Ýr Gunnarsdóttir, SHELL
OpEx / CI Process Leadership

Results oriented professional with ~20 years of experience delivering sustainable fit for purpose business improvement initiatives across a range of industries and disciplines (oil and gas, energy, automotive, telecom, banking, technology, pharmaceutical, non-profit).  Focus on value delivery, end to end process improvement and operational excellence.  Approach utilizes a range of tools and techniques (Lean, performance and process management, communications) designed to unleash a team or organization’s people to deliver sustainable and continuously improving results.

Ýr joined Royal Dutch Shell in August in The Netherlands in August 2012 as a Senior OE/CI Deployment Lead.  Accountable for driving continuous improvement, efficiency mind-set and operational excellence across the enterprise with the aim of accelerating business value within Shell. Some of her key responsibilities have been:

• To drive efficiency gains to maintain competitive advantage within the Upstream Exploration organization and the Subsurface Technical User Community.
• To drive the deployment of operational excellence/continuous improvement within the Downstream Manufacturing organization within the largest refinery in Europe.
• Global CI Communication Lead, setting in motion more intentional cross-business collaboration based on best practice solutions & approaches and ensuring that CI deployment leaders are equipped to move effectively and decisively in their own organizations.
• Directed the CI Network by working with the Senior CI Focal points in the businesses and functions steering capability-development, driving consistency, approach and increased shared learning and putting more influence, pace and certainty into the Shell CI journey. Strategy and initiatives aligned with the Operational Excellence Winning Capability.