Thesis title: "Testing Guidelines for New Product Development"
Summary: Guidelines were developed for developing in-use tests to be used in new product development when standardized tests are not available or applicable.  To demonstrate these new guidelines, I conducted a case study where a new safety product for the U.S. Military was tested at length with both standardized and modified (in-use) tests to determine its ability to stand up to the environmental exposures in the intended environments.

Coursework Included: Lean Systems, Composite Materials & Processes, Manufacturing Simulation, Manufacturing Information Systems, Research & Development, Thesis

MBA SHOC (Students Helping Our Community)-Helped organize service projects with local organizations in the community.

Admissions Recruiting Committee-Assisted in the MBA recruiting process by conducting admissions interviews with potential candidates and assisted with campus visits of potential students.

Coursework Included: Corporate Finance, International Finance, Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Managerial Economics, Supply Chain Management, Operations, Human Resources Management, Negotiations, Marketing, Corporate Strategy, International Business, New Product Development, IT Systems

Minor in Business Administration

Related Manufacturing Coursework Included: Materials Science, Technical Writing, Quality Systems,  Plastics Materials and Processing, Tool Design, Manufacturing Automation, Process Planning &amp; System Design, Computer Aided Manufacturing, Machining, Casting and Forming

A six-month night school program consisting of four courses (12 credits/120 hours) that cover the globally accepted project management concepts, using the PMBOK as the basis of curriculum. Courses included Project Launch, Project Planning, Project Execution, and a Capstone course where groups worked together to build all major deliverables for a major project.

Bike

Moto & Powersports

Outdoor

VP Operational Insights @ Vail Resorts | Collaborative Problem Solver and Leader | PMP | Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Other

Curious and collaborative leader with track record of progression in both roles and impact throughout my career.  My career journey has allowed me to learn from and make meaningful impacts in M&M'S factories, behind the scenes at Disneyland, and in majestic ski resorts across North America!  Following recent organizational changes at Vail Resorts, I'm searching for a new company and role where I can apply my background and leadership to build capabilities and teams focused on problem solving and continuous improvement.

Most recently at Vail Resorts I was brought in to build a new function (Operational Insights) and I led through many firsts for our business by applying metrics and process improvement methodologies to Lift and Parking Operations.  Our business leaders are now empowered with mountains of data and information to support decision making for lift operations and investments as well as traffic operations.  In leveraging many of my learnings of people flow and efficiency at Disneyland, I was able to lead improvements to help our business maximize efficiency of our ski lifts.   I'm most proud of my team's accomplishments in efforts around launching programs to dramatically reduce morning traffic congestion at some of our major resorts where morning backups were generationally accepted as a part of the ski resort experience.

My methodology to solving problems centers on curiosity, simplicity, and collaboration.  I love the thrill of finding and solving new problems in ways that make things easier to understand for front-line operators up through C-Suite Executives.  My ability to build relationships at all levels drives my engagement and has been the unlock to most of my career accomplishments.

Led rollout of enterprise workforce management program by launching online scheduling platform across 37 resorts in North America to manage seasonal workforce of over 40k hourly employees.  Managed cross-functional program team to develop and deliver technical scope, drive configuration activities, and to coordinate internal communications and change management activities across the enterprise.  Program capabilities related to budgeting, staffing, and scheduling drove $9.6M savings in first year of the program.

Designed and supported rollout of new parking reservation programs at Northstar and Heavenly in the Lake Tahoe Region for the 2023/24 season.  New parking program increased carpool rates and spread morning traffic out over a broader period of time on weekends and holidays.  Using internally developed metrics capabilities we saw 80% reduction in number of days with heavy traffic backups (30+ minutes) vs prior season at Northstar.  Improvements in carpooling rates at Northstar unlocked resort capacity and was primary factor in the resort repeatedly breaking all-time daily visitation records by 5%.

VP Operational Insights

Built a new capability at Vail Resorts to capture key lift operations data and translate into dashboards and key performance metrics where previously they had no metrics available to drive lift operations. Dashboards and enhanced metrics allowed resort leaders to better focus on driving performance at critical lifts and periods of time.  From an enterprise view, this new data was used to shape lift investment decisions with data driven insights and supported design and approval of over $100M in new lift investments.

Built new guidelines and processes for resorts to optimize lift performance through collaboration with lift operations leaders and through focused on-site observations.  Across the 50 most impactful lifts in the portfolio that were in focus for this program, efforts drove a 6% increase in lift performance during high demand periods, this increased ridership would have been equivalent to capacity of $36M in new lift investments.  Increased lift ridership performance supported a 30% reduction in skier waits over 10 minutes at the 14 in-scope resorts supported increased YoY guest experience scores for Lift Experience over course of my tenure.

Consolidated 37 different Lift Operations training programs (each resort had a different program) into one harmonized enterprise training program.  Led development of new content in partnership with key lift operations experts throughout the business resulting in a 3.5 hour comprehensive online training course.

Senior Director of Operational Insights

Reduced time required for opening activities on new Rise of the Resistance attraction from 3.5 hours down to 90 minutes by leveraging in-field shift studies and Six Sigma process improvement tools.  Utilized process mapping and gantt charting to optimize opening tasks of over 12 operations positions each morning.  Daily savings of two hours supported increase in both operations and maintenance windows each day allowing more guests to have access to the high demand attraction and gave maintenance more time each night for upkeep of the attraction.

Built and launched a new work order tracking program across entire Disneyland Resort to streamline maintenance work order process, reduce labor needs for taking maintenance calls, and to improve communication flow with operational groups.  New process allowed for images and more details to be uploaded to each work order along with communications chain providing clarity of work order status to operations leaders.

