Current responsibilities:
I am the facility manager at the Caterpillar Tucson Proving Grounds (TPG) and part of the Resource Industries Operations and Products (RIOP) division for Caterpillar. The scope of my responsibilities includes operations, maintenance/facilities, manufacturing engineering, quality, supply chain, safety and lean. I have responsibility for approximately 75 production and 75 support/management employees. TPG is a 6,000-acre campus where we do activities such as product validation, data acquisition for model creation, build validation and customer demonstrations.
Professional experience:
I have twenty-nine years of manufacturing experience with twenty-four of those years at Caterpillar. I have held a variety of manufacturing roles including manufacturing engineer, quality manager, group manager, blackbelt, lean deployment manager, SAP lead, manufacturing engineering manager, assembly factory manager and facility manager. I have worked at four facilities within Caterpillar – fifteen years in Paving Products in Minneapolis, five years in Forest Products in Georgia, four years in Mining Products (Decatur, IL) and recently joined TPG in September. Prior to Caterpillar, I worked for five years in various manufacturing roles for a privately held company. The primary scope was metal manufacturing for aerospace companies and military contracts.
Educational background:
I have a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison
Personal information/interests:
I have been married for twenty-nine years to my husband Jon and have two children. My daughter, Megan is twenty-two years old and works in Chicago. My son, Gavin, is twenty years old and a sophomore at the UW-Stevens Point.. I enjoy working in the yard, gardening and taking our dog Dixie for walks.