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graham-johnstone

Graham Johnstone

Graham Johnstone is the Managing Director of FJM (VELUX roof windows) Ltd.  VELUX are the world’s leading manufacturer of Roof window and Flashing systems.

He started his career as an apprentice engineer with Weir Pumps and United Glass and on successful completion, both vocationally and academically, he progressed into a supervisory and operations management position, focusing on cold end automation and control systems within United Glass.

In 1985 Graham was given the opportunity to join VELUX with the task of helping to turn the business around and to establish a fully operational Aluminium processing plant in Scotland.

Since then, the company has recovered and has grown well and Graham has continued to develop his role within the company; a highlight being the youngest Managing Director in VELUX, on his appointment in 1992.

Using business improvement techniques, benchmarking and bench learning the company has thrived and grown and continues to be competitive in the VELUX world and beyond. For Graham this is a major achievement and a source of great personal satisfaction against a backdrop of many manufacturing companies going East in search of low cost labour.

As part of the VELUX management team, secondary responsibilities were given to Graham and from 1997 - 2003, as part of a system revival task, he resurrected and headed up the window supply chain purchasing team being responsible for all PR and NPR spend in VELUX. This was a multinational task involving colleagues and businesses all over the world.

In 2003 after a visit to Japan (Toyota City) it was obvious that VELUX had to look towards world class manufacturing techniques in order to maintain its position.  Graham was then tasked to develop the VMM (VELUX Manufacturing system) based on the TPS system.. His role was to create a full business model and sell the concept to all business units within VELUX. This role continued until late 2006 once the concept had been adopted worldwide in VELUX and all local business units had reached a certain level of engagement with Lean principles and techniques. Graham is still actively involved in business development both in his own business unit and provides support to other business systems within VELUX.

In addition to his work in VELUX and as part of VELUX’s corporate social responsibility, Graham has been involved with FE since 1998 and in 2005 Graham became the chairperson of The Adam Smith College in Fife. This is a “new” College based in Fife that educates up to 30000 students each year from home and abroad. Based on our ambition to be an excellent College that inspires learning, we are quickly becoming amongst the largest College of its kind in Scotland

To support educational excellence in Scotland, Graham is also a director of Scotland’s Colleges and a member of the Scottish Funding Council’s knowledge transfer and employer engagement team.

In his spare time Graham enjoys a good hectic family life with his partner and 5 children, and is a keen pilot of light aircraft and enjoys riding motorcycles and loves to tinker with anything mechanical.