Prior to Chartwell, a graduate in Aeronautical Engineering, he started his career as an engineer in the Nuclear Power industry. Andy led the turnaround as owner and CEO of a defence and aerospace manufacturing business. Andy leads many of Chartwell’s speciality chemical client projects and during the COVID-19 pandemic led the operations team that delivered a 100 fold increase in production of PCR medical diagnostic assays and equipment.
Andy Redfern
Partner
With over 28 years’ experience as a consultant to top multinational businesses, I have led many hundreds of successful projects delivering results in manufacturing and operations. I lead many of Chartwell’s speciality chemical client projects and specialize in highly technical and complex processes.
“For me, one of the things I enjoy most about a project is the first few days with a new client. The intensity of study and understanding hidden potential is exhilarating for me and always enlightening for the client.”
University of Cambridge, Aeronautical Engineering
Prior to Chartwell, a graduate in Aeronautical Engineering, I started my career as an engineer in the Nuclear Power industry. I led the turnaround as owner and CEO of a defence and aerospace manufacturing business. While many of the projects I lead at Chartwell are with specialty chemical clients, during the COVID-19 pandemic I led the operations team that delivered a 100-fold increase in production of PCR medical diagnostic assays and equipment.
Overall, my career has been dedicated to helping improve the performance and profitability of vital manufacturing, engineering and support services businesses. I have worked both as a consultant and through direct operational leadership. The common theme has always been to drive a step change in performance with lasting sustainable results.
The work our team contributed during the COVID-19 pandemic is my greatest achievement so far. Helping to increase output of critical PCR testing kits to meet the ever-increasing global demand was not only professionally fulfilling, but also personally. We know the impact of our work is far greater than a single site or organization, but never was this point as true as when it came to this project.
I am firstly an engineer and when I’m not working on client projects I can be found tinkering in my workshop and enjoying my classic car collection.
He loves working in high-urgency-high-value situations, where a large improvement is needed in a short time.
For me, the best part of the job is helping client teams to deliver great results that they never thought would be possible, getting people excited about making the graph go up, and shifting their mindset to believe that further improvement is always possible.
Cornell University, Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, with a side of Astronomy.
My entire career has been focused on helping clients continually improve, regardless of organization size or industry. I fundamentally believe that improving productivity is the key ingredient that fuels innovation and improves the quality of life for everyone.
As a Partner at Chartwell, my mission is to help create new partners that will fuel our company’s growth and continue to help our clients make long-lasting improvements long into the future. I’m also continuously seeking to improve our core methodologies, to help our project teams and clients to unlock great results even faster.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we made the decision to re-deploy all of Chartwell’s resources into pandemic fighting industries. This required us to seek out an entirely new set of clients and adapt our methodologies to these sectors. Chartwell went on to help to increase the output of COVID-19 testing kits, healthcare supplements, the COVID-19 vaccine and other sterile injectable drugs, the major COVID-19 therapeutics, complex API and biologics production, and drug substance packaging.
The results were astonishing – the teams were able to get at least +20-50% more output everywhere we ran projects, and in many cases were able to get 2x or 3x capacity increases. This work led us to add pharma/API as a cornerstone of Chartwell’s core purpose: to help increase the global supply of lifesaving and life extending drugs.
Fast forward to today, and our research team is constantly looking for drug shortages and pharma capacity shortages, so that we can reach out and offer to help.
There is always much more opportunity to improve than what people think. When site teams are asking for help and keen to improve, this is when we will find the 20-50% opportunity. And when the site teams resist help from outsiders or believe everything is already optimized, this is when we will find the opportunity to improve 2x or 3x or more.
I enjoy spending time with family, traveling, reading, training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and lifting heavy things.
Jonathan Willis
Partner
With over 50 improvement projects in the UK, Europe and the USA, I have vast industry experience in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and industrial products. I help manufacturers develop processes and roll-out improvements across their sites around the world.
