Michael Patriarca Email & Phone Number

Swampscott, Ma, Us

Swampscott, Ma, Us

Singapore, Sg

Newburyport, Ma, Us

Rochester Electronics makes semiconductors for military, aerospace, automotive, & consumer applications. Upon joining their team, I came up to speed quickly on their QMS program. I took charge of the Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) mitigation program, ushering in new quality control techniques and metrics, allowing REI to achieve Class 0 ESD mitigation. Within 6 months the ESD program achieved ANSI ESDA S20.20 certification, opening up new revenue streams from industries and customers that require this certification. In addition I moderated REI's Technical Review Board (TRB). This internal board governs technical changes that may affect "Form, Fit, or Function" of the product. In addition to FFF, other considerations included Product Change Notifications (PCN), as well as environmental, health, & safety.Versed in JEDEC standards for Highly Accelerated Stress Testing (HAST), Temp Cycle, Moisture Sensitivity Level (MSL), Preconditioning, and Tin Whisker growth on semiconductors. I have written extensive technical documents and internal specifications on all of the above standards with special focus on production. I was part of a Quality Assurance team that writes & approves Product Qualification specifications for semiconductor production. Product Qualifications are the detailed test procedures and stresses that semiconductors must pass in order to assure quality of the product. Military, Aerospace, and Automotive industries have the highest standards, and the most demanding requirements for semiconductor devices. Perhaps the most enjoyable project in which I participated at REI was to lead a Quality team to designed a new completely "out-of-the-box" technique for testing lead integrity on a small QFN package. This project was for a tier 1 customers. The process we designed was simple yet elegant, and scalable to production levels, while maintaining the demanding MIL standards the customer required. The customer was ecstatic with the new design.

Running this business started part-time, but as sales rose it became a full time job. For more than 10 years I have been sourcing a variety of product for the retail market. This has required gaining knowledge on a wide variety of products, and monitoring retail buying trends as well as checking the quality of the sourced product. While this has presented a variety of challenges, I think one example in particular captures the skills required for this effort. Several years ago, memory chips for personal electronics were getting a lot of attention. Anticipating the consumer demand, I sourced a supplier located in China. I educated myself on these memory devices, becoming very knowledgeable. I joined a business group comprised of Americans working with Chinese suppliers. I also stayed current on consumer blogs of Chinese hi-tech. I became aware that there were counterfeit memory devices being shipped to North American markets. Apparently most importers were accepting the wholesale orders and selling them retail without testing them. Leveraging my knowledge, I tested every memory device before sale. I was able to market my devices as "tested," and I was able to offer an unconditional guarantee of my products. This lead to increased sales and 100% satisfaction of my customers.

Chelmsford, Ma, Us

Provided extensive reporting on relational database using SQL and MS Office to create charts and tables. This allowed our department to embrace data-driven decision making; which led to 40% quality improvement on repairs. On subsequent efforts to reduce failures, I used "5-Whys" to drill-down on failures determining the root cause. The returns were substantial, including: improving product reliability (> 98%), and significantly improving customer perception of product quality. By focusing on, and improving the repair process, the company was able to realize a 50% reduction in repair failures. I was able to support the culture of quality by leading key stakeholders to focus on the order of operations in the repair process. Getting their "buy-in" of the new process was a substantial effort, but paid off handsomely. This allowed the repair personnel to work "smarter" not harder. It improved quality with virtually no cost to the organization. As the quality of the product improved I was selected to be on a team to facilitate the corporate transition to new Oracle CRM software. My focus was on creating the details of the repair order process and the repair itself. I completed that project by writing extensive technical documentation for each of the processes that the team detailed (e.g. Creating the repair ticket, Issuing RMA, receiving product from customer, storing and handling product, clean-room procedures for the repair process, monitoring repair cycle-time, etc.)

Tolland, Ct, Us

I was initially hired by a small company as an applications & field engineer. The company had a very focused product: a computer controlled single-ply or low-ply cutting table, very similar to a large flatbed plotter. These cutting tables used a blade instead of a pen to cut the material. The target marked was the sail making industry for marine applications and several other low-ply applications. Although it is somewhat of a niche market, there is substantial opportunity in this industry making it ripe for automation. Historically, sails were cut by hand making it a long process. The automated high precision, low-ply cutting solution reduced the production time by an order of magnitude.The product sold well and got much attention making the small company the target of an acquisition; we merged with Gerber Technology and soon the product was selling into a broad range of industries including textiles, apparel, composites, automotive, and medical, among others. I advanced to support and expand the fast growing European market, working with the"in-country" sales and marketing teams. I was their sales engineer, applications engineer, and quality engineer; staying in close contact with the main office back in the States, and providing frequent updates and feedback. Exposure to this broad array of industries has given me important insight into what quality practices among successful companies look like. I have gathered the commonalities of these successful companies into a set of quality principles and I have successfully applied them as my career has progressed.