Biographies

Cynthia Kalina-Kaminsky, Ph.D., has over 20 years in state-of-the-art technology introduction and manufacturing strategy and design. She currently has a strategic alliance with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, a U.S. federal agency. She is recognized as a leader in operational planning and strategy, spending most of her consulting time working with executives and managers to improve planning, understand risk, define mitigation programs, and create strategy to expand competitiveness and innovation. She also received a proclamation for excellence from a local government entity.

Bob Kohankie, CSCP, CPIM, CFPIM, is a retired Lt. Commander, USNR, submarine qualified Vietnam Veteran. His extensive industrial experience includes prime contractor Northrup Grumman. Focused on organization wide business process improvement via supply chain, logistics and distribution strategy and planning, he also has extensive knowledge of Enterprise Resource Planning and its implementation. Industry experience includes innovative implementation programs in material planning and control, purchasing, production scheduling, receiving and warehousing functions, and inventory control.

Mak Madadi, CPIM, has over 30 years of contemporary state of the art experience/expertise and success in Supply Chain Management, Systems Implementation, Global Sourcing, Supplier Managed Inventory, System Transition, Product Rationalization, Logistics, Inventory Management, ERP and Manufacturing Engineering/Industrial engineering Management. This experience has been received while working for prime contractors, most recently Raytheon. Mak has a track record of eliminating millions of dollars of waste in supply chains and manufacturing systems.

Kathie Myhre, brings a broad scope of experience in business communication, marketing, and training, developed over 13+ years with a Dallas-based Fortune 100 company. In her role as a corporate training specialist, she designed and instructed corporate Train-The-Trainer courses and other training for company employees and clients. Her career also includes a variety of related roles in a small business environment, as well as several years as a secondary level public school teacher. Kathie resides in McKinney with her family, where she is actively involved with the community and public schools. She holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Family and Consumer Science Education from Montana State University/Bozeman.

Sergio Garcia, CPIM, has 22 years of experience with the automotive industry in a number of positions including supply chain manager, logistics manager, program manager, production manager and has successfully led conversions to lean in locations such as France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, China, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. His lean experience includes implementations within the company, with the supply base and with the customers. Through his interactions with different countries and multicultural environments he has concluded that Lean is the standard methodology for the optimization of operations, regardless of geography and language. Born in Mexico, a US resident by choice, Mr. Garcia speaks English, Spanish and French fluently. He holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana of Mexico.

Shawn Hill, CSCP, brings 17 years of manufacturing experience to the APICS North Texas consulting group. He has held senior management positions in Nortel and STMicroelectronics with responsibilities ranging from production planning and control to industrial engineering and most recently as the Senior Manufacturing Operations Manager for STMicroelectronics silicon wafer fab in Carrollton. With an undergraduate degree in business from Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, Shawn can understand the business role that manufacturing supports in any organization and the many effects that manufacturing performance can have on the bottom line. Adding to the experience gained through his career, Shawn has recently completed both a Lean Six Sigma green belt certification as well as the coveted CSCP designation from APICS. These certifications, combined with his current enrollment at the University of Dallas in their MBA program (SCM Focus) demonstrate the importance that Shawn places on continuous improvement at both the business and personal levels. With experience in manufacturing systems, lean manufacturing, constraint management and extensive people management, Shawn brings a wide range of tools to the consulting team.

Terry Egan, CPIM, is a procurement professional with over 25 years management experience in global and domestic sourcing, purchasing and inventory management, and supply chain consulting. He has worked in distribution, manufacturing, and service industries, in the public and private sectors. He has taught college level courses in operations and supply chain for 14 years. He is APICS lifetime certified as a CPIM, and is a past holder of the Certified Purchasing Manager certificate for 15 years.

Mayela Alcaraz brings over 30 years of international experience in a broad spectrum of supply chain and commercial support roles in manufacturing, banking, consulting, service, and chemical industries. In her varying roles over the past 12 years with a Fortune Global 200 company, she provided operational support through international customer service, logistics, and global inventory management, eventually expanding into a business consulting role supporting a global implementation, upgrade, and customized system adaptations to the company's global supply chain processes and practices including design and execution of user training in the US, Europe, and Asia. Mayela is fully bilingual in English and Spanish and holds a BS degree in Business Management from the University of Phoenix.

Suzanne Strong, CPIM, has worked for national and international manufacturing companies supporting functional to matrix organizations. Suzanne has a strong grasp on production processes and supply chain planning and works collaboratively with management on corporate supply chain improvement initiatives to deploy new tools and drive improved performance. She has demonstrated value through previous assignments by creating organizational focus on the cycle time of prototype products leading to improved planning processes and increased manufacturing performance. The benefits of Suzanne's support were incremented through coordination of interfaces resulting in excellence in customer service and increased business. Suzanne graduated from Texas A&M University in College Station with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mining Engineering. She is working on her MBA with a concentration on Strategic Leadership from the University of Dallas and holds Six Sigma Green Belt certification from Omnex.

Jerry Y. Ayers, CPIM, CSCP, has over 20 years hands-on experience in strategic planning, production planning and material control from Lockheed Martin and Siemens with in-depth knowledge of ERP systems, including experience with SAP and JDEdwards. He is currently with a mid-size company managing inventory and has implemented a cycle counting process improving inventory accuracy from 56% to 92%. His experience in the application of lean manufacturing tools include Value Stream Mapping, JIT, 5S, Kanban and Six Sigma DMAIC process (Certified Greenbelt) will improve the company's value adding flow, eliminate waste, increase throughput, reduce inventory and reduce lead-times. He also has experience with the Balanced Scorecard that can translate strategies into measurable metrics and transform the enterprise into a strategy-focused organization. Jerry has taught senior and mid-level executives on what drives EVA (financial metric used by many Fortune 500 companies to gauge the performance of the enterprise) and holds a BA degree in Business Management from the University of South Florida.

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