Profit and Growth
Operational Improvement
Objective:
Increase revenue of indirect 3D printers in the Americas by 25%.
Actions Taken:
- Designed and implemented a structured sales process.
- Coached sales executives to question for customer needs.
- Restructured the organization to support sales process.
- Implemented a monthly management review process.
Results:
Sales revenue increased by 30% and doubled the sales pipeline.
Objective:
Increase market share and reduce working capital.
Actions Taken:
- Topgraded 40% of the sales team.
- Designed and implemented a structured sales process and by focusing on target accounts.
- Coached sales executives to question for customer needs.
- Simplified our product offering by 80/20 analysis of inventory items.
- Implemented a sales & operations planning process that spanned six months.
- Implemented a monthly management review process.
Results:
Increase market share by over 40% and reduced working capital by $36 million.
Objective:
Double digit revenue growth.
Actions Taken:
- Designed and implemented a structured sales process.
- Coached sales executives to question for customer needs.
- Restructured the organization to support sales process.
- Implemented a monthly management review process.
- Marketed the differentiation in capability, responsiveness, reliability and delivery from our chief competitor.
- Invested over $15 million in new capacity to support these programs.
Results:
Secured multi-year contracts with Boeing and Airbus resulting in revenue increase from $35 million per year to over $70 million per year.
Objective:
6% per year revenue growth.
Actions Taken:
- Restructured sales group into markets.
- Topgraded the sales group through training, coaching, and redeployment.
- Implemented 80/20 thinking into customer service plans on the basis of their potential revenue.
- Implemented the market team approach linking sales and marketing resources with operating personnel across the Company.
- Trained market teams to develop and sell tailored value propositions to their customers.
Results:
Increase revenue from $270 million to $330 million per year.
Objective:
Business re-position.
Actions Taken:
- Applied 80/20 quadrant analysis to the products and customers.
- Increased prices substantially on all non-core (quadrants 2, 3, & 4) business.
- Exited the sanitary business.
- Downsized the organization.
- Established minimum dollar value thresholds for customer orders.
- Re-focused the sales organization on pursuing more quadrant one business.
Results:
Increase profitability by $5 million per year.
Objective:
Business re-position.
Actions Taken:
- Applied 80/20 quadrant analysis to the products and customers.
- Exited the semiconductor business.
- Increased prices on items where a competitive advantage existed.
- Downsized the organization.
- Established minimum dollar value thresholds for customer orders.
- Re-focused the sales organization on pursuing more quadrant one business.
Results:
Increase revenue by $5 million per year and EBITDA by $1.3 million.
Objective:
6% year over year business growth.
Actions Taken:
- Discovered that a few select utilities preferred our feed-water heater tubing due to its very low residual stress that provided them with a longer life cycle.
- Built data sets to support a lower residual stress for our feed-water heater tube than the competition.
- Introduced XLS brand (Xtra Low Stress) to the market through seminars, e-blasts, literature, and presentations to utilities.
- Convinced utilities to specify the performance of the XLS brand.
Results:
Increased revenue from $20 million to $50 million per year and increased the profit by $6 million per year.
Objective:
Maintain business in India.
Actions Taken:
- Restructured sales channels.
- Implemented multiple technical support visits to India each year.
- Implement executive visits to India.
- Partnered with stainless steel coil producer to provide international pricing for this business.
Results:
Increased revenue from $3 million to $12 million per year.
Objective:
Solve supply problem to assembly plants.
Actions Taken:
- Provided interim leadership – General Manager, Operations Manager, OEE leader.
- OPEX implementation.
- 5s deployment.
- Equipment refurbishment.
Results:
- Ensured supply to assembly plants.
- Reduced expedites by over 90%.
- Reduced problem reports from customers by over 60%.
- Improved OEE by over 19%.
- Improved profitability by $2.5 million per month.
Objective:
Reduce cycle time by 10%.
Actions Taken:
- Introduced one bundle flow concept.
- Established virtual links between production cells.
- Reduced queue / work in process storage spaces.
- Specified queue spaces.
- Reduced changeover times in welding, drawing, and bending further.
- Utilized simulation software to further refine linkages between cells and storage queues.
- Implemented OPEX to follow-up on execution of the system.
Results:
Reduced average cycle time from 300 hours to 50 hours (83% reduction).
Objective:
Improve On-Time Performance to 96%.
Actions Taken:
- Implemented a finite scheduling model.
- Topgraded the operations management team.
- Introduced visual management into each work center.
- Standardized recipes for drawing processes.
- Reduced changeover times in drawing process, welding process, and the bending process.
- Implemented OPEX process.
Results:
Improved OTP to 98%.
Objective:
Improve Material Yield from 88% to 92%.
Actions Taken:
- Operations leadership and process engineering were topgraded.
- Weld mills were rebuilt and aligned.
- Upgraded the bead conditioning equipment within the weld lines.
- Standardized the weld tooling design and tooling maintenance practices.
- Conducted designed experiments to define optimal process recipes for each product.
- Trained weld operators in standardized work instructions and process recipes.
- Established audit protocol to ensure that work instructions and process recipes are followed
Results:
Improved OTP to 93%.
Objective:
Operational turnaround to improve customer satisfaction.
Actions Taken:
- Topgraded engineering, maintenance, and operations leadership.
- Standardized work practices.
- Deployed 5s, kaizen, and TPM events.
- Implemented engineering design and process change controls.
- Optimized the forging process using Taguchi methods (design of experiments).
- Upgraded equipment controls in order to help with both safety and process controls.
- Standardized work assignments resulting in significant reductions in headcount.
- Automated the forging process resulting in further reductions in headcount.
- Developed and implemented ion-nitriding process for the dies resulting in tripling of die life.
Implemented monthly business operating system.
Results:
- Won 4 1/2 year extension to supply forged pistons to Visteon (Ford).
- Reduced cost structure by $4.2 million per year.
- Reduced customer ppm to less than 3 pmm.
- Reduced internal scrap rate by 50%.
- Tripled die life.
Dec 1995 – Apr 1999
Project description
Situation:
I was given responsibility for a forging business where the equipment was dated (1940's vintage). The process was considered art by the associates, engineering staff, and leadership. Practices, parameters, and process controls either did not exist or were not standardized for lubricants, die temperatures, billet temperatures, operating procedures, tooling designs, etc. Equipment maintenance was repair only after failure. Workplace organization was not existent. The UAW workforce blamed leadership (rightfully so) and were resistant to change. The business was being threatened by a Japanese competitor with new equipment and a better process.
Actions Taken:
- Upgraded engineering, maintenance, and operations leadership.
- Standardized work practices.
- Deployed 5s, kaizen, and TPM events.
- Implemented engineering design and process change controls.
- Optimized the forging process using Taguchi methods (design of experiments).
- Upgraded equipment controls in order to help with both safety and process controls.
- Standardized work assignments for support personnel resulting in significant reductions in headcount.
- Automated the forging process resulting in further reductions in headcount.
- Developed and implemented ion-nitriding process for the dies resulting in tripling of die life.
Outcomes:
- Won 4 1/2 year extension to supply forged pistons to Visteon (Ford).
- Reduced cost structure by $4.2 million per year.
- Reduced customer ppm to less than 3 pmm.
- Reduced internal scrap rate by 50%.
- Tripled die life.