I believe that everyone wants to do a good job, and that many people can feel frustrated by existing systems and processes. I love challenging and changing these systems to help people do the right thing more easily, and to build their capacity to identify and execute future changes for themselves.
University of Cambridge, Master of Engineering in Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.
Before I began my Engineering studies, the world of construction captivated me. Delivering complex and ambitious solutions to challenges requires an astounding level of precision in planning and execution. The need for these skills first struck me when visiting the Millau Viaduct in France in the early 2000s – aligning a 342m bridge deck with a pylon 270m in the air to within millimetres is quite something! This, along with my ability to lead others through complex and complicated systems, has helped me be successful throughout my career.
I take great satisfaction knowing that the work we do with our clients has a positive, and often far-reaching impact on the communities they serve. Working with Pharmaceutical companies, both during the Covid Pandemic and in more normal times, is a great example of how our work can bring a real change in the world – our improvements translate into more life-saving drugs being available to patients around the world.
On a personal note, I am excited to see how we can engage with organisations to help combat climate change. Improving how we use our energy in manufacturing is vital for moving to a more sustainable future, and to ensure that my daughter’s generation has better opportunities and prospects than we do.
My greatest achievements to date at Chartwell are found in the large body of work that we have done at multiple sites for a large pharmaceutical manufacturer. In just one of these projects, we helped increase their output of a critical drug by over 200%, meaning they were able to give 45,000 patients an extra 23 years of life.
Having worked and led over 50 improvement projects, there are two key things that massively increase the probability of successfully delivering change:
One perk of my job is the opportunity to travel to all sorts of places, especially ones that aren’t on the normal tourist routes. This gives me a great opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and to explore local cultures and foods.
Outside of work, I like to extend this exploration into the early hours of the morning. Seeing a place at sunrise gives an opportunity to experience places in a whole new way. It is quite something to be stood on the Brooklyn Bridge in complete isolation, or to see the nights purple hue recede and reveal the vistas of a National Park.
Since joining Chartwell in 2017, he has had the opportunity to work in a wide range of industries, resolving multiple companies biggest operational challenges and delivering transformational results which have a tangible impact on business performance.
Andrew Smith
Associate Partner
I enjoy working on teams largest challenges and achieving results of magnitudes which previously were thought to be unattainable.
Masters in Biochemical Engineering, University of Bath 2014
Since I began my engineering studies, I knew I wanted to use my technical acumen to solve companies’ largest problems. Having a solid grounding in operations management from my prior job within industry, I transitioned into consulting to ensure that not only was I working on the largest problems, but also by extension, working on the things that would have the greatest impact both on companies and their end consumers.
After running dozens of transformational improvement projects across multiple different industries, I take the most satisfaction from knowing that the work we do with our clients has a profound impact on their business and the lives of the customers they serve.
Interesting pieces of analysis of facts and data that your organization has is just that … interesting. What really matters is actionable insight. How do we go about improvement? What’s the masterplan and timeline? How much improvement are we going to get and by when? How do we convert operations improvement to real financial value? All of these questions I answer by taking complex concepts and concisely portraying them in an understandable manner without over-simplifying and missing key details. This makes the right course of action as clear as possible to all stakeholders.
Leading teams of consultants to rapidly increase the capacity of processes producing life-saving drugs during the Covid-19 pandemic. This included increasing the capacity of vaccine production by 110 million doses per year in a 5-month period.
Having done both, I can say running a factory and improving a factory are two different things. Input from the folks running the process is essential to driving improvement, but relying on them to be the sole drivers of improvement is unlikely to yield a step-change in performance in the short-term.
Although I peaked during college, I still play squash to keep myself active. I also enjoy exploring the USA as the new country which I now call home.
Max Winchester
Principal and Head of Digital
I am continually impressed and motivated by the positive impact that our team has on the world, both by reducing waste in various forms – materials, energy, and time – and from the effect these projects have on the mindset of the client teams we get to work with.
