YAMATO APPOINTS NEW PROJECT MANAGEMENT HEAD

John Mulligan has joined Yamato Scale Dataweigh UK (Yamato) as project manager, tasked with implementing processes aimed at managing Yamato’s growing customer base and delivering integrated solutions from across its range of specialist weighing machinery.

With a background in overseeing projects within the automotive, medical technology and heavy industry sectors, John has worked in engineering for the past 15 years. He has gained Chartered Engineer status and Prince2 project management certification along the way.

Commenting on the project manager role, Yamato’s commercial operations manager Andrea Spencer said: “It’s a challenging role with a steep learning curve but John does have plenty of experience with project management best practice and managing jobs through to their completion.”

The appointment is the beginning of an overhaul for Yamato, which previously has interfaced each department directly with the customer.

“There is a lot of expertise in Yamato, they’re a great team with a lot of experience and knowledge within their specialised industry,” said John, “Integrating that experience and using it to manage what we do, from the sale through to the installation, is what this role is all about but it will be a team effort.”

The role was created to accommodate increased customer growth, providing a single point of contact to assist all customers with their purchasing, installations and commissioning in order to allow the sales and operations teams to focus their activity. Co-ordinating the sales, technical and commercial operations divisions of Yamato is part of a streamlining of its current processes.

John Mulligan said: “We’ve agreed what we’re going to focus on, now comes the implementation and that’s where things really get interesting!”

Outside of the office, John has experience managing a very different type of challenge. Married and with two sons, aged seven and 10, his time outside of Yamato is mostly taken up with involvement in helping with their budding martial arts and athletics careers.

“They do take up most of my spare time,” John admitted, “but when I can find the time and weather permitting, I’m out on my Yamaha R1, for either a casual few hours of riding with friends in the Yorkshire Moors or a track day or two.”