PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
A proven Engineering / Product Design / Manufacturing Leader and 6 Sigma Master Black Belt with experience in organizations ranging from $50M to $70B global businesses, managing operational budgets of up to $15M. A capable mentor and manager, having a track record in multiple organizations, attracting, recruiting, and mentoring teams of up to 52 and establishing the infrastructure that has repeatedly resulted in accelerated performance and restored customer confidence. A transformational leader with a continuous improvement mentality and the ability to engage employees at all levels by elevating and training product knowledge and process excellence. A professional, accomplished, and versatile communicator instilling customer confidence and promoting internal and external business relationships that have proven to fortify, drive, and sustain results.
ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES REPRESENTED BELOW
•Technical Leadership •Engineering Strategy •Quality & Validation •Lean Six Sigma
•New Product Development •Global Expansions •Testing & Validation •Team Building
•Product Design & Innovation •Supply Chain Analytics •Profit Optimization •Big Data Analytics
•Change Management •Cost Reductions •Operational Optimization •Employee / Customer Engagement
ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES DETAILED
QUALITY CONSULTING LLC., CHICAGO, IL , A consulting company specializing in Product & Process Design Optimization 2017 - PRESENT
Principal Responsible for helping companies achieve optimized product & process designs
Corporate Profile: A 6 Sigma process improvement, product design, manufacturing, and quality consultancy leading product development strategy through engineering. Robust Optimization, of projects and programs, utilizing a wide range of 6 Sigma, Taguchi, Innovation, and Continuous Improvement Techniques.
ACHIEVEMENTS ON BEHALF OF CLIENTS
•Business Transformation / Quality Systems: Improved First Time Pass rates of high volume hydraulic control valve product lines for Fortune 100 Company, from 40% to over 85%, and still improving, as final changes are being implemented.
•Technical Leadership / Training: Provided Design For Six Sigma Training, including Taguchi Robust Design Optimization techniques, showing many real examples to manufacturing companies in Chicago and also overseas, and also showing them specifically how to apply the techniques to their products and processes, thereby enabling them to achieve greater product performance, higher reliability, at lower costs.
•Business Transformation / Quality Systems / Strategy: A startup device manufacturer in the clean energy industry had design and quality issues. After the company tried many attempts to reverse the trend, over many months, was tasked to retrain the Design Team on basics of Robust Design, which identified and removed the design issues. This restored confidence and enabled the company to continue in the business developing high-quality products, preventing the potential of closure.
CATERPILLAR INC., PEORIA, IL, A $60B construction equipment manufacturer with 115,000 employees.
Analytics Global Services Manager (2010 – 2017), 52 employees with 7 direct. Responsible for Global Analytics Product Development, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain.
6 Sigma Master Black Belt / DFSS Leader (2002 – 2010), Served as Corporate leader of the Design For Six Sigma (DMEDI) Process, training new Master Black Belts, and leading execution of major programs.
6 Sigma Black Belt (2001 – 2002), Responsible for major project execution and training Green Belts and Yellow Belts.
NPI Valve Team Supervisor (1998 – 2001), Responsible for the $100M control valve design group.
Senior Project Engineer (1993 – 1998), Responsible for designing and analyzing hydraulics and hydraulic systems.
ACHIEVED WHILE ANALYTICS GLOBAL SERVICES MANAGER
•Global / International Expansions / Strategic Planning: Competitive pricing threatened sales. Tasked by leadership to evaluate productivity within offices in India. Identified the need to improve and expand capabilities. Mapped demand projections, built a lean organizational structure, created job descriptions, interviewed, hired, and mentored the team. Deployed operating metrics, built analytics offices (in country). This increased capacity and utilization rate by 49% within 6 months, delivering a competitive rate, which drove double digit revenue every year, 5 years running.
•Quality Systems and Strategy / Testing & Validation / Change Management: Recognized the need to update a 40-year old machine validation process to remain competitive. The first 30 days, gathered top PhD Analysts and Engineers and built mathematical models that could predict issue discovery rates. Over 60 days, directed testing and selected the best model. Led development of an automated process to predict the issue discovery rate. This reduced NPI test hours by 30–60%, saving $2.5M per program and became the key resource for all machine validation & test engineering.
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•Service / Product Line Expansions / Strategic Planning / Change Management: Big Data Analytics was growing worldwide and the company was behind. Called upon to grow this capability and build a Product Development Analytics portfolio. Led the enterprise-wide strategy and chartered projects. Once completed, this demonstrated analytics’ usefulness in Product Development, saving over 5X the cost of the projects. Net benefits over 3 years exceeded $100M and the Analytics Product Development Portfolio grew in revenue by double digits for 5 years straight.
MICHAEL A. A’HEARN • PAGE 2
ACHIEVED WHILE 6 SIGMA MASTER BLACK BELT
•Business Development / Business Transformation / Team Development / Mentoring / Coaching: After deploying Design For Six Sigma, Master Black Belts received significant pushback for conducting Taguchi Robust Design Experiments, due to time constraints. Designed a new procedure to experimentally test their designs to determine if Taguchi Robust Engineering Process was needed, which proved the need on multiple systems. This evolved the design culture and within 60 days, this new process was adopted as an SOP in product and process design.
•Business Development / Business Transformation / Team Development / Mentoring / Coaching: The Design For Six Sigma (DMEDI) Training taught by Master Black Belts corporate-wide was lengthy, confusing, and was difficult to schedule when needed within busy NPI programs. Designed a new two-day Robust Design Workshop for engineers when their programs needed it. This became an approved course and Best Practice for engineers.
ACHIEVED WHILE 6 SIGMA BLACK BELT
•Profit Optimization / Cost Reductions / Operational Optimization: Significant performance issues surfaced for 30% of the main product line and multiple attempts to reverse the issues had failed, escalating severity and costs. Called upon by the Chief Engineer and given all resources to create a solution. Performed a Taguchi Robust Optimization designed experiment, created and presented results within 2 weeks. This resulted in ...
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