He studied Production Engineering at the University of Derby and became an early employee of Toyota at its factory at nearby Burnaston, where he rose to be a general assembly manager before moving to General Motors in 1995.
For GM, Slym worked first in the former East Germany as a "lean manufacturing" adviser in the Opel factory at Eisenach in Thuringia - which had previously built the Wartburg saloon, the so-called "Mercedes of the East".