Edward Gest Email & Phone Number

Brookfield, Wisconsin, United States

Tax Manager

Milwaukee, Wi

• Created and managed the financial structure required to control and report on organizational procurement expenditures, departmental budgets, and formalized savings plans. • Met with various Controllers and their teams to identify the total JCI spend. Through the team’s efforts, we were able to create an Access database with all vendors and identify the total spend of $3.3 billion dollars. • Created a standardized savings report that is now used across multiple JCI divisions. This report allows business unites to recognize savings that are not a part of a standard cost system. Implemented a global standard for savings reporting that is traceable to the P & L. • Worked as a part of the management team responsible for $268 million in hard savings in our 2017 fiscal year.

Watertown, Wi

• Managed all aspects of the Watertown, WI manufacturing plant’s financials and managed the $9.5 million Damper manufacturing cell.

Watertown, Wi

• Fully responsible for the management and operation of the Damper Cell factory. This includes the manufacturing, quality, implementation of engineering changes, inventory procurement and turns, delivery performance, the development of the Damper Cell salaried staff, and Damper Cell financial results. • Delivery performance went from 58% on-time the year prior to my taking over to 88% in my first year and 97% in year 2. • Inventory turns for my first year were 26.7% the highest in my division. Year 2 turns were 26%, also the highest in my division. • Productivity in my first year was 82%, the highest in the plant. Year 2 productivity improved to 87%.• Past dues have been kept at a minimum. Usually in the 0-$3,000 range. • The Damper business that was run in Poteau was moved to Watertown when Poteau was closed. This was accomplished and implemented with minimal disruption to our customers.

Milwaukee, Wi

• Responsible for the financial operations of the plant while supervising a Sr. Accountant, Payroll/Fixed Assets Clerk, and an Accounts Payable Clerk. • Closed the books, analysed the financials, and prepared the budget. • In FY00, while reconciling accounts, discovered a major problem in the way our systems handled material purchase price variance. It was discovered that not all of the variance is recognized until the purchase order is closed out. The problem had allowed$1.0 million of favourable variance to get captured in the Accounts Payable account. I corrected the way the variance was getting captured and the problem did not happen again and we were able to recognize the $1.0 million as earnings in FY00.• Created an Excel file to reduce the time it takes to prepare the budget and used the software tools included in the package to automatically load the budget in the system reducing the time to load and keypunch errors. • Successfully changed the Watertown union employees from manufacturing payroll to the corporate payroll system allowing corporate to reduce benefit costs and increase the ease with which payroll reporting is done. o This method has since been used at other SP plants to automate payroll in the same manner.

Milwaukee, Wi

Milwaukee, Wi

Milwaukee, Wi

Milwaukee, Wi

Milwaukee, Wi

Milwaukee, Wi