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FIMechE Stuart Wood. CEng
+30yrs a student of 'Lean' thinking - aspiring servant leader - passionate about success through Enterprise Excellence - Joint founder UK Lean Forum® - Managing Director / Vice President Kelvion Ltd FAR.
Professional Background
Stuart Wood, a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE), is an accomplished leader and motivator with over 20 years of experience in driving business transformation and operational improvement across a diverse range of industries. His expertise lies primarily in Lean and Operational Excellence methodologies, allowing him to effectively plan, lead, and execute successful change programs that enhance organizational performance.
Stuart’s extensive career has taken him through various roles, enabling him to lead teams in both consulting and industry environments. He has demonstrated remarkable adaptability, overseeing single-site and globally dispersed multi-site operations in sectors such as Aerospace & Automotive, Agriculture & Food, Chemical, Cosmetic & Medical, Electro-Mechanical, and Financial Services & Banking. His ability to facilitate shared visions and goals among teams has been pivotal in implementing processes that drive improvement, elevate quality standards, and accelerate business transformation.
At present, Stuart serves as the Managing Director and Vice President of Kelvion FAR at Kelvion, where he continues to leverage his skills to lead transformation efforts aimed at boosting shareholder value. His career journey reflects a commitment to excellence and a passion for continuous improvement, traits that have earned him respect as a thought leader in the field.
Education and Achievements
Stuart's educational background and professional experiences are marked by several notable achievements and contributions to the field of operational excellence. He is a proud joint founder of the UK Lean Forum®, a platform dedicated to promoting Lean practices and methodologies among organizations.
Stuart's recognition as a past winner of prestigious awards, including the European LMJ Lean and the TM Top 100 Manufacturer awards, showcases his significant contributions to operational improvement and business success. Moreover, his role as an Industrial Advisor and Interview Panellist for the Chartered Institute of Mechanical Engineers reflects his stature in the engineering community, as does his experience as a past assessor for the Manufacturing Excellence (MX) Awards.
His capacity as an experienced speaker has allowed him to share insights and best practices on Lean methodologies and operational excellence, contributing to his reputation as an expert in the field. Stuart’s journey in Lean manufacturing has not only benefited the organizations he has worked with but also enriched the wider community through his advocacy and knowledge-sharing efforts.
Specialties
Stuart Wood is characterized by his diverse skill set, which includes leading the implementation of Lean manufacturing business improvement change programs, developing and deploying operational strategies, and training and mentoring teams in Lean methodologies. His strong financial acumen, shaped by several main board directorships—including four years on a fully listed London Stock Exchange-listed PLC—positions him uniquely in the landscape of business transformation.
Stuart excels in mobilizing people and resources to achieve exemplary results. He has a proven track record of mentoring and directing staff to unlock their potential, fostering environments where workforce engagement is paramount to the success of change initiatives. His leadership qualities extend beyond professional settings, empowering teams to embrace a culture of continuous improvement that resonates throughout the organization and aids in the journey towards excellence.
Career Milestones
Stuart’s career encompasses a plethora of influential roles, each contributing to his comprehensive understanding of operational excellence:
- Managing Director / Vice President at Kelvion: Currently leading efforts to enhance business transformation and operational excellence.
- Founding Director at Lean Forum Network: Instrumental in establishing a community focused on Lean methodologies.
- Operations Director at Applied Photophysics: Responsibility for operational transformation within the company.
- Head of Operational Excellence at Oxford Instruments: Focused on driving operational improvements across various operations.
- Lean Six Sigma Manager at Accenture: Leading business improvement initiatives using Lean Six Sigma methods.
- Operations Director in various companies including Rimor Ltd, Thwaites Ltd, and City Technology by Honeywell: Each role offered the opportunity to shape operational strategies and promote Lean practices.
- Production & Engineering Manager at Printed Motor Works and Production Engineer at Autoliv: Early career roles that laid the groundwork for a robust understanding of production processes.
His impressive portfolio of positions has equipped Stuart with the insights and expertise necessary to navigate the complexities of modern industrial environments, making him an asset in any organizational setting conducive to growth and transformation.
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.