Joe Murcko is the principal of EM Consulting Group, a Lean manufacturing consultancy specializing in aligning tactical level employees to senior level planning in small to medium size companies. Joe is a former staff consultant

with the Arizona Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a subsidiary of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Department of Commerce), and was a manufacturing manager at the Toyota manufacturing facility New United Motor Mfg. Inc., in Fremont, California for 19 years. Joe wrote The Missing Principle of Lean The Art of Alignment® after many years of observing well thought out lean projects falter due to lack of sustainability after implementation.