John Natoli

John Natoli is an FTE Senior Advisor with 35 years of experience working at multiple manufacturing assembly centers specializing in body assembly operations, facilities operations and manufacturing engineering for the site. John has been a people leader throughout his career, from maintenance group leader to a department head.  He has directly supervised both hourly and salary personnel and served on a Human Resource Management Team for over 18 years.  He has also been actively involved with UAW local negotiations at two high-volume vehicle assembly facilities.

Notable experience and accomplishments:

  • Led conveyor & facilities workstreams (conveyor design & installation) at expedited launch of vehicle assembly line on brownfield site. Launch complete on-time (within 8 months – vs. 24 month typical time) and within budget. Reduced initial conveyance costs by 38% through value engineering, from $37 million to $23 million
  • Body Shop Area Manager at two different high-volume assembly plants. John led up to 575 employees (salary, production, quality, and skilled trades) and was responsible for product quality, quality systems, as well as maintenance and tooling activity for all associated processing and automation equipment.
  • Actively involved with four major new vehicle product launches across three assembly plants.
  • Planned and executed transformation from a two-shift to a three-shift operation within large vehicle assembly plant, increasing production output by 50%
  • As Manufacturing Engineering Director at two different assembly plants, and Engineering Superintendent at a third, led dozens of facilities process equipment installations. He has also served on future planning teams providing plant insight to multi-year strategic planning.

Prior to joining FTE, John retired from General Motors where his most recent assignment was the Manufacturing Engineering Director for a 4.3 million square-foot vehicle assembly plant. During his career he also led the technical activities for the Assembly and Stamping complex while overseeing large scale modernization of the facility. John actively led Health and Safety activities for the plant technical organization including Co-Chairing the Joint Skilled Trades Safety Team (JSTST).

John earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and also holds a

Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

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