Providing consultation for:● New Product Development● Technology Innovation● BenchmarkingI provide process tools and training to imbed new capabilities within client companies.

Alicat Scientific manufactures mass flow meters and controllers, as well as, pressure controllers for line sizes 2 inches and smaller. I led the design, R&D and engineering activities to expand high value product offerings and improve current products. This entailed customer and prospect visits to gather requirements and capability gap information to drive product capability priorities. I also delivered talks to industry groups, introducing Alicat as a company and product capabilities.• Introduced a new product roadmap • Developed a new product development process• Built a new product development team • Introduced advanced tools with new capabilities• Launched product development projects • Advised project leaders on technology and process

ACI is a defense contractor with an electronic manufacturing industry-facing side of the business. ACI operates two ONR ManTech Centers of Excellence and so is the prime contractor for Navy ManTech projects with team members that are Fortune 100 defense contractors and second tier suppliers.ACI does not have “managers”. They have the “Lead”. The Lead is to be proactive in leading various activities within the organization. The Lead develops proposals, leads projects, leads customer relationships, and communicates progress of knowledge to the industry.After leading a major ManTech project, I went on help develop a proposal that won the contract for the new Benchmarking and Best Practices Center of Excellence (B2PCOE). When the intended director left the company, I stepped in to develop the organization, establishing processes, initiating projects, developing benchmarking team training, and coordinating multiple projects.Among the processes developed within the B2PCOE was the so called “Manhattan Project”, so named for a vague organizational similarity to the original. The idea was to tackle intractable technical challenges with an elite, sequestered team. We would vet industry experts and then recruit them for the team. Our first project was lead-free electronics manufacturing for critical processes and infrastructure. The first report provided a clear view of the issues and risks, followed by a second report that provided recommendations for risk mitigation.Our standard benchmarking projects addressed manufacturing processes within the defense community. Not all addressed technical issues. For example, one addressed supply chain management for the Virginia Class Submarine.I went on to lead a project capture team for a $30M+ project to develop a compact, low cost radar for the smaller Navy ships. The team included a major defense contractor, second tier contractors, as well as, an internal team at ACI, funded through collaboration with the other services.

American Competitiveness Institute changed its name to ACI Technologies after I joined. During the first 2 years I led 2 Navy ManTech projects worth over $5M for a Navy Center of Excellence as prime contractor with Fortune 100 Defense subcontractors. Additionally, I consulted on a number of customer requests, providing timely knowledge and solutions to electronic manufacturing challenges. I also consulted on 2 Small Business Industrial Research (SBIR) projects to develop advanced thermal management technology for power electronics packaging.

Princeton Instruments provides state-of-the-art CCD, ICCD, EMCCD, emICCD, X-Ray and InGaAs cameras; spectrometers; spectrographs; imaging systems; optics and coatings. My role was to lead new product development projects, drive incremental product improvement, provide custom engineering solutions and own document and configuration control. I led a cross divisional, multidisciplinary team to develop a new product line for deep-cooled EMCCD camera platform that was co-branded for the divisions' respective markets.I leveraged a custom product request to effect a technology refresh on the large format x-ray camera product line.My team was able to create a competitive advantage by developing a compact, large format 2kX2k low-light imaging camera for astronomy and spectroscopic markets.When our department director left the company I was able to step in to support the company’s ISO 9000 certification through procedure development and internal auditing.When I was approached by our customer service, requesting help to reduce warrantee returns of water-cooled cameras, I found that the root cause was customers using chilled water circulators to cool the cameras. This caused condensation in the camera which shorted the electronics. I provided internal training to our sales and marketing personnel and then developed a compact, integrated ambient temperature heat exchanger that provided an improved customer experience, as well as, minimal product returns.A change in the manufacturing process prior to my joining Princeton Instruments created a problem in configuration management leading to errors in camera configurations and manufacturing delays. I worked with customer service and manufacturing to develop a new configuration process that eliminated the errors and delays.

