Joseph Lee joined FTE’s Network as a Senior Advisor with over 30 years of engineering and management experience. Joseph’s experience comes from a hands-on approach of learning by doing the jobs and leading by example. He is a transparent communicator who can effectively work with all levels of any organization. Joseph has a proven track record of maximizing throughput to potential by full utilization of equipment / tooling capacity and operators.

Notable experience and accomplishments:

• Led Ford Vehicle Operations Body Construction Engineering team in delivering New Model Body Shop launches in North America assembly plants. 2018 Expedition/Navigator Aluminum body shop installation & launch delivered on time under budget ($300M) and met all quality targets.
• As Ford’s first Global Maintenance Operating System Director, Joe implemented a maintenance operating system (MOS) at more than 60 plants around the world. The system, based on constraint-management and flow prioritization, increased global annual throughput by 224,000 vehicles, 686,000 engines and transmissions, and 6 million stamping “hits”.
• As Global Ford Production System Director, operationalized a team-based standard production system that drove safety, quality and productivity results,
• As Plant Manager, improved cost metric from $48 million over-budget to making budget in 5 years while simultaneously improving working relationship with UAW workforce.

Prior to FTE, Joe spent three decades with Ford Motor Company.  He was Plant Manager at three different manufacturing facilities where he oversaw 2,000+ employees at each location and built a dedicated team that helped improve operating metrics at the stamping plant and assembly plants.  Also at Ford, he worked as process engineer, industrial engineer, maintenance supervisor, manufacturing engineering manager, production operations manager, and assistant plant manager. Most recently, before retiring in 2017, he was the Vehicle Operations Manufacturing Engineering Body Construction Chief Engineer, responsible for the assembly plant body shops’ current model quality and productivity, as well as new model body shop engineering, installation and launch.

Born in South Korea, Joseph immigrated to the United States when he was 13 years old with his parents. During his junior and senior year in college, he did a co-op for the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University.