Sommer Allibert / Faurecia 2000-2002

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Global supplier of injection moulded plastic interior and exterior trim to the automotive industry.  
Turnover €10.7bn.   Employees 60,000

Product Design Engineer

To control and supervise design development activities on a number of plastic door trims and mechanism projects for Ford and Mazda. (Ford Fusion and Mazda 2)
  • A development team was not following company procedures resulting in costly mistakes being found by the customer.   Coached and directed the team and enforced corporate procedures ensuring that quality of output matched customer’s expectations.   Mistakes were eradicated and the speed of product development was increased, reducing overall costs by over 10%.
  • Following a takeover of the company it became clear that the organisation was not offering a similar standard of service to the same customer on different projects.   Trained and managed Design Engineers in Spain and France to ensure that they followed the lessons learned from projects successfully completed in the UK.   The projects transferred smoothly from the development phase in one country to launch phase in another, ensuring continuity of momentum and customer service.
  • A problem solving group rarely met for weekly meetings and was failing to achieve corporate targets.   As team leader, coached and motivated the team members and transformed this group into one of the highest performing teams, winning ‘idea of the month’ for three consecutive months.