Professional

I have been very fortunate in my long and successful career, serving over 65 companies in scores of projects as a business, manufacturing, ERP systems, and IT consultant, including Deloitte and Touche, as well as successful stints as VP Manufacturing and Director of Material earlier in my career.    

The purpose of this web site is to provide the visitor with the ability easily find publications, articles, and papers I’ve written which may be of interest, and to quickly read more about the aspects of my work experience which may be of interest.  It helps overcome the inherent limitations of a brief resume, which of necessity must be focused.

There are common threads that run through my work and life.  Briefly, these are:

·        Intense curiosity about how business, IT, manufacturing and supply chain work – not just WHAT works, but WHY things work the way they do.  This motivation has led me to investigate and quickly become fairly knowledgeable, even expert, in more areas, and to a greater level of detail, than most otherwise well informed professionals.  I have a visceral need to know why something works the way it does, whether the result is desirable and brings success, or the opposite.  All results – good and bad – are a predictable outcome of some kind of process.  The key for me is to understand what processes bring which outcomes, and why.

·        Manufacturing and Supply Chain – the process from idea to something physical which is useful to many people has held my attention throughout my career.  In many companies, the engineering process itself is an integral part of the making of things, and has its own fascination to me.  A personal project provided deep insight into this process right out of graduate school, in which I studied chassis and suspension design, then did simple engineering drawings, from which a friend and I built a complete modified stock race car, and then raced it.  From mental image to a 650 hp race car; very exciting at the time.

·        Information Technology – companies were making use of computer technology before I started my career, but the uses and capabilities have become steadily more powerful, and so my interest in deploying these powerful tools everywhere I worked has grown concurrently.  While much of my work was not focused specifically on IT aspects, in almost every instance my work has involved the company’s information systems, or its gaps.  One cannot succeed in any business endeavor without becoming expert at the management of to information.

·        Innovation - Many companies attempt to purchase competitive advantage by oursourcing and/or standard packages.  My view is that "proven solutions" are a contradition to "leading edge innovations."  I have helped multple companies create compeitive advantage by selective, careful innovations. often in combination with off-the-shelf standard ERP systems.

It is the overlap or intersection of what the business is need to do - become more productive, cut costs, expand operations, etc. - with the details of ERP and other systems that the bulk of my work has occurred.  This thread runs through my work with over 65 companies, with over 50 of them being product oriented, but also including insurance, medical and software companies.  Click here to see the Companies list.

Professional Certifications - I hold certifications in the following professional areas:

• PMP - Project Management Professional, through the Project Management Institute, via a 4 hour, proctored, 200 question examination.  The PMP body of knowledge focuses on the methods by which projects are effectively and successfully planned, estimated, scheduled and conducted.  Since I am no longer working in the field full-time, I have let this certification expire.

• PRINCE2 - Project Management certification at the Foundation level;  via a proctored test in May, 2012.  This project manaagement methodology is used primarily for project governance.

• CFPIM - I hold the lifetime certification as a Fellow level Practitioner in Production & Inventory Management through APICS.  This recognition is a result of numerous contributions, including my Prentice-Hall published hardback text, "Production & Inventory Management in the Technological Age, noted above, numerous professional papers, published articles, speaking engagements, as well as an earlier proctored examination.

Areas of Expertise - My career work has these 5 areas of concentrated expertise as core threads:

• ERP systems – almost immediately out of graduate school I worked on one of the first large-scale, ERP system implementation projects at a medical products factory with over 1,000 people on the shop floor; through this I gained a fairly deep grasp of manufacturing and supply chain management, as well as my initial APICS Fellow level certification.  Later, I used this expertise to design, oversaw a team of developers to create it for Alesis Corporation, then formed a company, AIMS Software, Inc., to market it for the subsequent 7 years.  We closed the company in 2001 when changing IT technology made its platform obsolete.  the AIMS subsite at THIS link describes the AIMS "story" and how its advanced, leading edge scheduling tools provided capabilities to its users still not available in "modern" ERP system. 

• Information Technology – from the early ERP system implementation expertise came a mid-senior level role in a large manufacturing company’s corporate IT department, overseeing 2 systems analysts and 15 programmers, supporting 5 factories and 26 warehouses.  I learned to write detailed design specifications and how to plan complex software architecture, how data bases worked and other more arcane topics.  The people who hired me said “you know what the business needs; you can tell us how to build it.”  Most of the rest of my career grew out of this merging of two areas of expertise.

• Manufacturing / Material Management / Supply Chain – starting out on my own as a consultant very early in my career, with these two expertise areas, brought an invitation to write and publish a hard-back text book from Prentice-Hall, a major global text book publisher, which I did.  "Production and Inventory Management in the Technological Age" sold thousands of copies globally, and was still in use as an introduction to material management as recently as 2009, when a candidate I was interviewing brought her copy to the interview.  I have republished it in paper-back form, available on Amazon.com.  This in turn led to dozens of projects for product-oriented companies, including a stint as VP, Manufacturing at Raypak, Inc., where I led a “lean” revolution with our “synchronized production” system which cut the production cycle time from 3+ weeks to 48 hours.

• Cost systems – the simple standard cost model, which originated in the late 19^th century, has become a GAAP standard, but has significant limitations.  Along with working on, designing, developing and implementing systems with standard cost, I also was asked to lead projects to develop other types of cost systems, most notably an actual production cost system for 2 divisions of Hughes Aircraft, while I was a Manager at Deloitte & Touche.  I also had detailed exposure to  other types of cost systems – direct costing, activity based costing, and project costing.

• Organization & Culture – I learned early on that how an operation’s responsibility (reporting) structure was assembled made a very large difference in how it worked, and more importantly, in its ability to become more lean, and agile.  Well-led, “flat” structures, composed of people who were highly professionally qualified are best.  And HOW people are treated, respected, led, and engaged – or not – I learned long ago is perhaps THE critical success factor for a company. 

My career stages built on these 5 foundations, with additional experience and expertise gained in:

• Lean and synchronized production and supply chain - initially while VP Manufacturing at Raypak, Inc., and later in projects with other companies.

• World-class manufacturing practices – I taught courses, and led implementation work in topics such as statistical process control and collaborative supply chain management, Value Engineering, and continuous improvement methods.

• Federal Acquisition Regulation (the “FAR”) – all US government contractors must adhere to this standard.  In-depth experiences with large A&D contractors earlier in my career led to my giving talks and classes on this topic, which is boring to many, mission-critical to others.  It was key in the largest recruiting project I led, summarized below.

• Operational turnarounds – I led the operational portion of several substantial turnaround projects where major changes in how factories were run, consolidation of multiple facilities into a single facility, and in-bound logistics (including cross-border movements).

• Recruiting – specialized projects combining other expertise areas – such as the FAR + material Management + organization – led to very focused, special-purpose recruiting projects.  I have on-boarded about 150 candidates in my recruiting work, with about 85% being mid to senior level professionals. Click here to read more about my organization & recruiting experience.

• Business due diligence for operations – detailed assessments and forward planning of production operations for private equity firms and international investors, either for acquisitions or additional investments. 

• Trouble-shooting – unraveling of seemingly knotty problems in inventory, cost accounting, and challenging situations like GL-to-physical inventory reconciliations.