University of Cambridge, Geological Sciences & Management
After growing up on the south coast of England, my curiosity for ‘how things work’ was thoroughly entertained during a Natural Sciences degree in Cambridge, where I eventually specialized in Geological Sciences. Hiking up a rugged clifftop in Scotland to peer over at the exposed rock face opposite, before beginning to untangle the series of processes that must have combined to generate that exact sequence and structure, allowed me to combine my loves of science, nature, and physical processes.
Seeking a career that would continue this technical problem solving, offer an ever-changing set of challenges, and provide opportunities to travel the world, I started at Chartwell soon after graduation, after a brief stint as a ski instructor in New Zealand.
In my early career, I was quick to jump on opportunities to lead projects overseas, including Chartwell’s first ever projects in China and Singapore, as well as some of our early ventures in the US. That appetite for adventure continues as I have recently moved to New York where I live with my wife in Brooklyn.
Taking on a critical role during the Covid pandemic is something I will always remember vividly and fondly. As a team, we built a supply chain from the ground up in a matter of weeks to manufacture and deliver PCR test kits to hospitals around the world. No stone was left unturned in the effort and deep bonds were formed between those of us involved.
The greatest moment in any project is that point at which the improvement team gets their first major breakthrough. Not only is it a cause for celebration, but it also opens the group’s eyes to what might ultimately be possible. Suddenly everyone’s ambition shifts and this can act like rocket fuel.
My advice is therefore to not let ambition stand in the way of results; we are all capable of more than we initially thought possible.
I’m an avid sportsman, using weekends and vacations to challenge myself on the slopes, the trails, or the bike – and the distances seem to keep getting longer! Otherwise, I enjoy playing social cricket, football, and golf for the camaraderie (particularly useful when moving to a new city).
Aside from sports, I love to travel and experience new places and cultures. India, Japan, and, most recently, Brazil have been particular highlights over the years.
Rob Crawford
Associate Partner
If my successes and failures throughout my career so far have taught me anything, it is the criticality of not overlooking the people-centric part of manufacturing. The technical aspects of identifying changes to implement are usually pretty straightforward compared to the challenge of actually getting people to do things differently, day-in and day-out.
Driving those behavioural and cultural changes is a great challenge – refining my approach to this central problem has been my greatest learning over the past 8 years, and still continues every day.
My favourite thing about working at Chartwell is continuously learning. Whatever grade you are at or project you are staffed on, there are always opportunities to learn and great people to learn from – internally and on the client side.
A close second would be the satisfaction of making real, measurable change happen.
Bachelor’s Degree in Natural Sciences and Master’s Degree in Materials Science from Cambridge University, UK
I spent my childhood moving between different countries every 2-3 years. Perhaps this is where my love of seeing new places and meeting new people comes from.
At university, I quickly moved away from my original plan to study Physics and towards the more tangible and directly-applicable study of Materials Science. The opportunity to use my science degree to solve interesting, urgent, important problems in a manufacturing setting and to get paid to travel the world and meet interesting people was too good to pass up, and I was delighted to join Chartwell after finishing my Master’s degree in 2015.
Being one of Chartwell’s first 10 employees, I have been able to help grow and shape the business in a wide range of areas – from recruitment to training and new product development. I was also one of three Chartwell team members to set up our US office in Boston in 2017, where I have now returned to live.
During my time at Chartwell, I’ve had the opportunity to work across a wide range of industries and meet wonderful people around the world – expert Cheese makers in Wisconsin, textile weavers in Georgia, Foam makers in Poland, Super Yacht painters in Mallorca and Barcelona, and many experts in biomedical sciences in Pharmaceutical plants across Europe and the US. Being able to build relationships with interesting people from every level of our clients’ organizations has been a great source of joy for me.
The one FIVE most important insights I try to pass along to clients, colleagues, and anyone else who will listen:
My greatest achievement at Chartwell was undoubtedly the work I did to help establish our US office. The ongoing impact from our work to hire, train and support that original group of excellent team members is far greater than anything I could hope to achieve individually – and I’m very proud of the impact of my individual work.
