About Us
Colin Mynott
Dr Colin Mynott is a Chartered Engineer, a European Engineer, and a past Fellow of the Institute of Directors. A materials technologist by training, he graduated from the London Imperial College of Science and Technology and, for his doctorate, from Cambridge University in 1963.
He has extensive hands-on experience of manufacturing systems and of developing products, from devising strategy through to manufacturing engineering and start-up.
He worked in and managed manufacturing companies that developed their own products. His career started in the automotive industry in manufacturing systems’ engineering at the British Motor Corporation; he then became The Materials Engineer for Chrysler UK. Then followed a 5-year spell in international management consultancy. Following that, from 1976, he successively ran medium-sized manufacturing companies in the automotive sector. In a 3-year sabbatical from industry, in 1990 he was asked to organise the UK Design Council’s services to manufacturing industry as Industry Director, primarily to improve UK manufacturers’ product development capability.
As part of his manufacturing career, he started his own manufacturing firm with two partners in 1973, initially as non-executive chairman and, from 1987, as joint chief executive until its sale in 1989. It continues today as a market leader in its field.
He formed his present company in 1994 to disseminate best practice to industry on all aspects of product development, how it should be organised, its financial impact and management. He is joint author of a number of publications on product development and continuously researches best practice.
When requested, he organises and runs workshops, seminars and conferences on product development to show companies how, through their own efforts, they can improve their performance. And in national programmes with UK institutions, for example with the Royal Academy of Engineering in a UK-wide programme to improve the product development capability of UK manufacturers; and running workshops with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
He helps companies with their product development strategy and its operation; for example, with a leading Japanese car-maker in a 3-year programme to help improve the product development effectiveness of their European first-tier suppliers.