About
About S A Partners
Lean thinking, from its earliest days.
In the late 1980s, MIT researchers studying Toyota’s production system coined the term ‘lean ‘, and in 1990, The Machine That Changed the World, co-authored by Dan Jones, popularised the concept and introduced it to the world.
Dan Jones, along with Professor Peter Hines, founded Cardiff Business School’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC).
In 1993, S A Partners was founded by Professor Peter Hines following his extensive study of the Toyota Way. S A stands for Supplier Association and refers to the Kyoryoku Kai approach, whereby companies like Toyota treat their suppliers’ culture as an extension of their own culture, underpinned by the belief that supply chains compete, not the single company.
In the 1990s, S A Partners worked with Nissan and Toyota and helped them set up their supply chains as they were entering the European market.
Since then, we’ve been helping organisations put lean and organisational excellence to work across many different industries, partnering with global brands such as Airbus, BAE Systems, Panalpina, Google, Waymo, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Viatris, Abbott, EDF, Sellafield, Scottish Water, Welsh Water, United Utilities, Marks & Spencer, Mars, Coca-Cola, S&P Global, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Vale, and many more.
Our core belief hasn’t changed since day one: excellence already exists in your organisation. Our job is to help you find it, nurture it, and sustain it.
Three Decades of Practice, Underpinned by the Cutting Edge of Knowledge
S A Partners Founded
Founded in the United Kingdom as a spin-off from Cardiff University's Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC), staying close to the academic routes of lean thinking while taking it into industry.
Supporting Toyota and Nissan's UK Supply Chains
S A Partners supported the local automotive supply chain for Toyota and Nissan during their 1990s UK expansion, stemming from academic and field-level benchmarking conducted by the firm’s founders, including Professor Peter Hines.
Creating World Class Suppliers Published
Professor Peter Hines publishes his seminal work on benchmarking Toyota’s supply chain, Creating World Class Suppliers (Hines, 1994).
Lean Thinking Published
Dan Jones at LERC and Jim Womack at MIT publish their bestselling book Lean Thinking, which widely popularised the concept of lean thinking outside the automotive sector.
The Lean Trilogy Begins
Peter Hines and other researchers at LERC published the first of the Lean trilogy, Going Lean. The sequels were Lean Profit Potential in 2002 and Staying Lean in 2008.
Lean Thinking Master's Degree Launched
The Lean Enterprise Research Centre started the master’s degree in Lean Thinking in the Service Sector, the first-ever graduate degree dedicated to bringing the concept of operational excellence to the service industry.
Expansion into the USA and Australia
Expanded into the USA and Australia, taking three decades of lean practice to industry leaders across the globe.
Find Shingo Publication Award
Staying Lean received a Shingo Prize, the first of fiver other Shingo Publication Awards.
Shingo Institute Affiliation Begins
Started a formal affiliation with the Shingo Institute and is currently the Shingo Institute’s largest global affiliate. Several S A Partners client companies have progressed to receive Shingo Awards.
Second Shingo Publication Award
Received the second Shingo Publication Award for Creating a Lean and Green Business System, co-authored by Keivan Zokaei, Peter Hines and Hunter Lovins. This publication is currently a key teaching reference at several universities.
Further Shingo Publication Awards
Received Shingo Awards for The Essence of Excellence: Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement by Peter Hines and 4 + 1: Embedding a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Financial Services by Chris Butterworth and Brent Harder.
European Growth and Digital Transformation
Opened dedicated teams across Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and introduced digital transformation services alongside our core capability-building work.
A Global Team with Shared Roots
A global team of around 100 FTEs working across the UK, USA, Ireland, Germany and Australia, still guided by the same thinking we helped shape more than 30 years ago.
What We Do
At S A Partners, we help organisations find, nurture and sustain their own excellence. For example, we have helped several companies on their journey to the Shingo Prize, such as Vale, Edwards, Panalpina, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Ipsen, to name but a few.
We partner with organisations to build the leadership capability, operational discipline, and cultural habits that drive measurable, lasting performance improvement.
We build practitioners, not dependency, ensuring capability stays in the business long after we go.
Purpose
Strategy formation, alignment and deployment.
People
Leadership development, culture and behaviours, reward and recognition, capability building.
Process
Operational excellence, management systems, performance management, end-to-end transformation, problem-solving, digital and continuous improvement.
Find
Diagnostic assessment, co-create a roadmap to excellence, and align engagement.
Nurture
Build leadership and improvement capability, process and skills improvement, expert coaching and facilitation support.
Sustain
Systems design, implementation and integration, custom academy and handover, scale excellence across the enterprise.
How We Work
We work alongside your leaders and teams, from the boardroom to the shop floor, using frameworks we’ve spent three decades refining with organisations like Pfizer, Roche, Google, Airbus and Mars. Our work typically delivers a 5–10x return, drawn from more than 50,000 improvement projects across manufacturing, life sciences, and utilities.
Our People, Purpose and Values
Who We Are
Our consultants and coaches are former engineers, operators, educators, and executives. We speak the language of the work because we have done the work, many of us tracing our own practice back to the same Lean research tradition S A Partners was built on.
Our team includes Shingo Prize-winning practitioners, Lean Master Black Belts, accredited leadership and culture experts, and recognised enterprise excellence thought leaders. We combine global reach with local care to ensure consistency, capability, and relevance in every market you serve.
Why We Exist
Work is where people spend most of their lives. When work is meaningful, well-designed, and supported by strong leadership and systems, people thrive, and organisations do too. Our mission is to help people live their most excellent lives by helping organisations make work excellent.
What We Stand For
Excellence is a calling. We help organisations answer that call by aligning purpose, people, and process, and building a culture and operating system where improvement is continuous and results endure.
This means excellence as a daily practice, not a one-off effort; leadership that develops capability, not compliance; systems that support people, not the other way around; evidence-based methods and measurable results; and long-term partnership and shared success.
Start Your Transformation Today
Excellence is not achieved by chance. Let’s find it, nurture it, and sustain it together. Excellence is an inside job.