Robin Gerber Email & Phone Number

Harvard, Illinois, United States

AOK Harvard Products is a collection of companies that manufacture a wide variety of building products. Commercial and residential doors and windows, freezer and cooler doors, portable steel buildings, equestrian and agricultural buildings and a wide assortment of hardware and custom OEM fabricated products. Some of our larger customers are Grainger, McMaster-Carr, Northern Natural Gas and NICOR. I wear a few hats here and in addition to overseeing quality, I’ve been creating routers to track the true costs of products and restructure their bills of material, which have improved our margins. Developed a more robust polyurethane foaming process that has significantly reduced the number of rejected doors. Helped them establish better local and global sourcing to reduce costs. Facilitate the internal Kanban process. Engineered hardware components to make us more competitive in the market. I also do a little drafting to make custom doors and sit on a committee that improves our brand image in literature and social media.

North America

Developed OEM suppliers and vendors for Napoleon in China and Vietnam. This included their manufacturing processes and quality. In addition, I worked closely with existing and new component and material suppliers and vendors for all three divisions which included Hearth, Grills and HVAC. I interacted with a team of my own in China and teams in Mexico, USA and Europe. It was quite rewarding working in a global network again, solving problems and selling products people really enjoyed. It also gave me the opportunity to fuel my passion to learn more first hand about local World cuisine so I could improve my own culinary skills.

Helped companies I worked with globally, improve their processes and develop suppliers / vendors in a variety of materials, commodities and processes. It was great to maintain those relationships.

Palatine Illinois

Weber grills are pretty well known around the World for their quality. I was proud to be a part of that organization and helping to keep the brand image alive and strong. As the Director of Quality Engineering, I assembled a team of data analysts and engineers to look at all the different sources of data and information and help make improvements. We visualized the data into easy to understand reports which could be used by Sales, Product Management, Global Subsidiaries and certain customers. The consistent reporting provide the organization with a current status on all the activity for problems on many levels. It also provided valuable information to the R&D department to improve designs and Finance to better project warranty costs associated with a specific design. In addition, the quality engineering team would help prioritize the most critical issues and establish projects. We focused our investigations to correct unique problems that impacted warranty claims, reliability, legal issues and the assembly of product in our factories.

Palatine Illinois

This promotion placed me as the head of Quality for domestic and Asia manufacturing and the international supply chain of parts and materials. The Quality/Engineering Labs were now my responsibility and I quickly showed the usefulness and justification to increase their capabilities. I added an x-ray spectrometer to measure material chemistries, a QUV light chamber to challenge color UV protection in paints, plastics and labels. Doubled the capacity for salt fog testing. Added nickel, copper and chrome plating thickness test equipment. Increased optical measurement equipment and a plethora of metallurgical instruments including the ability to mount, polish and etch metallographic specimens. This allowed us to measure grain size, inclusions/laminations in steel as well as bubble structure and defects in porcelain enameled steel. These additions took a lot of the finger pointing away from the age old argument of “it’s the steel – no it’s the tool” in Manufacturing and with the Steel Mills.This position also allowed me to focus attention and resources on domestic process controls for stamping, deep drawing, powder coating and porcelain enamel finishing various alloys and aluminum castings. Control limit charts were introduced at all measurable locations which were audited and then weekly meetings held to implement corrective actions. With the help of IT and Engineering, sensors were installed at all the measurable locations and Ignition software was used to display in real time, the measurements on displayed limit charts. This was a real eye opener to everyone when flat screen displays were strategically placed for all to see how we were doing. Corrective actions increased significantly.

Palatine Illinois

Not only is Weber a leader for BBQ grills but there is a huge assortment of accessories as well. I was instrumental in the development, specifications, literature, testing and packaging of all the different types including the electronics. Packaging many times is overlooked but it’s the first thing that consumers (or big box retailers) see and the experience they have, when removing your products from the box. Consistent documented auditing and testing at the supplier prevents shipping damage and graphics abrasion so the product looks great and the bar codes are scannable to prevent fines at retailers.Social Media can make or break a brand. Simple commodities like wood chips can have a great impact on social media if they arrive to the consumer moldy or infested with insects. Process controls at the supplier is critical to heat treat and properly control packaging. Small things but critical in brand image protection.Developing materials with suppliers that will withstand the rigors of outdoor exposure to the sun, coastal regions, consumer use and cleaning is critical but even more so, maintaining those materials properties through rigorous surveillance testing to maintain brand image is key. I have a lot of experience in this arena when it comes to paints, plating, coatings, plastics, porcelain enamel and stainless steel. Understanding how to accelerate their testing in a lab environment and in the real World is one of my strengths.My philosophy with suppliers is one of relationship building and trust in accurate metrics and KPI’s. Treating the supplier like they are part of your own company goes a long way in keeping them customer focused and not just on the one-time sale but the whole product life cycle. Especially when service and replacement parts are concerned. Nobody wants a part that doesn’t match the color or doesn’t fit or the stainless finish is different or wears out faster than the original.