Project Manager, Industrial Engineering

Identified $500K/year labor savings opportunity by leading field studies and by conducting deep dive data analysis that discovered and clearly articulated complex overtime patterns. Led cross-functional effort to build new reporting tools that gave added visibility for leaders to effectively manage the overtime levels on their teams.

Improved daily opening reliability and unlocked labor savings across five attractions by improving the operations opening checklist process. Identified efficiency opportunities by leading time studies paired with Gantt chart analyses. Led cross-functional alignments to ensure recommended changes were approved and captured in official operating guides and checklists.

Designed and implemented a vendor managed supply chain solution for park consumable supplies. Partnered directly with front-line operations crews and external vendor to ensure success of new process. Program reduced frequency of purchase orders per year by 98% and supported a capital cost avoidance of $500K.

Outlined $4M/year retail labor savings opportunity by fixing a broken on-stage merchandise replenishment system and process. Influenced and aligned operations staff up through senior leaders to support initiative and to fund software and process changes.

Senior Industrial Engineer

Developed and executed supply chain strategy for the TWIX® brand in North America by outlining five-year capacity and sourcing plans, by identifying investments required to support brand strategy, and by working closely with marketing and supply to enable the continued growth of TWIX®.

Led the North American Facility Master Planning process by coordinating efforts of cross-functional teams of 25-40 participants through extensive pre-work and by facilitating on-site workshops to craft future site layouts and capital plans for over $1 billion in future investments across five factories. Outputs enabled business to confidently approve transformational projects across the network.

Reinvigorated a stalled project to launch Canadian MARS® Bites product by developing a hybrid internal/external supply solution and secured approval of $3M in capital. Partnered with marketing, finance, engineering, and manufacturing sites to deliver successful product launch, driving over $8M/year incremental net sales.

Industrial Engineer

Enabled rapid growth of North American capital projects by leading the recruitment process resulting in the hiring of 30 new full-time engineers over a two-year period. Planned and led regular recruiting efforts at multiple universities and with military recruitment partners and maintained contact with candidates throughout recruiting process.

Managed successful transition of new engineers by leading onboarding process to ensure proper cultural expectations and specific engineering processes were understood.

Led the engineering internship program by recruiting candidates, developing technical scope of projects, and by managing the interns throughout the program. Managed work through individual coaching sessions, leading to 75% of candidates accepting full time offers.


Training and Recruiting Manager

Graduate of the Mars R&D Chocolate School.

Led $3M controls and automation install of new M&M'S® line through cross-functional partnership with site associates, vendors, designers, electricians and programmers to manage budget and schedule while troubleshooting technical issues on a complex controls system with over 700 electrical devices. Project came in under budget and delivered 100% of learning curve six weeks ahead of schedule.

Enabled a low-cost rapid launch of M&M'S® Chocolate Bar by leading manufacturing design and reduced expected capital cost from $5M down to $500K while meeting product quality and design requirements. New process has since been used worldwide for multiple other product launches.


Associate Project Engineer

Worked in a small team to perform a detailed analysis of an airport equipment maintenance group by conducting interviews with key stakeholders and analyzing databases in order to identify and quantify problems that have challenged this organization for many years.

Developed a new preventative maintenance program with Total Cost of Ownership in mind and proposed major changes in corporate organizational structure to support this plan.  This new program has a projected NPV of over $20 million which was deemed conservative by a high-level VP.  Project has since been approved by the CEO and Continental has started implementation of our recommendations.

MBA Student Consultant

Constructed value-stream maps by interacting with functional groups to build hard copy, then used MS Visio to quickly digitize map for quick and effective distribution and modification, helping groups identify not only weak areas in organizations but also possible means for improvement.

Created tool kit for instructors of Quality classes by gathering and prioritizing teaching needs which were used in design and fabrication of organized kit, finished product helped instructors quickly prepare for courses and was used as classroom example of organization and effective visual control.

Edited monthly publication with distribution of over 5,000 people by proofreading articles for grammar, spelling, and coherency, publication kept employees informed of quality principles and safety issues in workplace, editing work helped contributors maintain professional reputation and assisted in timely distribution.

Lean Enterprise Intern

Built and modified workstations on production floor in collaboration with lean manufacturing experts from US and Japan to improve ergonomics, safety, and efficiency by working individually with operators and engineers resulting in workstations that were comfortable, safe, and productive.

Redesigned production floor by building template to plan moves of each workstation to accommodate space constraints resulting in production floor with safer isle-ways, better product and operator flow, and more effective visual management.

Developed Standard Work Instructions for several processes by observing and communicating directly with operators, then creating instruction sheets that were easy to follow which helped decrease cycle time, increase part quality and allowed new workers to quickly master complicated assembly processes.

Worked on a small team to develop a "manager's walk" to increase visual management of the factory.  We outlined five physical locations on the factory floor where the VP of Operations and other executives could stand and visually gather all necessary information to effectively manage factory operations.  These visual cues were things such as the number of cells in operation, finished goods carts, work in process racks, Materials Review Board bins (rejected parts), etc.  This system provided a very quick and easy method for managers to get a snapshot of factory performance without having to wait for tedious and delayed reports.

Lean Manufacturing Intern

Assisted in the development of effective and creative online and computer based safety training courses.  My contributions involved creating and editing videos, photographs, and other graphics for use in training courses.  Ensured high quality training by testing each course for ease-of-use, identified errors in the program and then made suggestions for making the courses more engaging and user friendly.  This was a part-time position.

Instructional Design Assistant

Find out detailed information about Derek Egbert, VP Operational Insights @ Vail Resorts | Collaborative Problem Solver and Leader | PMP | Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in Denver Metropolitan Area, TX

Derek Egbert: VP Operational Insights @ Vail Resorts | Collaborative Problem Solver and Leader | PMP | Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in Denver Metropolitan Area, TX