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Experiences
How I've applied my skills in different aspects of my professional life
Experiences - Top
pROJECTS
PROJECTS
Ripe Avocados
Crafting a New Beginning For a Local Small Business
For my senior capstone at Portland State University, I worked on a team to help a local small business owner redevelop their business plan. Our client was a food cart owner who was struggling to grow his customer base. Their food was exceptional, but there was something missing that the owner just couldn’t figure out. My team used that struggle as a starting point for research and discovery.
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I quickly discovered the two driving forces of a successful food cart: price competitiveness and niche products. Generally speaking, people who go to food carts do not know what they want ahead of time, so their decision is often made on the spot. The gist of what a food cart is offering needs be immediately apparent, regardless of whether the customer reads the menu or not; branding is paramount, and this where our team decided to focus on for our client.
This food cart, then called The Greenhouse Grill, did not have a grill, nor did the food come from a greenhouse...his current brand heavily mismatched his food. During an open discussion, I pointed out that he had avocados in all of his dishes, and suggested that his theme be based around the avocado. It was an instant hit - simple to brand, easy to recognize, and great to sell.
We developed a marketing plan outlining how best to reach out to potential customers, helped him brainstorm new menu options, drew him up a social media strategy, and a provided him with a couple cool names for his business.
Upon completion of the project, our client successfully re-branded The Greenhouse Grill into Urban Avocado and moved his cart from the less trafficked area of Sellwood to a larger pod within Beaverton. He's since been very successful, and was recently selected as the food cart of the week by a local news site (I forgive him for taking credit for the re-brand, by the way).
Perfection, Quickly
Designing and Implementing a Data Automation Solution for AGC's Critical Measurements
One of my very first projects at AGC Electronics America (AGC) was creating automation for some of our inspection processes using VBA. It was a relatively easy and obvious improvement, but impact was huge - saving thousands of unnecessary labor hours every year; freeing the inspectors to focus on producing higher quality results for our customers.
A year or so later, a customer came to AGC with a request - to automate our laboratory measurements after an erroneous (manual) in-house measure caused several hours of downtime at their plant. Based on my previous automation success, I was chosen to lead the improvement efforts.
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After trying to automate it myself with little success, I started the search for an outside source. I quickly found a local company whom we had worked with in the past, and reached out. From the beginning, it was obvious to me that the tool's capabilities were a perfect fit for our specific need, but management initially rejected it due to cost.
I quickly developed a business case for purchasing the software, including: outlining project requirements for the tool, negotiating software and engineering costs, and presenting a cost/benefit analysis with AGC's C-Level executives. Thanks to my detail-oriented mind and penchant for persuasive presentations, I was able to get approval for the tool, green-lighting the path to implementation.
The tool was highly customizable, which meant that we would have to design it to fit our specific configuration. To cut down on implementation engineering costs, we decided to configured it mostly in-house. Myself and AGC's DBA quickly gained the knowledge necessary for success, including how to: set up the database, define the variables, design the forms, and generate automatic transactions. I focused on engineering and programming the forms, while our DBA focused on designing processes on the server-side to make it all work.
In just under 3 months from the purchase of the software, we were able to successfully implement the solution - and as a bonus came in 20% under the forecasted budge
A 20 Year Problem
Using Data Visualization to Fix Mysterious Scratches
One of the larger problems facing quality during my tenure at AGC Electronics America was how our CNC process resulted in the scratching of valuable parts. This scratching had contributed to tens of thousands of hours of rework, and no one in the 20+ year history of the process had any idea on how to fix the problem.
With the help of the CNC Supervisor and Operations Manager, we were able to observe the machining process, which led us to develop a testing framework. Using Microsoft Excel and other data analytics tools, we were able to determine the statistical probability of each part and visualize that data. By looking at that visualized data, we were able to notice some exciting trends.
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By leveraging the data we collected over the course of a month, we were able to pinpoint the exact cause of the problem. We then developed and formalized a procedure to target the root cause, which eliminated the problem, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly.
