TOCICO

Most consultants advise organizations from the outside. Brunello Menicucci brings a different perspective, having spent more than 40 years working inside factories, warehouses, finance departments, and boardrooms. Brunello began his career at the age of 20 in a local shoe factory, where he managed finance and accounting. Working within a real production environment—observing how orders flowed, where work became delayed, and how cash moved through the business—shaped his understanding of organizations and influenced everything that followed. A few years later, he joined a small housewares distributor, again working in finance. After completing a COBOL II course and recognizing the potential of business software, Brunello moved to an IT company that installed and supported enterprise resource planning systems. Over the next six years, he worked inside marble companies, textile mills, woodworking businesses, paper factories, and many other production environments. His role went beyond installing software. Each implementation required a detailed understanding of a new industry, its operational constraints, and the ways money and materials moved through the system. He later co-founded a marketing company at a time when the internet was not yet widely available to businesses. The company used early bulletin board systems to collect market intelligence, providing what would now be described as an early-stage information service. His next role was with a national IT distributor, where he managed marketing for several large cash-and-carry stores. He then helped develop an entirely new distribution channel: a network of independent local stores operating under a national brand. Moving into general management, Brunello joined a paper company as General Manager. There, he helped build the EcoCopia brand of A4 paper from the ground up and secured distribution through Esselunga, Coop Italia, and HP Europe. Working with major retail buyers and a multinational company provided practical lessons in throughput, market access, and commercial constraints that could not have been learned from a textbook. He was subsequently involved in the turnaround of an office furniture company owned by Banca Intesa. After joining as General Manager, he became CEO and led the business back to profitability before it was acquired. The experience reinforced the importance of understanding system-wide consequences, avoiding local optimization, and recognizing that the true constraint is rarely where people initially expect to find it. His final corporate role was as a board member and finance leader for one of Italy’s most prominent Apple distributors. During his three years with the company, revenue increased from €80 million to €210 million. Managing growth at that pace placed every process, person, and assumption under pressure and provided lessons that could only be gained through direct experience. In 2012, after working inside organizations of many different sizes and across a wide range of industries, Brunello established his own consulting practice.

Ad Vermeulen is the director/co-founder at A-dato and an expert in implementation of software solutions in the field of flow-based project and portfolio management. In 2006, A-dato was started out of the belief that people, teams and organizations should be able to collaborate smoothly and effectively when pursuing their goals and ambitions. In order to do so, we created the LYNX, a software for Multi-Project and Portfolio management solutions inspired by the principles from Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). LYNX Software is used by leading companies worldwide such as Airbus, Bosch, Diamond Air, Endress and Zeiss, and enables them to optimize and synchronize workflows across their total portfolio and project management landscape. LYNX is easy to implement and scales to fit the needs from small to large organizations. Moreover, Agile and Kanban workflows are fully integrated through LYNX TameFlow with the flexibility to customize the implementation and configure processes as needed.