowledge to help other manufacturing and distribution companies on their journey to business excellence.