Facilitators
Jo-An Weddle, Director, SBDC for Enterprise Excellence
Drew Casani, Regional Director, Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center
Donald H. Liles, Chair, Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington.
Randy Bohannon, Manufacturing Professional, Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center
Russ Aikman, Manufacturing Professional, Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center
Mark Sessumes, Manufacturing Professional, Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center
Kurt Middlekoop, Manufacturing Professional, Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center

Graduate Research Assistant
Sanya Yimsiri, Graduate Research Assistant, SBDC for Enterprise Excellence

Alumni
Jutamas Srisukpongsak

Facilitators

Jo-An Weddle, Director
SBDC for Enterprise Excellence

Jo-An has over 20 years both as a small business owner and service provider for small businesses. Together with the business, she works to reduce cost and improve the company's competitive advantage. As part of the Enterprise Excellence effort, Jo-An has worked with dozens of local manufacturers to transform their companies through the "Journey to Excellence". These companies have achieved some notable improvements. They include:

Reduced cost of goods sold by 42 percent,
Reduced work-in-process inventories from $89,000 to $11,000 per month,
Improved first run yield 17 percent
Increased sales 12 fold

Jo-An's specialties include strategic planning, development and facilitation of self-directed work teams, linking measurement and reward systems to critical success factors, process redesign, lean manufacturing and change management.
In 1996, Jo-An received the prestigious "Model of Excellence Award" from the U. S. Congress for helping small companies get "Small Business Innovative Research" grants.
In 1998, Jo An became a Certified Texas Quality Award Examiner and was recognized by the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center with an Innovation Award for her work in supply-chain optimization with Ingersoll-Rand.
Jo-An earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Texas A & M University at Commerce.

Drew Casani, Regional Director
Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center

Drew Casani is the Regional Director of the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC). He also is Group Manager for the Small Integrated Manufacturing Enterprise Group (SIME) at the Automation & Robotics Research Institute of The University of Texas at Arlington. SIME is comprised of three centers working together on behalf of small business.

Drew has over 30 years of progressive experience in strategic planning, business development, total quality and program management. During his 13-year career with the LTV Corporation, Drew held a variety of senior executive positions. He served as President of the Military Aircraft Division where he had profit and loss responsibility for the marketing, engineering, manufacturing and sales of major aircraft structure on programs such as the B2 and C17. As Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations he was responsible for strategic planning, quality management, new business development and domestic and international marketing. Drew had profit and loss responsibility for the aircraft overhaul and modernization business. While at LTV Drew also held positions as Vice President - Planning, Aircraft Products Group; Director - Planning, Vought Aero-Products Division; and Manager - Business Development, LTV Corporation.

He spent 20 years in the US Army, 16 of which were in various technical and management positions in the Department of Defense Weapon Systems Acquisition Process. Drew has hands-on experience with European industrial practices, government relations and foreign military sales.

Drew received his Master of Industrial Engineering degree from Kansas State University and his BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

Donald H. Liles, Chair
Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington.

Donald H. Liles is Professor and Chair of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. He also served as Associate Director of the Automation & Robotics Research Institute for nine years. His primary research interest is in the emerging discipline of Enterprise Engineering. He is principal investigator on numerous research projects including the "Agile Enterprise Templates" project funded by the State of Texas and the "Agile Manufacturing Research Center"(CO-PI) funded by NSF. He is responsible for the development of ARRI's small enterprise program that includes the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC). TMAC is a part of the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Dr. Liles has supervised thirteen Ph.D. students and has one more in progress. Dr. Liles holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Liles is active in numerous technical and professional organizations. He is a national officer in Alpha Pi Mu, the National Industrial Engineering honor society.

Randy Bohannon, Manufacturing Professional
Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center

Randy Bohannon has over 25 years of experience in executive management, curriculum development, training and information services. His expertise includes strategic planning, team facilitation for process improvement (mapping and redesign), and team building and organization.

