Ed Ekert Email & Phone Number

Huntersville, North Carolina, United States

Pratt Miller is transforming what’s possible in high performance vehicle engineering and product development with ingenious solutions to the world’s toughest challenges, serving the Motorsports, Defense, and Mobility industries.- Served as Project Manager for a new facility acquisition and secured financial grants from state and local governments. - Led efforts to establish a streamlined, singular, company-wide Design Release Process. - Led efforts to establish a company-wide Project Delivery Process, leveraging industry-standard components, yet tailored to Pratt Miller's high-speed delivery of innovative solutions.- Championed and led several projects to integrate core business systems MES-ERP, MES-PDM, Field Service Management-PDM.- Led a team to improve enterprise process flow (finance, program management, engineering, and manufacturing).- Identified opportunities for high-impact improvements in both technical & business areas.- Led teams using structured methodologies to define and implement effective solutions.

Huntersville, North Carolina, United States

- Led a team to coordinate the development and deployment of software systems for automotive OEM and NASCAR vehicle development and track-side race operations.- Drove use and expansion of Pratt Miller’s enterprise-wide product development system at two major automotive OEMs.- Used lean and six sigma principles to lead a team to reduce sprint % of development tickets re-opened by 60%. - Developed a visual dashboard to help manage and improve the ticket flow of the data services operations help desk.

Lagrange, Georgia

Wheelabrator is the world’s largest provider of surface preparation technology to the automotive, aerospace, medical, rail, and shipyard industries. They are a subsidiary of the Norican Group, which has operations in 21 countries.– Hired to rebuild and transform the engineering organization and drive business transformation by improving flow across the enterprise. Led a team of three direct reports and 16 indirect reports at three sites (Monterrey, Mexico and Bangalore, India).– Built engineering leadership and working team (mechanical, electrical, OEM, and aftermarket applications) in LaGrange. Managed transfer of engineering leadership function from Burlington, Ontario into LaGrange.– Led development of enterprise flow metrics to characterize functional performance (sales, applications, engineering, supply chain, and service), identified barriers to Lean flow, and drove customer-centric business processes. Results improved delivery and achievement of financial goals.– Participated in the Norican global initiative to expand the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to this industry.– Established a governance structure to develop and manage strategic objectives and build a culture of continuous process improvement.– Drove use of master BOM’s (80/20 reuse) to improve quality, cost control, and speed of delivery.

Lexington, North Carolina

MTS Systems is a leading global supplier of high-performance test systems and position sensors.– Hired to grow the business, increase operational efficiency, and improve customer delivery performance. Led a team of 10 direct reports and 30 indirect reports. – Identified a cross-functional leadership gap and launched a weekly production team meeting to improve information flow and reduce product delivery lead times.– Factory was space-constrained due to growth, and safety was at risk; directed implementation of a Lean factory layout which increased production capacity for an additional three to five years and reduced safety risk.– Co-led the business development of an automated production test machine with a key global customer. Result was a four-fold increase in long-term annual revenue for the product line.– Introduced Kanban and achieved a 20% reduction in inventory level while adding a new product line.– Instituted critical path project management to increase on-time delivery to from 50% (upon hire) to 94%.– Identified lack of sufficient knowledge of product lines in the Sales and Application Engineering departments. Collaborated with those functions and customers to deliver a 22% year-over-year sales growth.– Directed development of automated production test machine with IIoT technology, providing real-time measurement data for quality control, performance traceability, and remote diagnosing.– Established a project management discipline, ensuring the use of MS Project for project planning, execution, and communication with project stakeholders.– Led team through an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) migration to SAP for managing business operations.

Mooresville, North Carolina

Lowe’s is the world’s second largest home improvement retailer ($69B), operating 2000 stores across North America.– Promoted to instill a culture of operational excellence (OpEx) and drive process improvement across the $1B IT organization. Led a team of two direct reports and four indirect reports.– Recognized that IT leadership team did not have a structure and process to drive OpEx. Established and launched the IT governance function for the CIO’s staff. CIO stated it was the “best meeting ever” at Lowe’s.– Collaborated with other leaders to establish 10 high-level operations metrics (KPI’s) to monitor and ensure continued and increasing health of the critical processes and functions.– Instituted a process for identifying improvement opportunities based on financial risk-reward prioritization.– Identified top financial improvement opportunity and facilitated a cross-functional Lean Six Sigma Black Belt project to achieve a 75% reduction in the IT portfolio financial variance that saved $4M.

Mooresville, North Carolina

– Hired to lead an enterprise-wide deployment of Lean Six Sigma to drive operational efficiency. Secured commitment from Chief Supply Chain Officer to embrace the Lean Six Sigma program after identifying a potential $2B reduction in pipeline inventory.– Recognized that internal OpEx knowledge was insufficient. Established a training and coaching partnership with the Juran Institute; participated in training development and delivery for leaders and practitioners.– Deployed several innovation and continuous improvement (CI) methodologies across nationwide supply chain and distribution network, store operations, and corporate back office functions.– Coached several Green Belt process improvement projects that saved more than $15M.

Rochester, New York Area

Caldwell is a premier supplier of window counterbalances with six facilities in three countries.– Recruited by CEO to “fix” engineering, improve responsiveness to a large volume of sales inquiries, and hire and train a permanent director. Led a team of 12 direct reports.– Introduced the use of Lean principles to develop visual management of work. Established a data-driven, Kaizen-based, continuous improvement culture.– Identified weak organizational structure; restructured team to ensure both strategic and timely New Product Development (NPD) and Sustaining Engineering processes. Increased engineering productivity 30%.

Rochester, New York Area

Delphi is a leading global manufacturer and supplier for the automotive, computing, communications, energy, and consumer accessories markets, with over 100K employees in 32 countries.– Selected to fill a newly created position to redefine and rebuild the technical center culture, and develop a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. Led a team of six direct reports and 200 indirect reports. Team ranged from PhD to skilled union members at three sites. Managed a $5M P&L.– Discovered that senior leadership represented independently operating teams; formed and led a steering committee to establish a cohesive leadership team driving a shared culture and operations.– Provided guidance and support in developing technical centers in Mexico and China. Collaborated with technical center operations globally on the development & deployment of a lean business operating system – US, Mexico, China, Luxembourg, & Brazil.– Maintained excellent relationships with union and salaried personnel while achieving extensive savings through component outsourcing, elimination of model shop, and conversion to contract labor.– Achieved 20-50% improvements in test measurement quality and 10-20% development cycle times.– Directed site Quality Management System (QMS) and ensured compliance with all ISO/TS16949 audits.– Directed safety program resulting in ZERO lost workday injuries for seven years and 7M manhours.

Various

– Manager, Design and Analysis: led a team of 120 providing design and analytical services.– Manager, Analysis and Noise and Vibration: led a team of 25 providing analytical services.– Chassis Design Engineer: designed production and developmental chassis systems.– Product Engineer: designed and put into production automotive suspension coil springs.– Noise and Vibration Engineer: performed dynamic testing of components; dynamic Finite Element Analysis (FEA).– Analytical Engineer: performed structural, thermal, computational fluid dynamics, fluid-structural FEA, system simulation, Design of Experiments (DOE).

Master Of Science (Ms), Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Mechanical Engineering

Education record

– Lean Six Sigma Black Belt – Delphi MBA-based business leadership program – Kotter and Conner change management methodologies