I have worked in the pistachio industry for 23 years in harvest operations, maintenance, operations, engineering, and continuous improvement. I started in May of 2002 at Nichols Farms as an Optical sorting machine operator. I moved into the Maintenance Department in 2004 as the Maintenance Supervisor and filled that role for about a year and moved into the Maintenance Manager position in 2005 where I ran the department for 10 years. My duties included managing a team of up to 20 team members to ensure the plant and all related equipment was in good working order, Leading weekly Safety meeting, Setting up and implementing a plant-wide PM program, Work Order program, assisting with expansion projects, ordering department supplies, securing quote, overseeing installation of new packaging line, and working together with other department heads to ensure company objectives were met in a timely manner. Managed a 30 man team at the hulling division for the last 6 years to ensure that harvested product is hulled, dried and stored as to not degrade quality. As of December 2014, my new role is in the Continuous Improvement Department as the Assistant CI Manager were i am in charge of our CI apprentices. Our goal with this program is to take 3 team members from their primary roles and put them through an intensive 5 month CI training program where we teach CI methodology such as 8 wastes, 5S, Kanban, Visual boards, Standard Work, Project Management, Practical Problem Solving, Value Stream Mapping, A3 implementation, Flow Charts, and Root Cause Analysis to help move towards our mission and vision. I recently attended and was certified as a 6 Sigma Green Belt at USC Vitribi School of Engineering where our focus was on mapping histograms, understanding control charts to see if a process is stable and predictable before implementing process improvements. I have since moved to Touchstone Pistachio Co. We’re I have used my well rounded skill set to help move the organization forward. I am excited for my new roles to see where it will take me!