Steven Pratt Email & Phone Number

Port Moody, BC, CA

Burnaby, BC, CA

Global, Global, OO

Bellingham, Washington, US

• Privately held company providing power solutions products to the cable, telecom, traffic and security markets.Member of the senior leadership team charged with building, directing and managing a group of 24 engineers.
• Contributed to the development and implementation of PLC processes to achieve and maintain ISO9001, TL9000 and ISO14001 certification; drafted internal design standards and external production/workmanship standards
• Identified the need for and created a new CTO/ETO quote-to-ship business process for custom power systems that accounts for 300-400 new products and 15%-30% of total revenue per year
• Developed and instituted probabilistic tools for planning, estimating and business-case risk assessment based on analysis of historical data
• Champion of test-to-fail approach and proven technology platforms / standard designs to drive increased reliability, reduced material costs and quicker development cycle-time
• Drove the implementation of three-year market, product and technology road maps; linked team size and composition to road map needs

Argus Technologies, a member of the Alpha Group, specialized in the design and manufacture of premium quality DC power solutions for the global communications industry. Since 1986, Argus has been recognized as an industry leader in the telephony market.In addition to complete custom power systems, Argus products include enclosures, rectifiers, converters.

CA

• Privately held company founded in 2001 to develop and commercialize micro fuel cell technology for hand-held-electronics devices.Reporting to the COO, directed and managed cross-functional staff of 13 engineers.
• Instituted streamlined NPD/NPI stage-gate process and integrated project plan including deliverables
• Assessed core technologies regarding manufacturability and provided recommendations
• Established design reliability acceptance criteria in measurable quantities (i.e. B1 life, MTT1F)
• Provided structure, communication and tracking in the form of regular review meetings and reports
• Drafted and executed testing infrastructure road map synchronized to project plans

US

• Development stage public company specializing in hydrogen batteries for military, medical, industrial, and consumer markets.Reporting to the CEO, directed and managed operations of wholly-owned subsidiary, including DC.
• Championed Design-For-Manufacturing principles to develop scale-able technology platforms; developed and synchronized market, product and technology road maps
• Applied design of experiments, process optimization, semi-automated tools and fixtures and standard operating procedures (SOP) to reduce material and process variation
• Optimized designs and processes to reduce unit cell direct material (DM) cost from $12.45 to $5.16 and assembly cost from $7.45 to 77¢; reduced 30 Watt-hour fuel cartridge DM cost from $15.56 to $1.80
• Improved yield from 44% to >99%, reducing per-cell cost of poor quality from $8.43 to 8¢
• Utilized work cells, time studies and assembly line balancing to redesign the work flow for maximum throughput; increased in-house capacity from 10 single cells per week to 200 4-cell modules per day

• Startup founded in 2004 for the purpose of licensing and commercializing planar fuel cell technology developed at Motorola.Organized and grew company to establish Gecko as key player in alternative energy / portable.
• Successfully organized, funded and launched alternative energy startup; obtained license to key patents and technologies from Motorola
• Negotiated and entered into three-year, $6M joint development agreement in 2005 with Millennium Cell to obtain initial funding and co-develop power source products. Gecko was fully acquired and became a wholly owned.
• Determined critical skill sets and identified and hired exceptional personnel to build out the team
• Utilized platform approach to drive development of product and process according to road maps
• Defined metrics, set targets and characterized production to measure and continuously improve performance, cost, yield and throughput

Chicago, Illinois, US

• Fortune 100 company providing technologies, products and services for mobile communications worldwide.Provided broad array of design and engineering services spanning cradle-to-grave, including: advanced product and.
• Championed cross-functional international (US, Malaysia) Six Sigma Quality team to tackle critical field failure, resulting in new product having greater than 10 times expected reliability (B0.1 life), zero subsequent.
• Worked with preferred supplier to develop novel mold tooling technology and core process redesign to reduce design-to-molded-part cycle time by 66%; received corporate 10X cycle-time reduction award
• Established virtual team and streamlined product development process for rapid turnaround of several commercial-quality prototypes; delivered cutting-edge devices with typical lead time of 1-3 months
• Rapidly identified root-cause of manufacturing failures and modified design to reduce failure rate by 12 DPHU, thus gaining ship acceptance and meeting critical ship date
• Combined marketing tools, patent landscape analysis and creative problem solving techniques to drive inventing process; integrated new methods via training seminars, advanced invention sessions and one-on-one.

Co-invented integral knowledge-based design and analysis methodology and incorporated software within Pro/Engineer to seamlessly automate and integrate concurrent engineering practices early in the concept development and product design stage.

Re-designed a CNC lathing operation, increased productivity 4X and reducing defects by 3 orders of magnitude, thus securing a major contract previously written off as a loss to a competitor.