Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States
I am a Senior Engineering Manager with focused experience on new product development and systems integration. I bring 15+ years of project and technical leadership, including attention to voice of the customer, safety, cost, capital, schedule, and quality, successfully delivering projects and products to aggressive cost and timing objectives. I take pride in improving processes and bringing best practices. I am experienced at leading domestic and geographically dispersed teams of up to 15 team members, generating accountability and results. I demonstrate empathy, steady, and collaborative style, building trusting relationships. I balance focus on process and people. I have strong onboarding and coaching skills. Expertise in: • Technical Product Leadership• New Product Development and Launch • Lean Product Development • Innovation • Talent & Team Development •System Integration • Black Belt Six Sigma training • Technical Project Management • Codes and Compliance
In this role, I am the program manager for Trade and Digital showering New Product Development (NPD) -Manage a cross functional team, comprised of engineering, commodity management, supply chain analysts, products managers, quality engineers, and manufacturing members. -Drive the NPD process adherence to deliver projects on time and at cost targets. -Use continuous improvement mind set to push the teams capabilities and drive process updates through improved metrics. -Work with international teams (China, Spain, Germany) to help deliver project needs and form cohesive teams to help improve communication and throughput. -Key user with the larger SAP team to ensure integrations and updates have alignment with the larger teams. -Provide mentoring and coaching to other team members based on previous knowledge gained through engineering and system integration.
• Creating the process for translating Customer and System level requirements and decomposing into detailed requirements for the Mechanical Engineering team. • Map the existing process for Mechanical requirements and work closely with the ME team to understand how they need requirements presented to ensure the process captures the project’s needs. • Understand Mechanical SPICE requirements, mapping the software ASPICE existing process and using best practices for the Mechanical system architecture. • Work closely with System Engineering team to understand up stream requirements and the overall project deliverables throughout the product development process.
In this role, I led a team of 10 -- 4 new product development (NPD) engineers, 3 Custom Solution Engineers, 1 custom solution quoter, 1 custom solution Processor, and 1 Drafter -- for the development and introduction of new contract furniture products. • Led the team to deliver 7-9 new product development projects from concept to production, contributing to company’s ability to meet customer needs for stylish, affordable furniture • Introduced new design practices to the team, including tolerance stacks, Pugh matrices, rapid prototyping; Design, Verification, Plan and Report (DVP&R); technical design reviews, and project tracking competencies • Collaborated with, succeeding at influencing colleagues at another site to adopt, implement same design practices • Supported 260-member Manufacturing team’s day to day operations. Planned new product development projects, reviewed quality data, incorporated manufacturing’s input into process improvements • Participated in Kaizen events, manufacturing reviews, time studies, resulting in hitting 6.5 ppm productivity, 33% time saving, 33% reduction of RMAs’ target goals • Managed $300,000 annual budget for testing, prototype development, and other line items • Launched products on UL and BIFMA’s Compliant program • Gathered units for testing for yearly Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and BIFMA LEVEL certification testing • Strategized 3-4 year roadmaps with the Product Commercialization team to help create a path towards NPD projects across Architectural, Systems (Cubicle), Case goods, seating, accessories product lines
Promoted to lead team of 4 engineers (2 in North America, 2 in China) and 1 master assembler for the development and introduction of new storage and organization products for the Gladiator brand. • Delivered 3 innovations to the Gladiator team, like patented EZ connect racks, Gladiator Garage upright freezer, and Gladiator stand-alone refrigerator, adding incremental volume and revenue to the business • Led innovative design of additional products, including feature that reduced assembly time by 40%. Developed a “grab and go” product based on customer feedback • Integrated voice of the customer and quality function deployment (QFD) into all facets of the product delivery process, increasing intelligence about customer requirements, generating multiple solutions to address those • Coordinated, integrated work of global team (2 Engineers and Procurement in China; 3-4 engineers and designers in GTEC India team). Interacted with China suppliers
Promoted to technical lead and system integrator to a new trade partner product development project to provide a new garage organization system bid. • Developed new product line from general specifications to bid submission in 9 months, supporting deal expected to generate incremental $20 million revenue • Collaborated cross-functionally with marketing, customer business teams to understand customer requirements, while developing DVP&R, test plan, technical solutions to meet those requirements and aggressive cost targets • Collaborated with customer’s sales and design teams, built trusting relationships, discussed trade off options for customer needs, translated into engineering requirements • Defined new product architecture, enabling to incorporate improvements to baseline architecture in collaboration with our Chinese suppliers
Within Whirlpool, took a role with the Garage and Storage Organization group, supporting the Gladiator brand. • Integrated the Whirlpool product delivery process into Whirlpool’s Individual Business Unit. Brought best practices in drawing release, BOM development, Product delivery processes, testing requirements and documentation from previous role • Initiated, developed at least 4 product prototypes for new cabinet line in response to a customer bid request under a 6-month request, utilizing simulation, internal and external model shop coordination, and our supply base in China