The People Behind the Service

Phil has over 30 years’ experience in the Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing sectors with a significant aerospace focus. The experience has been gained within Senior Operational and General Management positions in the UK, US and Asia.

Phil has, and continues to be, actively involved with several companies, supporting Strategy development and deployment in the Aerospace and Automotive sectors working within the SC21 and LTASC programmes sponsored by the likes of Airbus, Bae, Rolls Royce and JCB in the UK. Further afield, he has had significant involvement with the Competitive Edge programme in Canada sponsored by Boeing and the Magellan Corporation.

Phil and his colleague and co-business owner Mark Hughes acquired Redthorn Limited in 2012. Phil’s particular strengths have spear-headed the development of the strategic direction of Redthorn to enhance the Customer Experience through the provision of additional Value-Adding services. These include data insights; analytics and consultancy to support productivity, Quality and Cost improvements; as well as the move towards Software as a Service (SaaS).

Phil continues to ensure topicality of thinking and innovation to his customers by focusing on his CPD by his continued involvement in the development of Operational Excellence programmes, combining Systems and Consulting approaches to improving business performance.

Mark Hughes was previously a senior Airbus Executive who formed Agile
Business Improvement Ltd with his colleague Phil Jones (also formerly a senior manager at Airbus) in 2007. Agile provide a range of services (such as strategic business planning, supply chain development and Leadership development) to the Advanced Engineering sector and are strategic service providers for the North West Aerospace Alliance and Manitoba Aerospace Human Resource Council.

Mark joined the Aerospace Wales forum as an observer in 2014 and was appointed a Director in 2016.

Mark acquired a shareholding in Redthorn Aventa in 2012 along with his colleague Phil Jones and a co investor. Mark led the Redthorn management team and developed and implemented new value added services for Redthorn customers as well as for companies introduced by Agile Business Improvement Ltd.

Mark increased his shareholding in Redthorn in 2015 along with his colleague Phil Jones after the co investor left the business to pursue an alternative strategy.

Mark has over 30 years’ experience in the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering sector, particularly Aerospace which has been gained within change, operational and general managerial positions, both in the UK and abroad. He has significant experience in leading and delivering change programmes within operational, supply chain and logistics environments and has developed a strong track record for raising Business performance.

Mark has taken care to develop his change management and leadership skills, by taking on new challenges, often working with new teams in unfamiliar businesses. He led a major change programme to deploy Lean methods and
systems across Logistics throughout Airbus UK and was an executive member
of the Manufacturing Change Programme team responsible for designing the future improvement strategy.

Tom started his career as an SQL programmer, progressing to become a technical lead for a number of development projects. (He actually implemented a Redthorn system as a customer prior to joining the Redthorn team in 2005).

After a number of years working as Systems consultant for Redthorn, Tom moved onto the consultancy side of the Business implementing continuous improvement programmes for a number of manufacturing companies in the UK, France, and Poland, as well as running MRP Selection Projects and Sales and Operations Planning projects. He took on his current role as Operations Director in 2016 and is responsible for the development, sale and implementation of Redthorn’s in-house MRP systems. He also loves to surf.

Quite simply… The Glue of the business!

Hannah started her career in Business Support at an engineering company using the Redthorn Software. She has worked at Redthorn for 10 years, starting on the software support desk, progressing into training and now a Systems Analyst helping to develop the current products.

Hannah is married with 2 young children and has an English Degree.

Alison studied Speech and Language Therapy at Manchester Metropolitan University and has worked for Redthorn since 1999, starting out as a Customer Support Trainee and progressing to a role as Office Manager. She recently returned to the company on a part time basis, following the arrival of her son Oliver, and mainly concentrates on customer support and product testing.

Zoe has worked for Redthorn since 2013, in a variety of roles covering account management, customer support and training of the system. Zoe spends much of her time visiting customers ensuring they are using the Redthorn system effectively and generally their Redthorn system knowledge.

Zoe speaks 3 languages and holds a Master’s degree in Business. Zoe is a keen traveller and plans to travel extensively in the future.

Simon is an experienced IT support professional. Prior to Redthorn, he was employed at Hewlett Packard for 12 years in various desktop and server roles. Simon’s main role at Redthorn, is to manage the internal infrastructure of the Redthorn software suite, this includes all hardware and software.

He is married with 2 children, 3 dogs, 6 cats and a goldfish.

Interesting fact – His father was a famous symphony orchestral conductor.

Przemyslaw (aka Denis) is an experienced IT support engineer with a degree in Systems Engineering. He has 10 years experience in a variety of office based environments and has a broad knowledge and experience of IT operating systems including Windows, Linux, knowledge of SAP/ERP systems and Oracle databases.

Previously Denis worked in in a busy office/production environment, providing technical support to over 300 employees across three sites in UK. In Redthorn, he is responsible for technical and software support.

Born and bred in Poland, Denis has made the UK his home since 2005. He loves basketball and mixed martial arts.

Rebecca has been an Account Manager for over 10 years, working in various Industries. Her role prior to Redthorn was Senior Account Manager for a locally based packaging company.
Rebecca is one of the sales account Executives at Redthorn and her role is to make sure that all our current customers are supported and up to date with the latest system technology as well as managing new business - overseeing the sale through from quotation to close of sale.

Rebecca is also studying for an FDA degree and enjoys travelling.

Our latest member of the Redthorn team. More info on John will be available soon.