Rob Frei Email & Phone Number

Pewaukee, Wi, Us

Waukesha, Wisconsin, Us

Responsible for managing a team of 16 engineers covering a wide range of disciplines including: hardware, firmware, software, mechanical design plus DevOps. During my tenure at Telkonet, my team delivered over 20 successful IoT products to market while transitioning away from a legacy energy management platform to a new state of the art platform in the AWS cloud. During this time, we installed over a half million wireless devices in 4000 hotels worldwide with additional installations in smaller verticals like military and student housing.New Product Development• EcoCommander 5.x Server• Integration Server• NT8000 Gateway Coordinator• Aida WiFi Thermostat• Touch Combo WiFi Thermostat • EcoInsight+ Zigbee Thermostat • EcoSource+ Zigbee Thermostat• EcoTouch Remote UI• EcoTouch Plus Remote UI• EcoSense+ Occ Sensor• EcoContact+ Door Contact• Rhapsody Composer Web App • EcoTools Web App• Composer Mobile App• EcoCentral Mobile App• EcoSwitch+• EcoGuard+• EcoInput Lighting Controller • Control API3rd Party IoT Integrations:• Dorma Kaba, Assa Abloy & Salto door locks• Samsung & Sonifi TV• Control4, Iris & Intellity controls• Axxess & Lutron lighting• Powershades, Somfy, Crestron & Lutron shade controllers• Bartech mini bars• Volara & Angie voice control• Johnson Controls Metasys, Trane Tracer & Automated Logic BMS control via BACnet.

Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mx

As R&D Manager, I provided leadership for a team of 10 responsible for the development of several groundbreaking technologies. Two of our projects were funded by grants from the DoE. Our partners in these collaborative endeavors included: Oak Ridge National Lab, Southern California Edison, Bonneville Power Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority and others. Through these projects we were able to advance industry knowledge in several key areas: superconducting technology, cryogenic refrigeration, composite materials, AC losses associated with 2G HTS materials, fault current limitation and power flow control in smart grid transmission systems.• 2013 SPX Innovation Award Winner• DoE Sponsored HTS-FCL Superconducting Transformer: 28 MVA 3-Phase Smart Grid compatible superconducting transformer with fault current limiting capability (69 KV/12.47 KV class).• DoE (ARPA-E) Sponsored Continuous Variable Series Reactor (CVSR): 115 KV rated device that will allow the project's host utility (BPA) to inject inductance into the transmission line at the substation to significantly improve power flow.• High Temperature Insulation: a new insulation material that can be used to replace traditional cellulose insulation in transformers. • UZDVac: a product improvement project that adds vacuum interruptor technology to SPX's high speed, resistance bridging UZD LTC (Load Tap Changer).• Voting Member NEMA Transformers & Smart Grid Groups (Representing SPX)• Material Testing, Performance Testing, Material Standards, IEEE/ANSI C57

Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mx

During my time as mechanical design manager at Prolec, I had an opportunity to automate engineering processes and mechanical design work flows that utilized 3D CAD. I won an SPX Innovation Award for this work, and a new position was created so that I could focus on automating business processes on a broader scale. During this time, I created many applications to advance business intelligence and give Prolec employees easier and faster access to information so they could make better business decisions.• Developed a customer portal providing SAP services for tracking orders, a virtual transformer gallery that allows customers to see pictures of their orders as they're being built and a GPS tracking system for monitoring truck & rail shipments.• Developed an online DMS (Document Management System) that allows Prolec to share engineering drawings and 3D models via the cloud with customers, the shop floor and Prolec’s suppliers.• Developed proprietary SCORM Compliant LMS (Learning Management System) to serve as a hub for all training at SPX.• Xcode, Cocoa, Objective-C, C#.NET, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Perl, PHP, TT2, JavaScript, jQuery, DOM, MySQL and CSS

Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mx

• Lead a talented team of 36 mechanical designers utilizing Creo (Pro/E) to deliver highly optimized transformer designs for manufacturing.• Focused on continuous improvement in quality and automation to insure that all designs were manufacturable, cost competitive and completed within an ever shrinking design cycle.I managed a talented team of 36 direct reports tasked with producing the mechanical design of Prolec transformers. This role required close collaboration with electrical engineering, our mechnical suppliers, sales, operations, our test floor and quality. At the time, our products ranged from medium power to EHV up to 1200 MVA, 345 KV. We produced designs for station, substation, GSU, Auto, Phase Shifting, Dual Voltage and Zig-Zag transformers.• Managed the internal and external mechanical design of "engineered to order" Medium and EHV transformers (station & substation, GSU, Auto, Phase Shifting, Dual Voltage, Zig-Zag transformers).• Accountable for the timely release of all drawings, BOMs and shop floor routings. Consistently beat scheduling deadlines by two weeks or better.• Worked closely with manufacturing to help resolve engineering, quality or production related questions across three shifts.• Responsible for providing the best design with the lowest total ownership cost. Worked closely with customers, manufacturing, marketing, sales, quality and purchasing to make sure each project remained on a successful track throughout the design and manufacturing cycles.• Responsible for customer changes, engineering change notifications and correction of non-conformances.• Developed and integrated software tools to improve engineering throughput.• Supervised training and on-boarding for new employees. Responsible for performance reviews, merit increases, team building and other administrative tasks.• Served as mentor for engineering development and rotational programs, and worked closely with HR to recruit new engineering talent.

