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Angie Bove Manufacturers Resource Center |
| Angie brings office management, training and curriculum development expertise to MRC. Her 12 years of experience comes from public utility companies, call center and pre-press operation. Her focus is towards implementing Lean into office settings including manufacturer and service companies. She received her Associates in Business Management and is currently working on her undergraduate degree. She is certified with Potential Plus Leadership Core and has completed the Dale Carnegie Course. |
Dennis Caruso President, Caruso and Associates Sales & Marketing Coaching, Training & Consulting |
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Dennis Caruso has over 35 years experience in Executive Management, Industrial Marketing, Sales, and Management and Training.
After graduating from Case Western Reserve in 1969 with a BSEE, Mr. Caruso's career began with General Tire and Rubber Company holding positions that ranged from Division Marketing Analyst to Field Sales. He was recruited away from GTR by Motivational Techniques Inc., a Chicago-based sales consulting and training firm, where he became the youngest regional sales manager in the company's 26-year history. His achievements ultimately earned him the senior position of Training Director responsible for training, coaching, and mentoring the company's team of sales professionals. In 1991 Mr. Caruso joined Automation News Network (ANN), a start-up Industrial Marketing Company, as Director of Target Marketing, servicing the plant and factory automation industry. In 1994 ANN changed its business model and become Industry.net, the first Internet Portal for Industrial Automation Equipment and Services. In the following three years Mr. Caruso built the Target Marketing Services Group from a three person staff to Division Level status employing 52 people generating over $6M in annual revenue. Since fall of 1997, in conjunction with his training and consulting practice, Mr. Caruso has been the driving force behind two sales and marketing service companies, Smart Systems Technology Inc. and Industrial Research Services. Both companies specialize in helping industry sellers maximize marketing and sales investments and count among their customer's well-known industry names such as Cutler-Hammer, Honeywell, Siemens, Parker Hannifin and GE. During the past five years, Mr. Caruso has been actively engaged with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a nationwide network of more than 400 manufacturing extension centers and field offices established within the U.S. Department of Commerce. MEP centers offer technical assistance and training on the latest business best practices to help the nation's smaller manufacturers improve their competitiveness. His association with centers in 11 states including Michigan, NY, Pennsylvania, and California is helping them provide best practice business growth and customer retention programs for their manufacturer clients. Mr. Caruso's successful market driven philosophy, style, and techniques have helped create numerous wins for client operations and have been the focus of various trade publication articles and books including Metalworking Distributor, Industrial Distribution, and The Green Banana Papers: Marketing Secrets for Technology Entrepreneurs. |
Dick Cipoletti RCC Associates |
| RCC Associates is a highly respected HR consulting and training firm. Dick Cipoletti has trained over 50,000 supervisors & staff nationally and teaches in the MBA & HR programs at DeSales University. Dick is also a published author and former TV host. |
Douglas A. Plikaitis Manufacturers Resource Center |
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Doug has thirty plus years of broad-based industrial experience, having worked for three
Fortune 500 companies in the areas of quality, marketing, sales, engineering, materials
and manufacturing. Prior to joining the Manufacturers Resource Center(MRC) ten years ago,
Doug was a private consultant that focused on management and industrial engineering for
various small to medium size clients in the apparel, food, metalworking, aerospace,
battery, electronics, machine shops, and process industries. He has significant hands-on
experience in strategic planning, JIT, TQM, ISO/QS 9000, CAD/CAM, MRP II, cellular
manufacturing, bar-coding, plant layout and continuous improvement programs. Doug is the
current quality/lean team leader for the MRC with a primary focus on ISO/QS 9000
implementations for local companies.
Doug earned a B.S. in Industrial/Mechanical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. He is a member of ASQ, APICS, AQP and currently serves on the Upper Macungie Planning Commission. |
Jim Athon Principal - Athon Group |
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Jim was trained as a Textile and Industrial Engineer, and has held positions as an Industrial Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer and a Design Engineer. He received his Black Belt training in 1995 while at AlliedSignal Automotive, and went on to generate substantial benefits for the organization in both the Manufacturing and Transactional settings.
