Duane Simpson Email & Phone Number

Salt Lake City, Utah, Us

Paris, Fr

Executive Oversight and Strategist in Manufacturing Plant | KPI Goals | Safety | Quality | Sales / Revenue | Budget | Executive AdvisorI joined Danone North America’s Salt Lake City plant just 2 years after it launched. My goals were to improve all aspects of quality, throughput, and customer experience for this $50M+ facility. Furthermore, I strove to increase employee engagement for my team of 6 managers and 110+ manufacturing operators.Across the board, I sponsored a substantive culture shift across all levels of the organization. For our executive team,I worked 1:1 with each leader to identify ways I could best serve their goals as an interface with our corporate team. Specifically, I instituted leadership strategies that increased our production to a record levels. As our output improved, we consistently found new ways to refine our processes for quality and safety standards, which, in turn, supported even more growth, not to mention employee engagement and overall organizational success. One key process resulting directly from our team’s refreshed commitment was the stark drop in turnover and concrete contributions to our team rebrand to “SLC 2.0 New Dawn,” with its sun logo.Methodologies I led and/or instituted included Gemba walks, Total Productive Maintenance, 5S, and more. Bringing these to support the overall transformation, lifting the needs and opinions of our large manufacturing team to high visibility, increasing our output plus quality, and creating a work environment in which they were mutually supported and highly valued all have been central to my executive leadership.

Paris, Fr

Houston, Tx, Us

Executive Leadership in Manufacturing Plant | Sales / Customer Experience | Safety | Quality | BudgetI was recruited into this plant manager role with a mandate directly from our executive team to maximize the effectiveness of our manufacturing facility (80+ employees, 7-figure operation). Taking our business to a new level involved a major shift in our organizational processes—and exceptional change management strategy. My strategies were successful, touching almost every aspect of the business, including safety, quality, employee engagement, and overall corporate culture, not to mention refreshed sales.One of my key initiatives was a business process digital transformation of our sales ordering program. On my arrival, all of our sales were recorded by hand and stored on paper. Replacing this 25-year-old, deeply entrenched process with an electronic ordering system had significant impacts on our business. Our orders were filed and organized properly, our change order system became carefully disciplined, and our customers trusted our timeliness and consistency.

Nashville, Tennessee, Us

Management in Manufacturing Plant | Safety | Quality | Throughput | Process Management and ControlsAs a manager, I participated in production planning, forecasting, scheduling, budgeting, inventory, and shipping. Throughout my time in this position, I oversaw all facets of the manufacturing process for our polyisocyanurate insulation facility—safety compliance, quality assurance, emergency procedures, maintenance, and production effectiveness—while exceeding manufacturing targets. Focusing on quality and safety, I quantifiably improved our team culture of respect and accountability to safety. In fact, I envisioned and delivered 150 standards that increased production while ensuring safety and protocol compliance as head of our control point audit team. Our successes included achieving zero OSHA recordable incidents per 1M person-hours. Moreover, we implemented startup best practices and decreased missed startups 90%. Additionally, we reduced changeover time 60% via checklists and “pit crew” approval process for the main operator. Of note, I conducted a Six Sigma project on first pass yield, saving $100K+ annually.

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As a CMC Failure Analyst | Warehouse/Exchange Manager, I pioneered the failure analyst role to determine root causes of component failures, then implement best practices to reduce warranty costs 25%. I produced 15 rebuild “Best Practices,” extending our components’ lifecycle. During this time, I served as a member of Rio Tinto's Continuous Improvement project and on Caterpillar’s global mining team.