The heritage of S A Partners is deeply rooted in my personal improvement journey. This began in the late 1980s when I studied for a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) at Cardiff University whilst heading up Operations and Supply Chain within a local manufacturing company. The application of Japanese inspired approaches fascinated me enough to self-fund a research visit to Japan. During this trip I was privileged to receive tuition from a number of eminent Japanese Professors and enjoyed visits to many prominent companies such as Mazda, Hitachi and Makino Milling as well as their respective suppliers. On my return I set up the second European application of the then little known kyoryoku kai (or Supplier Association) with the first tier automotive firm Calsonic and reported this as my MBA dissertation. This early work received widespread acclaim including television coverage from the BBC. This response encouraged me to leave employment and set up as a freelance consultant to emulate what I saw and to localise the approach in a European setting.