Outside of work I’m a keen football player, scuba diver, nature photographer, traveller, beer brewer, hiker, reader, and cook. Any time I can be outdoors, underwater or eating something extraordinary is time well spent for me.
Jenny Overton
Associate Partner and People Development Leader
In my experience, the core to any successful business is performance visibility and ownership, data-driven prioritization and a positive improvement mindset.
The Chartwell methodology enables us to identify the full improvement potential and prioritize that to deliver step change operational results. These structures have allowed us to make significant improvements across a breadth of processes and industries. I work with client leaders to embed these skillsets into their organization through training and coaching of their teams. I particularly focus on the cultural change required within a company as in my experience, creating a positive improvement attitude unlocks vast potential in any organization. I also ensure that systems are installed which give immediate and accurate data to allow all tiers of the organization to make the correct decisions to impact performance, from shopfloor operators, through all supporting departments to the C-suite.
I love helping people unblock constraints and realizing both themselves and their processes are capable of much more than they previously believed. The balance of geeking out over how a process works while still understanding that the fundamental driver in any business is its people is fascinating. Working with leadership teams to improve these essentials is always an exciting challenge.
MEng Chemical Engineering from University of Cambridge, Clare College
Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by how the world worked and to find a job where my most common question is ‘why’ has fitted me very well! As one of Chartwell’s first employees, I have had the privilege of being on a huge range of projects from small firms to global multi-billion turnover companies, from making bins to superyachts and from being a solo consultant solving a tricky technical problem to leading a large Chartwell team to deliver transformational results across multiple factories. I have also helped the company grow and develop our internal systems and client offerings, trying to ensure that we practice what we preach and continually improve.
I developed my love for leadership through Girlguiding UK, which also allowed me to practice my crafting skills, enjoy the outdoors and fulfill my love of adventure, including leading a camp in Eastern Siberia. I continue to travel both on and off the beaten path, usually with a ball of wool in my rucksack for my latest amigurumi project.
One of my favorite projects was an air filtration factory in UK. It was my first project leading the team independently and we transformed the entire business. With efficiency improvements, QC failure reduction, SOP and planning improvements, installation of and end-to-end live unit tracking system, introduction of performance bonus for the shopfloor, technical problem solving, cycle time reduction to improve the process for the operators and an entire shopfloor redesign to improve process flow – we touched almost every area of this company in just a few months.
This showed me just how powerful a team can be with the right direction and attitude and I was immensely proud of our work there. What really makes it special for me is that many years later, they have continued to improve and grow and take the company to even greater success.
For the greatest success you need to:
Travel, travel and more travel. I love experiencing new places and meeting new people and I’ve spent my life trying to reach remote places of the world, often in search of unique wildlife encounters or breathtaking scenery. Closer to home, I can spend hours lost in a movie, doing some amigurumi (crochet) or building my latest Lego.
Solutions
Industry
Chemicals
Improve plant capacity at a continuous chemicals manufacturer
7% additional output
$12 million in EBIDTA
Key Stats
$12M
EBITDA from production improvements
7%
Additional output delivered
Can a continuous chemical plant improve outside of a shutdown?
For many continuous chemical manufacturers, operational improvement follows a predictable cycle. Opportunities are identified, engineering studies are completed and capital projects are implemented during planned turnarounds.
That was the challenge facing a leading chemicals manufacturer as demand increased across its ammonia and ammonia derivative products. The business needed additional production capacity to support growing customer commitments and take advantage of market opportunities.
The challenge was particularly acute within the ammonia operation. The plant was designed to run continuously for three years between major turnarounds, making it one of the most difficult environments in which to drive operational improvement. Conventional thinking suggested that meaningful gains would need to wait until the next shutdown, when engineering changes and capital projects could be implemented. The accepted belief was simple: if the plant wasn’t coming down for another three years, significant capacity improvements were unlikely to happen before then.