He has also worked as a Design Engineer in Detroit, integrating Design for Six Sigma and Design for Manufacturability principles into current and future products. He later held positions as a Black Belt and later a Master Black Belt at GE Industrial Systems. He has been consulting for over 8 years, and has experience in several industries, including Paper & Printing, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Aerospace, Internet Service Provision, and Pharmaceuticals, amongst others. He has worked with several clients, including Nokia, AOL, Owens Corning, TRW, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Mead Paper, RR Donnelly, IDEX pumps, Williams Energy and State Street Financial Services. He has a unique ability to communicate to any audience at any proficiency level, and is skilled at enabling others to understand complex concepts by using commonly understood language and examples. Jim's strength is communicating complex subjects to students at any understanding level. Jim has taught and coached Black Belts worldwide, and has taught on contract for several of the leading Six Sigma providers nationwide. |
James J. Mikulski Manufacturers Resource Center |
| Jim has extensive industrial experience in a variety of industries, including food products, machine tools, aviation/aerospace and industrial pumps. His focus is on Lean Six Sigma, process development, and supply chain. He received his BS in Manufacturing Engineering Technology from Penn State and an MS in Manufacturing Management & Leadership from the Rochester Institute of Technology. While at ITT Industries, he received his Six Sigma Black Belt. and Lean Leader certifications. |
John Walsh Prism |
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John Walsh is a quality engineer with over 25 years experience in automotive, chemical and utility industries. His technical undergraduate and graduate business degrees, combined with manufacturing, engineering and staff experience, have made him an unusually effective communicator and team builder. He has audited more than 100 companies worldwide to a variety of standards, including
ISO-9000. John has administered quality programs, in both customer and supplier roles, with companies throughout North America, Europe and Japan.
Since 1995, John has taught a four-course curriculum, which he also authored, on quality engineering at Penn State University. John has directed the successful certification efforts of numerous companies to a variety of standards including ISO-9000, QS-9000 and AS-9000. Industries involved include textiles, plastics, rubber, engineering consulting, commercial printing and heavy fabrication. He has extensive quality engineering knowledge including subjects such as statistics, decision making, design of experiments, quality costs, performance metrics, quality planning, quality standards and quality auditing. Broad automotive industry experience, in both supplier and customer roles, encompassing all aspects of QS-9000 has allowed John to provide training in management principles and techniques to all organizational levels from operator to senior management. John has the ability to quickly grasp the effectiveness of an operation, identify opportunities and implement improvements. John is a member of the American Society for Quality as a Certified Quality Engineer, has been a Certified ISO 9000 Lead Auditor since 1993, and a Quality Engineering Instructor at Penn State University since 1995. He graduated with an MBA in Business from Monmouth College, and with a BS in Natural Sciences from St. Peter's College. |
Michael J. Withka Manufacturers Resource Center |
| Mike brings extensive Quality and Lean Manufacturing expertise to MRC from industries that include metal forming/machining, plastics extrusion, wire/cable, garment, and assembly. His focus is on Kaizen continuous improvement, Lean Manufacturing, and Equipment and Resource Optimization. He received his BS and MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. He is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt. |
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Richard J. (Dick) Donati Manufacturers Resource Center |
Dick brings over 25 years of diversified and extensive manufacturing experience to MRC. His specific areas of expertise include:
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David Athon Principal - Athon Group |
| David has spent most of his career introducing Lean Enterprise principles into the manufacturing environment, and has developed a unique method of integrating Six Sigma and Lean into a single, balanced system. David has been consulting since 1996, starting with Lean Enterprise and Continuous Improvement methodologies, adding Six Sigma to his abilities in 1999. He has performed contract training for several of the largest Six Sigma providers, and has worked extensively in North America. David combines practical knowledge with excellent communication skills, to enhance the students understanding and retention of the Six Sigma Methodologies. |
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Robert G. Cooper "Father" of Stage Gate® |
| Dr. Robert G. Cooper is a global expert in the field of new product management. He has been labeled "the quintessential scholar" in the field of new products in the Journal of Product Innovation Management and is a Crawford Fellow of the Product Development & Management Association. He is the father and developer of the Stage-Gate® process widely used by leading firms around the world to drive new products to market. He has published more than 80 articles in leading journals and written six books on new product management, including the popular, "Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch", with over 100,000 copies sold. He is President and co-founder of The Product Development Institute, Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, McMaster University in Canada, and also ISBM Distinguished Research Fellow at Penn State University's Smeal College of Business Administration. |
