Don Gardner Email and Phone Number

Manage all aspects of new product development, including: development and maintenance of the new-product roadmap, driving design-for-manufacturability & low-cost, selecting contract manufacturer and component vendors, and keeping the development team focused on the strategic priorities. Maintain detailed product development plans, schedules, and budgets.• Developed and implemented strategic plan for new product development.• Created detailed risk assessment of all product development activities, including marketing, linking risks to corporate success factors.• Implemented and adapted Agile project management methodologies to hardware development.• Lead designer of electromagnetic circuits for oscillator product line.

Managed new product qualification testing and new technology validation projects, including contract manufacturer (CM) qualification. Provided technical reliability support for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service teams.• Contributed to NPI projects by creating design-for-reliability input, defining and executing reliability experiments, thus ensuring successful qualification, often delivering results ahead of schedule.• Exposed major flaws in CM selected for a new product line and influenced leadership to secure an alternate CM, saving qualification costs estimated at $60K and ensuring product reached production on schedule.• Drove reliability assessment of an NPI project that incorporated new and untried technologies, uncovered design & process weaknesses, identified root causes, and, in many cases, found resolutions.• Championed reliability testing that went beyond industry standards and increased confidence with key customers by presenting products as optimal solutions to complex business / technical requirements.

On Sept. 16, 2014, Centellax was acquired by Microsemi. See further details under Microsemi listing.

(Through acquisition of TriAccess Technologies)Supervised 4 product engineers and 1 technician, driving CATV amplifier products through NPI and into Production. Provided DFM and DFT input. Supported all production products through to end-of-life and drove continual yield improvements. Managed resolution of all customer quality questions & concerns. Technical reliability support for Sales and Marketing.• Launched worldwide project team to move assembly of 8 products to a new contract manufacturer when former CM flooded by typhoon and simultaneously re-qualified all products in time to resume shipments without affecting customers.• Reduced life test costs 80% and increased capacity by developing new method to conduct accelerated life testing.• Drove 17% cost reduction in CATV product qualification costs by leading company-wide qualification efficiency project, resulting in new methods to streamline qual processes, reduce costs, and expedite time-to-revenue for new products.• Managed failure analysis of NPI qualification failures, providing root cause and recommended corrective action in time to recover and maintain development schedules.• As 1 out of 10 presenters at a 3-day management forum attended by executive staff and almost 100 managers, received praise from CEO and VPs for the most professional presentation.

Reported to the CEO as employee #5. Managed QA responsibilities. Being a small startup, also took ownership of key operations and purchasing tasks.• Managed reliability test project for flagship product, going far beyond competition, receiving praise from head of procurement with key customer and securing new contract.• Helped land large contract with lead customer by taking on program management of flagship product, pushing it from prototype, through reliability qualification, to full-scale production in time to secure customer win.

Managed all product compliance projects, such as UL and CSA certification, CE mark, Telcordia NEBS, all EMC compliance (e.g., FCC and ETSI), etc.• Developed reliability enhancement program centered on HALT testing and utilized HALT to achieve incremental improvements in reliability, thus avoiding field failures.• Managed component failure analysis, leading suppliers to corrective actions in time to support NPI schedules.