Faculty
The Academy of Excellence in Healthcare faculty members are able to use their vast experience and knowledge to create a stimulating and productive learning environment for students. By leveraging significant expertise in both corporate and academic environments, faculty members provide real-world examples and challenge students to apply concepts learned in the classroom.
Peg Pennington is the executive director of the Center for Operational Excellence at Ohio State University. She works closely with companies, managing and coordinating problem-solving consultations, site visits, and best-practice knowledge sharing. Peg is also the academic director of the Academy for Excellence in Healthcare, a collaboration between Ohio State University and Cardinal Health to bring operational excellence to healthcare. As a senior lecturer at the Fisher College of Business, Peg teaches lean enterprise and Six Sigma and serves as a coach for the college’s Master of Business Operational Excellence cohort in which she helped to architect.
She has a bachelor’s degree in finance from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Dayton. She resides in Columbus, OH with her husband and three teenage children. When she is not taking soccer pictures she enjoys running overnight relays with her running group.
Rick Guba is an Executive in Residence in the Management Sciences department. He came to Fisher in 2016 after retiring from General Electric co where he worked for 35 years. While he worked for the General Electric Company he held multiple manufacturing and design positions in multiple locations. His most recent role was to manage Lean transformation in the 87 Aviation division global facilities. These facilities included new make component manufacturing, assembly, and engine test and overhaul operations.
Guba has extensive experience in Six Sigma, Lean methodology, change management, teaming, leadership development and manufacturing management. His experience includes problem solving in traditional manufacturing applications as well as Transactional application (HR, Engineering, IT, Billing, finance). He has developed the Lean Leader development program for the Aviation division that is reshaping leadership in the GE organizations today.
At Fisher, Guba serves as a faculty of the Master of Business Operational Excellence degree program. In addition to teaching in the MBOE program he coached students from Tinker Air Force Base, GE, Tennessee Government, and more. In recent years, Guba has privately consulted with private and publicly held companies and organizations.
Al is the Vice-President of Operational Excellence for the Pharmaceutical Segment. Specifically, Al leads the continuous improvement efforts for all pharmaceutical business units (Distribution, Nuclear, Specialty, Pharmacy Solutions) as well as LSS collaboration with customers and suppliers. Al is responsible for integrating Operational Excellence philosophies and methods to improve business performance, enhance the customer experience, and create supply chain efficiencies. Al rejoined Cardinal Health in October 2009 from Catalent Pharma Solutions (formally Cardinal Health PTS) where he was a Master Black Belt & Deployment Leader for their Oral Technologies Division. At Catalent, Al led OpEx efforts and lean implementations at 13 sites globally resulting in $45M of Type 1 savings over 3 years. Al originally joined Cardinal Health in May 2006 as a Master Black Belt.
Prior to joining Cardinal Health, Al spent over eight years at GE Superabrasives/Diamond Innovations leading engineering efforts, new product development, Lean Six Sigma capabilities, and quality initiatives. He applied DFSS techniques over 5 years in his engineering capacity for several product lines with $38M in annual sales.
Al has a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Business Administration from The Ohio State University, where he also serves as an instructor teaching 3 Six Sigma classes annually.
Ken has been involved in the enterprise deployment of operational excellence for Cardinal Health for the past eight years. Ken's primary responsibility has been to translating the application of continuous improvement using Lean Six Sigma methodologies across the healthcare value stream, including work with healthcare manufacturers and healthcare providers.
Overall, Ken has 23 years of general business experience in a wide range of functional roles including sales, design, production management and process improvement. His career has crossed several industries including primary metal working, advanced materials and metal stampings supporting various OEM products including automotive, appliances and industrial pumps.
Since 2009, Ken has been a technical coach for Ohio State University executive MBA candidates in the Business Operational Excellence program. As a coach, Ken helps participants apply operational excellence methodologies to everyday work.
Ken has been trained and certified in the Danaher Business System by Shingjutsu Kaizen and has also been certified in Six Sigma by General Electric. Ken holds a Bachelor of Science, Aerospace Technology from Kent State University and an MBA, Operations Management and Quality from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Chris has more than 25 years of healthcare industry experience including leadership positions in the areas of laboratory, corporate health, operational excellence, and consulting. He has Lean Six Sigma experience in Perioperative Services, Cardiovascular Services, Perinatal Services, Emergency Department, Infection Control, Laboratory, Risk Management, and Materials Management.
He demonstrated many successes within the areas of hospital operations including strategic consolidation of pathology services and construction of an offsite Core Laboratory, open heart clinical excellence initiatives, surgical case cart redesign and workflow, OR scheduling, pre-admission testing patient flow, emergency department length of stay, reduction of catheter-related blood stream infections, improved pneumococcal vaccination rates, and revenue capture.
Since joining Cardinal Health, Chris has experiences in organizational development, operational excellence, medical distribution, corporate shared services and consulting. He has embedded operational excellence capabilities across the organization conducting LSS training courses, mentoring Black Belts, Green Belts, Kaizen Leaders, and Sponsors, and coaching high potential employees. He has led lean cultural transformation across medical distribution network via Lean Roadmap to Success and Operating Model initiatives.
Currently, he is the Director of the Center of Excellence for Operational Excellence responsible for building people capabilities that embed operational excellence as an enterprise-wide core capability to drive value internally and externally and fosters a high-performance culture. He also leads the fee for service Cardinal Health Performance Improvement Consulting team.Chris serves as a coach for The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business MBOE program and the Academy for Excellence in Healthcare
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