Iku Nakada Email & Phone Number

Atlanta, Ga, Us

Greater Atlanta Area

Senior operations expert and program leader with deep experience in engineering, customer engagement, technical service, and manufacturing. Proven track record delivering results through diverse, cross-functional program teams, including those with third-party involvement and significant customer engagement. Specific expertise areas: • Operational Excellence • Product Management • Supply Chain Optimization • Customer Engagement• Post-Merger Integration• Technology Development Processes • Program Management• Technical Issue Resolution• Quality Management • Process Improvement • Agile Development• Startups

Northern Atlanta Metro

Owner of 3 franchise locations in the North Atlanta Metro.

Greater Atlanta Area

Directed the centralized operations team for Cisco’s Service Provider Video (SP-Video) Business. Spearheaded acquisition integration (Scientific-Atlanta and NDS into Cisco) activities, coordinated global operations activities across the SP-Video Business Units, managed the escalation engineering team, and developed and managed a laboratory and asset strategy for the business.• Drove the Scientific-Atlanta acquisition integration to completion – $7Billion business fully converted to Cisco processes and tools. Key member of NDS integration team - $5Billion software and services business • Transformed SP-Video Escalation Engineering team from a high level customer issue resolution team to a new product deployment and resolution team without adding additional headcount and improving customer satisfaction by having successful new product launches. • Organized and led the Operations Leadership Forum to drive deployment of new processes and standards across over 6000 employees across the globe. This is a small central team that leveraged the organizational structure and clout of the local business teams to implement changes.

Greater Atlanta Area

Led the growth of the >$1B North American Service Provider product line over 10% per year by providing excellent marketing, sales, operations, and technical support to customers. • Hired to lead the Quality function for new product development and was rapidly given additional responsibilities including managing critical customer issues and creating a team of escalation engineers to address complex system issues. This led to being promoted to Vice President, Customer Marketing and Engineering for the Digital Video Systems Group. • Maintained positive customer relationships by being the single source for production/shipping status, providing frequent updates on new products, driving customer requirements into product roadmaps, managing customer-facing revenue-impacting projects, and providing high-level technical support for product issues.• Worked with Sales and Customers to negotiate contracts and develop deals for targeted growth areas. Negotiated strategic vendor and third-party contracts.• Provided detailed product forecasts to Manufacturing and Procurement groups to ensure customer product needs were met, including strategies for overcoming regulatory changes and complex product transitions.

Boynton Beach Florida

Managed all aspects of a state-of- the-art printed circuit board (PCB) assembly factory. The factory produced populated PCBs that were assembled into pagers and other communications devices, and was considered a showcase for the integration of technology (robotics, placement, and vision equipment) with empowered team-based workforce. Gains in output, cost, and quality improvements were significant enough to shift operations away from “lower labor cost” locations to the factory in Florida. • Managed traditional cost, quality, and delivery metrics while providing production employees with input into work assignments and methods to reach their goals• Developed and conducted ground-breaking training that include experiential learning for hourly employees and other means to increase the problem-solving ability and ownership of factory goals by all employees. • Obtained an improvement in output and quality over 25%.

Rapidly promoted while mastering a broad span of manufacturing and product development roles culminating in obtaining a key Operations Manager position in a high tech, innovative environment. During this time, productivity, output, and quality increased by over 2000x• Production Management – shift, section, and department manager responsible for productivity, safety, and quality. • Development and Production Engineering – led a team of up to 60 engineers that were effective in developing higher yielding production processes. • Maintenance Management – directed all skilled tradesmen working all of the production equipment and facilities. Successful maintaining a positive relationship with unionized employees working in the facility.• Operations Management – managed for a 600 person manufacturing facility with responsibility for productivity, quality, cost-reduction initiatives, and engineering.