Vickie has deep and varied experience, starting her career in manufacturing first at Proctor and Gamble’s flagship Ivorydale Soap Plant, and then at Alcoa, one of the world’s safest companies. Her passion for values-based system thinking began at P&G when she was part of the company’s global initiative to implement TPM. She built on her learnings when she joined Alcoa’s Corporate Strategic Analysis and Planning Group. There she helped business units use Alcoa’s proprietary process of theoretical, potential, and practical limits to drive strategy and process improvement.
Subsequently, as a member of the Alcoa Business System Group, she assisted business unit leadership world-wide in adopting Alcoa’s new comprehensive management system, the Alcoa Business System, which is based on the principles of the Toyota Production System. This work involved leadership, strategic, operational, and change management support in operations and support functions, such as finance and human resources. During this time, she had the opportunity to be directly and extensively mentored by Toyota sensei and Harvard Business School mentors.
In 2000, she took a leave of absence from Alcoa to work with Paul O’Neill in supporting the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative applying the same values-based safety, quality, and system design principles in the local healthcare industry. PRHI was one of the first organizations to demonstrate that lean principles and methodologies applied to healthcare could succeed in improving patient and staff safety, improve quality and reduce cost.
Later, she co-founded True North Institute, a consulting firm that supported various Pittsburgh businesses, nonprofits, and healthcare organizations in the application of the principles of the Toyota Production System. These organizations included a local grocery chain, a women’s center and shelter, a substance abuse clinic, and a school district.
Vickie joined Value Capture following her work with Pittsburgh’s St. Clair Hospital, supporting the organization’s Perioperative transformation, the planning and building of a new Ambulatory care center, and the integration of its primary care and specialty practices into a multi-specialty medical group.