Brooks Instrument manufactures a variety of flow instrumentation for a broad range of process technologies. At the time, the parent company was Emerson Electric.When I first joined, I led a team to develop the company's first successful digital mass flow controller. The engineering department was suffering from low moral at the time, which prompted me to investigate. I found, by interviewing each of the engineers and technicians and then using MS Project to analyze the work load, that the department was tasked at 130%. This helped to explain why projects were rarely on time. When I presented this information to senior management, they initiated a project review and realigned the tasks bringing the workload back into line.The Emerson CEO challenged us to examine our key flow measurement technology and prevent competitors from rendering it obsolete. I organized a private flow measurement seminar to review the state of the art. The group, which included internal and external representatives, reached a consensus that the flow measurement based on the Coriolis principle was the most viable. We did not have a skill set needed to develop the product, so I developed a core, rapid-learning team and then established a virtual, international, collaborative R&D organization for rapid development of the new product line of mass flow controllers. This required that I create technology and product roadmaps; secure outside resources, initiate collaborative international R&D and manufacturing relationships, execute feasibility studies, manage the product development project, develop partnerships with key customers, assure that our people were trained, assure smooth transition to manufacturing and communicate product value. The result was a new highly competitive product line, new customers, new partnerships, and new capabilities.

High Yield Technology (HYT) manufactured in-situ particle monitors (ISPM) for the effluent stream of semiconductor process equipment. The technology was based on laser light scattering and detection. HYT was recently acquired by Pacific Scientific. Their marketing strategy was to evangelize the semiconductor fabs toward retrofitting or requiring the ISPMs to be installed on new equipment. They had reached sufficient critical mass to begin a drive for the OEMs to make the product a standard option on their equipment.I was brought on board to initiate business development in the semiconductor equipment OEM market. My approach was to coordinate collaborative qualification projects involving OEM and end-user customers. The initial contacts and resulting orders were coordinated with regional, independent sales representatives and our field application engineers. In the short tenure with them I was able to sign OEM contacts with 3 of our "spot buy" customers worth more than $1M. Within this time, Sematech requested that we hold a user-group meeting. Working with our marketing department, I organized and chaired the event, which had approximately 50 attendees.

Unit Instruments was a mass flow controller company focused on the semiconductor industry. As a part of my on-boarding process I met with the Senior VP of our largest customer. He challenged me to infiltrate his organization to find the advanced research projects, develop relationships and gather product requirements to enable Unit to develop the required products in parallel to the OEM's development. The reason he could not simply direct me to the groups was that the company is a very dynamic and distributed organization. Traditional networking was unsuccessful in this setting. However, I found that by scanning conference programs where the OEM's engineers presented research papers, and attending their talks, I was able to make relationships that resulted in successful communication of product requirements to Unit. This resulted in the next generation of mass flow controllers. Additionally, I maintained surveillance on Unit's competitors, monitored and evaluated end user focus groups, consulted with semiconductor equipment companies, their customers and competitors on applications, and communicated the “voice of the customer” to Unit Instrument's product development teams.

My first assignment was to commission a new silicon epitaxy laboratory at the Technology Center. This developed into an electronics materials development section of which I was named Head. During this time I drove the reduction of operational costs while increasing capabilities until finally leading semiconductor materials and process development for the Technology Center, managing R&D projects, and tracking technology trends.I was privileged to be on the team that developed the first commercial LCD table top digital projector. My team developed wafer bonding and etch back technologies achieving 10+/-1nm thick bonded silicon layer on a 200mm wafer as an enabling technology for 3DICs.I collaborated with Hughes Research Labs (HRL) to develop through silicon via (TSV) technology for 3DICs.I developed silicon epitaxy over buried layer technology to enable the Hughes BiMOS cryogenic readout circuits.We also developed the highest purity silicon epitaxy in the world for Impurity-Band Conduction (IBC) Far Infrared Focal Plan Arrays (FIR FPAs).My team won the Team of the Year for discovering and eliminating a new defect that was affecting the yield of our FPAs.