Sean is an FTE Senior Advisor with over 35 years of manufacturing engineering and operations experience in the automotive industry. He has an extensive background in lean manufacturing, production process development, continuous improvement activities, installation and operation of production tooling, automation and conveyance systems, facility management, skilled trades maintenance processes, production management, and labor relations activities.

Notable experience and accomplishments:

• Led team of controls engineers, mechanical engineers, and a core team of skilled trades to plan for and support tool and conveyance installation, system debug, and launch of vehicle production at a new $1.5 billion state-of-the-art greenfield assembly plant. The 3.4 million sq. ft. LEED-certified facility encompassed 13.1 miles of conveyors and over 1400 robots and c-flex units. My team supported production in three departments around the clock on all three shifts.
• Managed all press and die room activities across three shifts to launch stamped body panel production for simultaneous luxury vehicle production launches. Conducted die tryout for over 40 sets of dies for steel and aluminum panels on two AA and two B3 transfer presses while maintaining production on 64 other die sets already in use. Included management of 70 engineers and skilled trades employees. Achieved highest strokes per hour and line transition times in North America on two B-size presses and top three rankings on our AA presses.
• Coordinated multi-department effort to develop standardized best-of-the-best maintenance processes to maximize uptime, ensure efficient use of resources, and support continuous improvement efforts while meeting production needs. Comprehended reactive maintenance, standardized work, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, and project work. Included local development and implementation of hand-held PDAs for floor use by skilled trades, enabling real-time process management.
• Spearheaded development and implementation of multi-year site-wide project to maximize plant capacity 10% beyond the original plant charter. The $50 million dollar project scope included conveyor buffer revisions, tool redesigns, automation rework, back-up robot programming, error-proofing network enhancements and other initiatives to boost production to 1142 vehicles per day.

Prior to consulting, Sean worked for over 35 years for General Motors with challenging assignments of increasing responsibility in plant engineering, manufacturing engineering, maintenance, and production. In those roles he led various teams through seven new vehicle launches in four different vehicle assembly and stamping facilities. He also gained valuable human resources, health-and-safety, and training experience in a multi-year developmental assignment in labor relations.

Sean earned his MBA from the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from GMI Engineering & Management Institute (now Kettering University).