William (Bill) Brown Email & Phone Number

Ponce, Puerto Rico

The Ponce, Puerto Rico operation of Zimmer Biomet is focused on the manufacture of hip, knee, and trauma components, and is a large scale precision machining operation.As General Manager (and Ponce site Plant Manager) directed overall Puerto Rico operations. Accountable for improving site performance factors associated with quality, compliance, customer service, cost, safety, morale/engagement. Also responsible for purchasing, planning, manufacturing, site compliance, finance, HR elements.Provided new leadership to this struggling site significantly improving performance of key metrics, unified the focus for a compliance-first mentality, increased employee engagement, and led the site through a difficult period of remediation while improving the day to day business operations, with 65% of the top 30 leaders new to the organization. Results achieved within the first 12 to 24 months include:• Initiated and drove accountability with a balanced scorecard for all key performance factors resulting in improvements across key metrics.• Improved operating cost; reduced scrap by $3.7M annually (64% improved) and delivered cost improvements of over $1M in 6-month period.• Reduced lot defect rate 60% (from 6% to 2%) in under 6 months.• Provided increased focus on Preventive Maintenance, closing gaps to compliance (increased attainment from 89% to 100%), Calibration (increased from 90% to 99% attainment on 12,000 calibrations annually), and Training (increased attainment from 85% to 99.98%).• Reduced annual attrition by 80% in 18 months.• Improved safety incidents by 92%; the site was recognized by PRMA with 2 awards.• Site Champion for the Culture Change initiative. First of the company's large sites to reach 100% deployment of new engagement concepts. • Created a new site Vision to become a Center of Excellence by 2020 based on improving leadtime by 90% and cost by 20% while sustaining compliance and safety improvements.

Orange County, California Area

Ossur is in the business of improving people’s mobility and is a leading global company in non-invasive orthopedics, and prosthetics, including braces, supports and compression therapy.As the top regional manufacturing leader and reporting to the Global VP of Manufacturing, managed multiple manufacturing and distribution sites with staff of 15 direct and 350 indirect employees. Responsible for the entire supply chain from purchasing through manufacturing and logistics for North America; P&L responsibility. Main focus: (1) leading key organization-wide initiatives to deliver improved quality, cost, lead-time, safety, inventory levels, and customer focus; (2) increasing operational execution through team development and deployment of Continuous Improvement methodologies (i.e. Lean Manufacturing); (3) consolidating a variety of different organizations acquired through acquisition into one cohesive high performance operating unit; (4) building effective cross-functional teams to improve manufacturability and distribution of new products.Accomplishments included:• Built new factory in Tijuana, Mexico, hired key personnel (plant manager, engineering manager, molding manager, materials manager, key engineers) and transferred 20+ product lines. Consolidated North American operations, closed three sites, transferred 165 jobs, and reduced annual operating cost by $4M.• Developed and launched a world-wide safety improvement strategy; reduced safety incidents by 90% in 3-year period.• Developed and launched a global lean manufacturing strategy to drive excellence into manufacturing and distribution, aimed at achieved Industry Week Best Plant status in 5 years. • Launched an employee idea program to improve employee engagement, and support our change initiatives. In the first 12 months, the employees generated and implemented over 2,000 improvement ideas.

Macon, Georgia Area

YKK is the premier fastener company in the world, with the Georgia site the largest slide fastener manufacturing site in the world. As the top American manufacturing leader reporting to the Japanese GM, managed multiple plants in two industrial parks, with staff of eight direct reports and 650 indirect. Responsible for the entire supply chain from purchasing through manufacturing and logistics for North America; full P&L responsibility. Main focus: improving operational execution and closing the gap to world-class performance. Main contributions: • Developed the new manufacturing Vision, strategies, and tactics to initiate the journey to world-class performance.• Improved operating margin by $6M annually through Lean Manufacturing Kaizens.• Led concurrent engineering effort that reduced development time from 18 months to 12 weeks (80% improvement) for a new product; added $4.5M revenue in 1st year.• Improved quality by 63% in 18 months.

Macon, Ga

Founder and first Chair of a consortium of manufacturing executives across the state that collaborated to strengthen manufacturing as vital contributor to the state's economy through identification and sharing of best practices.

Championed continuous improvement initiatives and directed Lean Manufacturing and Quality improvement efforts for high-volume equipment manufacturing business unit across multiple international sites.• Led the development of the multi-site lean manufacturing operating strategy (Hoshin Kanri; Policy Deployment process) to support the organization's annual commitments to improve cost, quality, and manufacturing capabilities.• Coordinated efforts for more than 50 projects that enabled increases in operational excellence resulting in significant productivity improvements.• As the Quality champion, re-engineered the customer complaint process reducing administrative cost by 75%; improved critical escaping defects by 30% in one year.

Lived in Guadalajara, Mexico. • Developed and managed the new Tech Center supporting product commercialization for the business unit. Led manufacturability development work for new product launch; achieved production readiness in record time with quality levels far better than expectation.• Led the Engineering and Quality departments for the high volume assembly and precision injection molding factory - reduced escaping defects by 50% in 6 months, reversing the negative trend of the previous two years; established the process methodology for another 50% improvement in the following 12 months.

Responsible for the Manufacturing Engineering and QA organization in a 450-person, highly automated flow factory, and 60% of the plant's performance committments. • Increased automation productivity by 25% through continuous improvement efforts. • Led the initiative that achieved ISO-9001:2000 culminating with zero non-conformance registration. • Acquired incremental full-time responsibility as Worldwide Product Operations Manager for a new equipment program, eliminating one manager; consolidated manufacturing into Mexico saving $7M annually.• Led numerous Lean manufacturing initiatives, one of which resulted in a no-cost capacity addition of 10 million units per year; developed cellular manufacturing concepts.• Designed new Lean, focused factory to support new commercialization efforts.

Manufacturing Manager: Managed manufacturing efforts five products across two high-volume factories (France and US). Led the development and manufacturing team for a new product launch of Kodak’s first six-sigma product. Co-led efforts to introduce a derivative model into the emerging China market.Product Engineering Manager: Relocated to Mexico to launch and ramp a major new product. Led the operational team to develop a joint venture in China with a Hong Kong company.Plant Manager, Monterrey, Mexico: Two-year assignment in Mexico to start-up, develop, manage a new manufacturing plant; high quality and productivity enabled the closing of a similar plant in Nuevo Laredo.Quality Assurance Leader, Brazil: One-year assignment in Brazil to start-up a new quality organization; reduced outgoing defects by 90% in 12-months. Supported launch of two new best-in-class products.

Mba, General Management

Dean's List

Supply Chain Management

Black Belt, Six Sigma

Bs, Engineering