Family owned manufacturer of refractory castable and shapes with annual; sales of $60,000,000. Supplying the iron and steel, glass and aluminum industries worldwide• Developed and improved products• Monitored and improved quality of field installations• Maintained MSDS and Product Data Sheets• Approved Alternate Raw Materials

Provided product development and technical support to largest customer with a focus on new product start-up and troubleshooting assistance to both plant and development teams.• Developed procedure for commissioning new products that ensured environmental, safety and training issues were addressed. • Improved correlation of pilot plant data with full-scale production through team discussions, data gathering and statistical analysis. Reduced the amount of time spent bringing product to market and reducing the average amount of off-specification material made during each trial by 50%.• Acted as technical liaison for a major customer, that led to formation of a joint venture with the customer.• Developed and commercialized two new catalysts providing estimated $3.0 million in annual revenue. Patent is pending on one catalyst.

Applied troubleshooting and problem solving expertise to plant operations.• Troubleshot operations through team brainstorming and problem solving, in one case increasing process rate by 50%.• Commercialized three new catalysts and managed new toll manufacturing efforts, resulting in sales of $1.0 million. • Participated in team that developed, implemented and trained operators on an environmental compliance program. Program won the site Illinois EPA recognition as a Partner in Pollution Prevention and assured compliance with the new Clean Air Act.• Earned ISO 9000 certification, as part of the team that developed the system, rewrote all procedures and established data collection to assure compliance.• Served as Pollution Prevention Code manager for site Responsible Care® program.

Evaluated potential new products and processes, providing preliminary and detailed cost estimates for each. Budgetary and project management for capital projects to $2.0MM • Installed an entire extrusion line which made extensive use of surplus equipment. Final project cost was $1.4 million, easily a savings of $1.4 million over other alternatives proposed.• Served as Process Safety Code manager for site Responsible Care® program

Managed a production facility that included three supervisors and 30 operators. Coordinated with maintenance and process engineering to assure timely response to problems and continuous process improvements

Managed group of six process engineers, assuring continual improvement of existing processes and recommending and implementing capital projects for process improvement and new product manufacturing. Facilitated career development of the staff.

Created the positionDeveloped quality metricsDeveloped quality incentive programWorked with process engineers to provide continuous improvements

Developed new refractory products