Jeff Hess Email & Phone Number

Yankton, South Dakota, United States

Ancenis, Fr

Knoxville, Ia, Us

Elk Point, South Dakota, Us

Returned to rebuild engineering department after company shut down and sale. Currently managing a geographically dispersed engineering team of five to support a custom trailer design and manufacture company with annual sales of $15M to $18M. Primary responsibilities include new product development, supervision and mentoring of new engineering staff, support of manufacturing, sales, and customer service, and coordination of engineering resources.

Cleveland, Oh, Us

Development of test plans and fixtures to validate new products. Interfaced with suppliers and customers (both domestic and off-shore) to design cost effective, industry leading products. Managed multiple large scale development projects, participated in visits to customer's facilities to evaluate prototypes, and bench marked competitive products.

Project management, product and process design of custom heavy haul trailer systems.Mentored developing engineers and technical staff to increase productivity and enhance group performance. Developed and managed a comprehensive structural and durability test plan with a total budget over $250,000 to simulate 5 years product life.Championed extensive cost reduction and process improvement efforts for entire product family to reduce costs by 10%.Worked in team environment to standardize and document design guidelines for custom product. Developed logical, math based criteria from legacy rules of thumb and guidelines. Worked closely with sales and senior engineering staff to understand industry and develop new products to meet customer expectation

Project management, design of structural, hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical systems for automotive frame repair equipment. Product testing, training of sales and service personnel, development of product manuals, product troubleshooting, and customer assistance with product problems. Supervised and mentored in-house contract engineers and technical support personnel. Worked closely with outsource engineering and production facilities to communicate technical requirements. Developed new standard products tailored to production capabilities, minimizing opportunities for error while reducing labor cost. Lead inventor on US patents 6925848 and 7143628Hydraulic, pneumatic, and electric system redesign to minimize costs while increasing reliabilityIntegrated input from service, production, and sales to develop improved products

Design and documentation of custom falling object and roll over protective structures using Autocad. Overall responsibility for legacy product family with focus on continuous quality and cost improvements.CNC programming for punch plasma and laser fabrication machines.

Edgerton, Mn, Us

Sole engineer for single division of company specializing in custom vinyl promotional products. Tooling and process design for low and high volume product lines. Provided tooling, materials, and process information to estimators to generate quotations for custom products.

Brookings, Sd, Us

Design custom scoreboards and message centers

Worked in the value analysis department. Primary focus was investigating new technologies to incorporate into production.