Since joining TMAC, Randy has worked with manufacturers throughout the Metroplex including Atlan Industries, Global Mail Management, AirBorn, Inc., Christie Manufacturing and Farrow Machine.

Prior to joining TMAC he was a consultant in the use of structured thinking processes and in implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) for a variety of organizations including some Fortune 500 companies. He developed and taught training courses including Project Management; Systems Development Methodology; and Team Facilitation. Randy also has conducted employee and customer surveys and facilitated executive implementation, problem solving and process improvement teams. He delivered the initial training for a standardized system development methodology based on the Shewart cycle for a national information services organization and implemented that methodology in a number of companies.

Randy received his BS in Physics and Math from The University of Texas at El Paso. He pursued graduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Russ has more than 10 years' experience in the manufacturing arena. His expertise lies in performing process improvements, inventory management, and implementing Continuous Flow Manufacturing/JIT systems. Prior to joining TMAC, Russ consulted for Andersen Consulting and The George Group. Russ designed and implemented Continuous Flow Manufacturing systems for customers including Teledyne, ITT, Hill's Pet Products, and H. B. Fuller. He served as a facilitator on over 20 process improvement teams, developing operators into effective team leaders. Russ has designed and implemented several pull scheduling systems, including one currently used in scheduling production for over 1,000 products at three different plants of a $75M powder paint company. He also worked with an operator team in cutting equipment setup time by over 50%.

Before his consulting positions, Russ worked as a Quality Engineer at Baxter Health Care where he validated existing manufacturing systems and tested new products. Prior to Baxter, Russ worked at AT&T where he performed cost estimation studies, prepared equipment layouts, and worked with a team to design a high purity chemical system.

Russ holds a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering, both from the University of Arkansas.

Mark Sessumes, Manufacturing Professional
Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center

Mark Sessumes has 10 years of progressive operations management experience in diverse manufacturing and production environments. Mark has worked in fabrication, assembly, remanufacturing, refurbishment, and processing plants for small companies and branch locations of large, multi-division firms. He has experience in both union and non-union shops.

Prior to TMAC, Mark was Operations Manager for Spring Engineers, a family-owned metal fabrication business producing metal springs, stampings, and assemblies for oil tool and heavy truck applications. As Senior Branch Manager for Greyhound Lines, Mark was responsible for operations and had profit and loss responsibility for a multi-facility, multi-state bus refurbishment operation. Most recently, as Plant Manager for a division of National Linen Service Mark engineered and led the financial turnaround of the operation.

Since joining TMAC, Mark has worked with companies ranging in size from 3 to 300 employees. They include Fort Worth Aluminum Foundry, Plastics Packing, Inc., Farrow Machine & Manufacturing, Hannon Hydraulics, MPA Modular, InterFet, Mortex, Inc., and Alpine Engineered Products. His projects with these companies have included Strategic Business Planning, Cellular Layout; Defect Prevention Systems; Set-Up Reduction; Inventory Reduction/Control; Selection and Implementation of an MRP System; and Production Scheduling Systems.

Mark received his Master of Business Administration at The University of Dallas and his BBA in Production / Operations Management from North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.

Graduate Research Assistants

Sanya Yimsiri, Graduate Research Assistant
SBDC for Enterprise Excellence

Sanya has been working with SBDC since June 2003. He also studies towards Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at University of Texas at Arlington. Sanya received a M.S. in Engineering Management from University of Missouri-Rolla and B.Eng. in Instrumentation Engineering from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand. He worked as a lecturer of Dept. of Electrical Engineering in conjunction with Engineering Management Program at Siam University after finishing his M.S. His research interests involve logistics, supply chain management, lean enterprise, and enterprise excellence.

Jutamas Srisukpongsak

Jutamas worked with SBDC from September 2000 to Decemer 2003. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington. She received a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from the University of Central Oklahoma and a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Thonburi, Thailand. Her research interests include performance measurement for continuous improvement, the design and analysis of manufacturing system, logistics, inventory control and business processes reengineering.