Timothy Noble

Timothy Noble is the president & managing partner of The Avery Point Group. Mr. Noble has over 30 years of executive leadership experience in business transformation, manufacturing operations, supply chain management, distribution, and executive search. Throughout his career, he has been consistently promoted and has held senior-level executive band roles in major Fortune 500 companies like General Electric (GE) and The Stanley Works (SWK – now known as Stanley Black and Decker). As a GE trained Master Black Belt and Shingijutsu trained Lean executive, Mr. Noble has extensive transformation experience applying Lean, Six Sigma, and digital transformation globally.

Before starting The Avery Point Group in 2004, Noble was the Global Operations Executive for Stanley-Bostitch, the second-largest division of The Stanley Works . In that role, he had full operational leadership responsibility for 8 plants and over 1,900 employees with operations throughout North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia, supporting revenue of just under $1.0 Billion.

While at The Stanley Works, Noble was also responsible for the North American distribution operations of the business’s Hand Tool and Hardware Group, supporting revenue of more than $1.0 Billion. In this capacity, he drove a record-setting 15.4% in year-over-year productivity. These results were driven primarily by unprecedented labor productivity of 18.8%, as the result of focusing on individual labor performance tracking and leveraging Lean and Six Sigma to dramatically improve labor balancing, process flow, and throughput that ensured effective labor utilization with no capital investment. While in this role, Noble was recognized repeatedly by the CEO for playing a critical role in helping the business achieve its quarterly/year-end revenue, service, and fulfillment objectives.

Before joining The Stanley Works, Noble spent almost 14 years with General Electric and was consistently promoted into roles of increasing responsibility in supply chain management, plant operations, Lean Six Sigma leadership, and plant management (GE Executive Band level roles).

In his last role with GE, Noble was a plant manager for GE Lighting’s Quartz business. In this executive leadership role, he led over 300 employees, processing raw silica sand into high-purity fused silica quartz tubing and rod components for demanding global customers in the lighting, semiconductor, and fiber-optic industries. He managed the largest plant in the global GE Quartz operation, supporting over $250 million in revenue. Noble drove over 9% year-over-year VCP despite significant down-market headwinds tied to the dot.com market crash. He was instrumental in driving significant changes in labor, attendance, and work practices in a challenging union environment that were key to delivering variable cost productivity.

In his earlier Lean Six Sigma role, while at GE Lighting, Noble was responsible for driving the North American Production Division’s Lean Six Sigma Stable Operations and Span initiatives across 26 plants in the US, Canada, and Mexico, supporting $3.0B+ in revenue (an executive leadership development staff role reporting directly to a GE Corporate Officer and VP). In that role, Noble worked closely with GE’s Chief Lean Six Sigma Quality Officer, who reported directly to Chairman and CEO Jack Welch and helped deliver significant capacity and throughput improvements in an environment of growing product demand and limited capital investment.

In an earlier executive leadership development role at GE Lighting, Noble managed over 350 employees in one of the largest operations management roles in the division, producing over 300,000 lamps per day in a wide range of reflector and specialty lamp products for major retailers. In this role, Noble leveraged GE’s CIMPLICITY software as part of the plant’s and GE’s broader digital transformation efforts to capture real-time equipment process performance data. A precursor to today’s Industry 4.0 approach, Noble integrated this digital transformation effort into the operation’s Lean Six Sigma, Stable Operations, and TPM improvement initiatives. As a result, he drove an unprecedented 9.8 % improvement in machine efficiency on extremely complex integrated lamp-making equipment that each produced over 2,200 lamps/hr. The data from this digital transformation platform was also leveraged along with Lean Six Sigma to drive record-setting process performance results with a 20% DPM reduction in lamp defects, a 36% reduction in material efficiency shrinkage, and a 47% reduction in OSHA recordables.

Mr. Noble holds a B.S. in Management / Industrial Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated with Highest Distinction and received the Salisbury Prize, one of the university’s oldest and most prestigious academic achievement awards.  Since 1871, the Salisbury Prize has honored graduating seniors who have made “truly exceptional contributions inside and outside the university. Not only must a student have a perfect academic record to receive this prize, but they must also have taken on an extraordinarily challenging academic course load and degree path. The prize recipients must also demonstrate leadership at the university and represent the school at notable off-campus venues.”

After graduation, Noble was recruited into General Electric’s highly selective Manufacturing Management Program (GE MMP), with assignments in GE Transportation and GE Government Electronics divisions. The GE-MMP program was designed to develop and fast-track high-potential operational leaders by combining over a year of classroom and GE Crotonville leadership development and operations management training courses with 4 rotational work assignments across various GE businesses.

The son of a Presbyterian minister and theology professor, Noble spent his youth growing up in Basel, Switzerland, and in the Westchester suburbs of New York City. After many corporate promotions and relocations throughout his career, Noble now happily resides with his wife and family in Atlanta.