John Hefferle Email & Phone Number

St Louis, Missouri, United States

Cost Engineering, Quote Development, Supply Chain Management, Process Planning / Improvement, CNC Machining, Manufacturing Operations, Continuous Improvement

St Louis, Missouri, United States

• Led the cost estimating and quotation development function for an industry-leading Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier of complex high pressure die cast aluminum & magnesium products to the automotive and lawn & garden.
• RFQ management, quote development, financial modeling, & risk assessment.
• Program budgeting for production equipment, tooling, automation, and contract services.
• Manufacturing process planning including target setting for operational metrics, cycle times, labor costs, & program budgets.
• Collaborate & strategize with industry leading suppliers of tooling, equipment, automation, and component suppliers on new programs to optimize competitive position.
• Identification & evaluation of new suppliers and technologies for manufacturing equipment, tooling, and engineering services.

St Louis, Missouri, United States

Responsible for launch management of new programs to ensure customer milestones, program budgets, launch metrics, and financial targets are met. Liaison to customer engineering and purchasing teams to manage technical and commercial open issues, engineering & scope changes, and program schedule.

St Louis, Missouri, United States

• Manager of Product Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, and Tool & Die departments at a TS16949 certified brake rotor & drum manufacturing facility. Responsibilities included new product design, development, &.
• Achieved 100% on-time launches for Ford Motorcraft OES rotor & drum product line.
• Increased pace of new part number launches by 3x the previous average.
• Identified and "fast-tracked" 7 high volume, high priority part numbers to become first supplier to the aftermarket.
• Led technical & commercial competitive analysis team to expand supply base for castings and finished goods to support growth strategy to expand product line and internal production capacity.

St Louis, Missouri, United States

• Responsibilities included new product introduction, production support & process troubleshooting, implementation of lean manufacturing initiatives including SMED, 5S, and continuous improvement, and administration of.
• Developed standardized tooling layout and setup procedures for brake rotor machining & assembly lines, eliminating the primary cause of downtime and reducing setup scrap by 30%.
• Championed effort to reduce part-to-part changeover time on brake rotor production cells from over 14 hours to 2 hours on average with minimal implementation cost.
• Led Lean Manufacturing and training activities with production team members including SMED, 5S, visual factory, and Kaizen events.

St Louis, Missouri, United States

• Responsible for financial justifications, capital project management, and new product launches.
• Project Engineer for new manufacturing processes and equipment at multiple US locations and joint venture start-up in Mexico.
• CNC programming, forging & machining process development, & turnkey engineering.
• Forging & extrusion die design, tooling & fixture design, and various machine design projects using SDRC I-DEAS CAD software.
• New Product Introduction (NPI) Team member for multiple MOOG product lines including inner & outer tie rod ends, ball joints, control arms, center / drag links, idler / pitman arms, and others.
• Expertise: hot & cold forging die design, CNC turning & machining, modular quick-change tooling, new process development, SAP ERP.