Lisle, Il, Us

• Motivated cross-functional team of 15 engineers to develop innovative products in highly competitive market spaces.Responsible for building an innovative NPD team from scratch capable of producing world class electrical products for both commer- cial industry and the consumer marketplace. I implemented stages and gates during this time to help managed NPD. New product development included: string lights, hand lamps, wiring devices and push buttons.My team was tasked with all electrical and mechanical design, as well as the development of the lean work cells needed to manufac- ture our products in Juarez, Mexico (meeting TPS requirements). We collaborated with outside firms on tooling for plastic injection molding, but ran the machines in our work cells. Our work cells were designed using takt time calculations to ensure optimum flow. At the end of the day these award winning products and the automated cells we built to produce them were designed to be modular so we could ship the cells to Juarez and get them operational in 1-3 days. Our plant manager was a fan of our process.• Established a creative mechanical design center proficient in complex plastic and metal part design.• Awarded patent numbers 6817733 and 20020136008 for award winning industrial molded string light.• Integrated highly effective Stages & Gates project management system to help the team to deliver commercially viable new products on time and on cost.• Provided key support for integration of Lean Manufacturing (TPS system).• Responsible for designing and building highly automated manufacturing cells to support the assembly of new products. Supervised the integration of these cells into different production facilities (Juarez, Mexico and Northbrook, IL).• Responsible for establishing and maintaining various regulatory agency requirements for all products (UL, CSA, CE).• Responsible for engineering's ISO 9001 and quality management systems.

I managed a team of 16 designers at Omni. At the time, Omni was a leading manufacturer of printed circuit boards going back to 1972. This family owned business employed 300 people across three shifts at a 156,000 square foot facility specializing in double-sided, multilayer and blind/buried via boards for RF and other applications utilizing FR4, Teflon and exotic materials. As a full service supplier, Omni offered it’s strategic partners 47 hour turns on prototypes as well as standard production runs. Omni also exceled at servicing volume orders requiring short cycle times. The engineering team was responsible for reviewing all gerber and CNC machine tool files to ensure manufacturability using Valor Genesis and similar tools. These design reviews were challenging due to the quick turn nature of the business.• Key customers included: Motorola, 3COM, US Robotics, Allen Bradley, Shure Brothers, Teltrend, Westell, Tellabs.• Worked closely with customers to insure PCB designs met all technical and performance specifications.• Successfully managed engineering at a time when the organization experienced a 400% increase in PCB orders orders.• Championed strategic R&D efforts to develop and implement HDI (High Density Interconnect) manufacturing processes to meet the rapidly advancing needs of the wireless electronics community.• Trained and organized first, second and third shift designers to review detailed wireless RF designs prior to submitting orders to manufacturing – this was necessary to turn prototype orders in 48-hours.• Worked closely with sales and marketing to present complicated PCB process knowledge to industry and thus help US wireless manufacturers better understand PCB manufacturing capabilities.

Columbus, Oh, Us

At the time, BriskHeat’s largest vertical market for surface heating was the semiconductor industry--both OEMs (Applied Materials, LAM Research, Novellus, KLA, Thermco) and fabs (Intel, AMD, Motorola, Cypress, Harris Semiconductor). I played a pivotal role in cultivating a niche market for surface and bakeout heating by forging partnerships with scientists at several National Labs (AT&T Bell Labs, Argonne National Lab, Fermi, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkely and Brookhaven). In some key semiconductor processes such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) surface heating can be used to significantly reduce deposition in the tooling and process lines which reduces maintenance and down time. Surface heating provides similar benefits in semiconductor processes that involve dangerous specialty gases such as Dichlorosilane, Boron Trichloride, Tungsten Hexafluoride and Hydrogen Fluoride. By heating these lines, the fabs can greatly reduce downtime and difficult maintenance. High energy physics applictions involve beams of particles that are accelerated near the speed of light in a high vacuum. To achieve such high levels of vacuum, it is helpful to remove moisture, thus surface heating can be very helpful.• I was granted a patent for inventing a grounded resistive heating element while at BriskHeat: Patent Number 5883364• Go-to person for designing and writing the RFP responses for particle accelerator applications including the RFP for the first LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity-Wave Observatory)--a NSF program established to study gravity waves.• Managed the development of the ACR II (Advanced Composite Repair) system for the USAF - this was a portable composite repair system used to conduct flight line repairs on composite aircraft components (DoD SBIR project).• Multizone temperature control is a very important component in all of the applications mentioned herein--I developed a 16 zone temperature control system that was used in fabs throughout the US.

Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Us

Provided field troubleshooting expertise for the MK 86 Weapons Control System onboard DD-963 class destroyers on both coasts.Areas of expertise included:• SPQ-9A Radar• SPG-60 Radar• AN/UYK-7 Mainframe Computer• MK 86 Weapons Control Console, Gun Control ConsolesQualified MOR Program (Master Ordnance Repair) for the MK 86 Weapons Control System - NAVSEA 8000.2A, New Orleans, LA, 1989

Washington, Dc, Us

Responsible for maintenance, repair and operation of MK 86 Weapons Control System onboard the USS Elliot DD-697 from 1985 to 1988.The USS Elliot was a Spruance Class Destroyer attached to DesRon 9 at 32nd Street Naval Station, San Diego, CA.• Completed Basic Training, RTC Great Lakes, Waukegan, IL• Graduated Basic Electronics School, NTC Great Lakes, Waukegan, IL• Graduated Naval Submarine School, Naval Submarine Base, Groton, CT• Graduated MK 117 Underwater Fire Control System School, Naval Submarine Base, Groton, CT• Graduated AN/SPQ-9A Radar Fleet Maintenance Course, FTC, San Diego, CA• Served aboard Spruance Class Destroyer, USS Elliot DD-967 (1985 - 1988)• Honorably Discharged from United States Navy in 1988