Rogelio Ruelas

NPI and Engineering roles for automotive industry products

-New Product Introduction ( NPI )-  Plan the phases for the new product based on APQP to have control on the activities resulting on a successful program launch, thus covering the demand production.  Quote the product to have the price agreement with the customer to ensure the financial goals considering the volume during the product life time.  Coordinate the product and process validation so that all areas analyze their performance in preparations for mass production and get customer approval. -ENGINEERING-  Analize the process capacity and capability and the product critic characteristics to provide solutions for cost reduction, under Lean guideness.  Coordinate the continuous improvement events to improve the process performance through effective measurement methods, resulting on data based decision-making system.  Establish the manufacturing processes and methods which results on a continuous production flow to reduce the inventory in between operations, then having a reliable operative system. -MANUFACTURING-  Execute the mass production startup plan with the assigned financial and human resources, fulfilling customer’s expectations on quantity and quality.  Supervise the activities associated to the manufacturing area to identify and solve any issues related to safety and ergonomics, resulting on a station class matrix per specialization grade required.  Supervise and make sure the delivery time is met so the customer’s demand gets covered, thus getting a high rating on the customer portal.

-New Products Introduction ( NPI )-  Plan the overall and specific activities for new and current models to get a mass production process with the required volume and quality to cover customer’s demand, with the best possible cost-benefit rate.  Coordinate the purchasing of injection tooling to continue with the process development, resulting on a robust approved process.  Negotiate with the customer the logistic related topics to understand the scope and responsibilities, having an agreement between both parties. -ENGINEERING-  Analize the manufacturing process to provide solutions through automation concepts and techniques to reduce operator dependency, resulting on a more stable and reliable process.  Validate the use of digital microscope for product inspection to improve criteria standardization, and then have a more consistent process.  Improve the product unloading operation to avoid contact with the operator and eliminate potential contamination or damage, improving the product dimensional capability. -MANUFACTURING-  Lead and Execute a Kaizen event to improve material flow to avoid WIP, increasing throughput in terms of product volume and quality.  Implement a training program for operators to reinforce the required concepts and skills to early identify potential issues or trends requiring resolution, resulting in an improvement on problem solving time.  Perform a Layer audit plan to detect inconsistencies on the method and the manufacturing process, this conducts to a standardization between working shifts, getting a more consistent process.

-New Products Introduction ( NPI )-  Plan the activities for process validation to meet product specification, conducting the learning process within the organization which allows the identification of the process strengths and weaknesses.  Identify new technologies in order to implement more robust processes and have an improvement on the controls, reducing the scrap and increasing capacity and capability.  Coordinate the process validation events so that standard processes can be implemented on differente manufacturing sites in different countries, improving the time for the analysis of global results by the Corporate Quality Team. -ENGINEERING-  Implement a real-time monitoring system for critical product and process characteristics on manufacturing plants in several countries (Mexico, USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany, South Africa) to standardize the reporting of the KPI’s, having an improvement on the decision-making process by the Corporate Office  Analyze the product and process performance from the manufacturing sites in different countries (Mexico, USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany, South Africa) to provide solutions to improve the performance using statistical tools, resulting an operation within the specified parameters.  Analize process capacity and capability to improve the use of resources and reduce capital investment, by improving the usage of actual resources. -MANUFACTURING-  Implement an automated report system to increase efficiency of the production supervisors time, this resulted on a reduction from 3 hr to 0.5 hr a day for each supervisor, so they can be focused on their primary function.  Analize and follow up on the critical work stations in order to introduce tools, gauges and poka yokes to have objective measurements, and also reducing cycle time.  Coordinate a Kaizen event to make one production cell runs 2 different product families, saving 120mt2 space floor.

Transfer new products from Tulsa facility to Chihuahua. Continuous improvement leader. Quality system implementation coordinator. New products introduction management (Enginnering and Production areas).

Production equipment development and construction. Coordination of new equipment development team. New programs timing keeper.

-ADVANCED MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING- Introduction of New Products on the Driver Information Area (including SMT, Automatic Insertion, Drop In and Final Assembly) based on APQP and Customer's specific requirements (Ford, GM, Nissan, Honda, VW). -LINE SUPPORT / MAINTENCANCE- Responsible for the Enginerring, Maintenance and Quality areas for multiple production lines at final assembly level. Preventive and Corrective Maintenance to reduce down time. Main metric was OEE, involving all 3 functional areas under my responsibility. -TEST STRATEGY- Leading the Test Strategy Group to transfer the production process from a US location to Mexico. Improve and startup of all manufacturing cells and Test Equipment, including product programming and calibration.