Chartwell had already partnered with the organization on several successful improvement initiatives, earning trust through technical expertise, practical execution and hands-on collaboration. That relationship opened the door to a bigger challenge:
Could a plant that wasn’t scheduled to stop for another three years still improve?
Rather than waiting for the next planned shutdown or pursuing a traditional engineering redesign, Chartwell worked alongside operators, engineers and site leadership to identify where additional capacity could be safely unlocked within the existing operation.
Using bottleneck theory and advanced statistical techniques, the team evaluated process behavior, pinpointed the operation’s true bottlenecks, and identified which areas could be optimized to increase throughput.
Because the plant was designed to remain online, replacing equipment or making major physical modifications was not an option. Instead, Chartwell leveraged its technical expertise to understand the process constraints, conduct risk assessments and determine exactly where changes could be made safely.
Working closely with the client’s operations team, Chartwell implemented a series of targeted operational improvements through the control room, incrementally adjusting operating parameters and set points while carefully monitoring performance and system response At the same time, the team applied structured problem solving to identify the specific constraints limiting performance and uncover their root causes. This enabled operational improvements and targeted capital investments to progress in parallel, ensuring both day-to-day optimization efforts and longer-term investments were focused on the changes that would have the greatest impact on throughput and production performance.
Going beyond process optimization, the Chartwell work also identified the specific constraints limiting performance and led to targeted capital recommendations with an outsized return. Historically, capital had often been deployed toward equipment purchases with mixed impact on production rates. By focusing on highly specific technical constraints, Chartwell helped ensure investment was directed toward the changes that delivered measurable performance gains.
The Chartwell team worked alongside the maintenance team also, to understand and ultimately resolve the routine issues that prevented Work Orders from being completed, driving down the backlog of overdue work orders and driving up productivity. Together with the site Engineers and Maintenance team, a process to map the largest risks to stable running and take immediate action was implemented, ensuring the team made steady progress every day on the biggest risks to sitewide reliability.
Finally, Chartwell coached and trained more than 20 team members, helping the organization build a repeatable approach to problem-solving, prioritization and operational improvement.
The program demonstrated that meaningful improvements were possible without waiting for the next improvement cycle.
By identifying the right bottlenecks, implementing targeted operational changes and optimizing how the plant was run, Chartwell helped deliver 7% additional output, equivalent to an estimated 60-70 additional tons per day and approximately $12 million in EBIDTA.
The broader program also delivered measurable gains across multiple operations:
These improvements enabled the business to meet growing customer demand, support new commercial commitments, and achieve record nitric acid and ammonium nitrate solution production performance. The operation also realized improvements in reliability, throughput and overall efficiency.
The most significant outcome was not the additional capacity.
The project challenged a widely accepted assumption that meaningful improvement in a continuous chemical operation must wait for the next shutdown or capital cycle.
By combining technical expertise, operator insight and structured problem-solving, Chartwell demonstrated that significant gains can be achieved while a plant remains online, even in an operation designed to run continuously for three years between major shutdowns.
Just as importantly, Chartwell provided the structure, leadership and methodology needed to keep the client team focused on the issues that mattered most. Rather than pursuing dozens of potential opportunities, the team worked together to identify the true bottlenecks, prioritize the highest-value actions and systematically implement solutions that delivered measurable results. This disciplined approach helped ensure effort was directed toward solving the right problems in the right order.
Along the way, operators, engineers and site leaders strengthened their own problem-solving capabilities. Through coaching, training and hands-on collaboration, the organization developed a repeatable approach to identifying constraints, evaluating opportunities and sustaining improvement long after the engagement concluded.
Together, Chartwell and the client team proved that accepted constraints are not always actual limits. With the right expertise, structure and approach to problem-solving, even the most complex continuous operations can unlock performance gains that many assume are years away.
Every operation has assumptions that influence how decisions are made.
Chartwell works alongside manufacturers to identify true bottlenecks, build internal capability and unlock sustainable performance improvements, without waiting for the next major capital project. Contact us to learn how we can help improve your operations.
Contact us to see how we can make step change improvements for your organization.
