Schaumburg, Illinois, United States
Demonstrated success in new product development projects through focus on customer insight, innovation, design for manufacturing and value engineering. Drive continuous improvement and problem-solving culture to generate efficiencies and cost reductions year over year. Spearheaded strategic organization expansion plans by identifying key business drivers and co-relating with industry requirements. Co-ordinate multi functional global team responsible for sales, engineering execution, manufacturing and logistics to deliver total customer satisfaction.
• Gather information on required product features through VOC surveys and competitor product analysis. Prioritize projects in alignment with strategic goals of organization. Develop iterative project management plan and resource list. • Lead the project team including design engineers, procurement personnel and manufacturing staff for design and development of utility industry tools like Cable grips, tool organization module in Bucket work center (used by Linemen during installation or repair of overhead electric lines). Follow the stage gate process from initial concept to final production. • Use PLM tools like Agile for documentation, record of changes and efficient sharing of information among different groups, vendors, and geographically spread-out team. • Act as liaison between customer and internal team and vendors to ensure adherence of design specifications to the ultimate user’s needs and requirements.
Lead cross functional team including sales, manufacturing and logistics to deliver manufactured products as per requirement, within budget and on-time. Utilize business acumen to help management with make / buy decision, NPV analysis for strategic expansion plan, identification of key business drivers and capacity analysis. Provide viable solution to customers through analysis of current capabilities and co-relating it with their requirements. Maintain constant customer interaction to gain industry insights and maintain healthy customer relationship. Be voice of customer for internal teams and provide guidance and insight for further execution of projects. Initiated Stage Gate process and use of Value stream maps (VSM) for operational efficiency Spearheaded formation of heavy weight cross functional teams for large projects. This helped to improve efficiency, reduce conflicts and develop specialization in certain engineering skills.
Volunteered as Business Analyst in Hedge Fund Administration company. It helped me to determine flexibility to work in non-engineering sector and feasibility check to work and pursue MBA at the same time. I was involved with customer service sector, to identify customer needs and work with team to generate custom finance related tools and solutions.
New Product Development- Concept to manufacturing Project Management- Stage gate process Cross Functional Integration Outsourcing and Supplier Management Innovations- New process or tooling solutions to reduce cost and improve quality Accomplishments: Developed innovative head tooling for manufacturing of Garbage cans that resulted in savings of about 20% in terms of set up and interchangeability cost.
Research and seek new materials and processes as part of innovation project Assist engineering team in new product development Determine value engineering opportunities for existing products Develop test procedures to determine product key features Accomplishment- Introduced grades of elastomer materials to improve shock absorbing capacity for phone cases and aided cost reduction by 20%