Cognitive Dissonance
Using Domain Knowledge and the Power Of Data to Shift Perspective
One of the programs I managed at AGC Electronics America was the Corrective Action program - which was a formal way to identify and fix processes and systems. I quickly noticed that many of our Design Engineers had a tendency to blame our Operators for issues a large percentage of the time, without fully understanding what other factors could be causing the problem.
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To gain more insight and better understanding, I began talking directly with the Operators. Throughout my conversations with them, I began to gain more knowledge about machining and GD&T and came to the realization that the problem wasn’t them. Several times, the problem was that the Design Engineers didn't build in efficiencies with their designs, which resulted in overly complex processes.
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With this newfound understanding, I set my sights on changing the attitude of management and our Design Engineers to increase collaboration among the two teams and improve our process design.
I built dashboards and reports to quantify this problem in a way that management and our Design Engineers could see. While it took vigilance and time, by focusing on real problematic trends, our management and Design Engineers began to understand the need for efficiency within their process design. Our Operators and Design Engineers began to work together to set records for all our quality and operations KPIs, because finally our focus was in the right place.
Programs
PROGRAMS
Tell It Like It Is
Creating and Managing the Reporting and BI Program at AGC Electronics America
I developed a regular quality and operations reporting program to help centralize our manufacturing information in a single place. Leveraging Tableau, I created a set of data to be regularly reviewed and established regular meetings with key stakeholders to solidify a set of KPIs to measure ourselves against.
As the sole developer and program manager, I was responsible for ensuring the data was accurate, as well as pulling a weekly, monthly, and quarterly analysis of how we were tracking against our KPIs.
After the first year, we switched our tool from Tableau to Qliksense, and I redesigned the program to expand and simplify the data pulling process, which allowed other departments and stakeholders to gather and analyze data as they needed.
My analyses were then used as an input for the C-Suite level executives, helping shape the fundamental approach to our business processes and strategy.
It's A Process
Redeveloping and Managing the Internal Audit Program at AGC Electronics America
As a manufacturing company that supplied critical components to major chip manufacturers, we had to maintain our ISO 9001 status. Within my first year at AGC Electronics America, I was tasked with leading the audit team and developing a plan to successfully transition to the newest standard.
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After becoming a certified auditor, I went through some of our past audits to identify our historical processes for achieving our past ISO statuses. The old ISO standard was very straight forward: Write down your process, follow that written procedure to a T, and make sure that the procedure is always done that way. The new ISO standard required process effectiveness - which meant a well-documented procedure could be ineffective. Upon review of these new standards, we decided it was time to change our focus from auditing compliance to auditing best practices.
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We presented our findings to senior management and, with their approval, completely redesigned our audit program. Some of the new improvements included training a brand new set of auditors. An audit is a very involved and complex process, so our team stepped up to do everything that was required to ensure the new program would run well.
A few months in, after a handful of audits, we realized that all of our written procedures could be improved. This was the first time we had really looked back into ourselves in 20 years, and it was a hard realization that things had to change. So, as a team, we set our sights on those continuous improvements.
Repeat Issues
Inheriting and Transforming a Broken Corrective Action program at AGC Electronics America
One of the more complicated requirements to becoming ISO 9001 certified is maintaining a strong Corrective Action program. Corrective actions are a formalized way of identifying, investigating, correcting, and securing any sort of problem that affects overall quality.
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A few months after joining AGC Electronics America, I took on the challenge of managing our Corrective Action program. At the time, there were 50+ open corrective actions (typically, 10-20 is considered high). After evaluating the daunting amount of tasks, I decided that we needed to overhaul our Corrective Action program.
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To help solidify my hypothesis, I began investigating each problem individually. In several cases, the identified corrective action had either been resolved, or never really existed. The problem with our current system was that anyone could assign a corrective action for any reason, which led to unnecessary work being done.
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After freezing any new corrective actions, I worked with my manager and the Operations team to set minimum requirements for corrective actions. Eventually, these corrective actions would require approval from the Quality, Engineering, and Operations senior managers to be considered a corrective action.
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In the end, we were able to reduce our amount of open corrective actions to under 20. This left room for managers and supervisors to work on only the most important problem.
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