"Upon taking my current role as a Quality Engineer, I quickly realized that the company didn't effectively track scrap rates for extremely costly raw materials. Knowing that the company was wasting a lot of money on raw material waste, my first project was to measure the scrap rate and do what was possible to improve it. I spent a month measuring incoming raw material versus the final production measure and found out that our rate was extremely wasteful. To get this rate under 5%, I worked hand in hand with the manufacturing folks on more effective processes to improve waste. We implemented new cutting templates and adjusted a few of the final production processes to improve defects. In just six short months, the rate was down to 4%. When I showed our leadership that the decrease in these rates saved over 500,000 per year, they were very impressed."

"A couple of years ago, in my role as the Marketing Manager for a large manufacturer of plastic products, the organization was focused on a new product line that would go into new markets outside of their current customer base. In the planning and goal-setting stages of the product line, I set the goal of sending out marketing email communications, letters, and presentations to 200 companies within the region that would be potential consumers of the products. I started with market research and assembled a small project team from within the organization. Once the targets were established, I developed communications and mailings that would go out and determined the target audience. In the end, I exceeded the goal by sending out communication to almost 250 companies. A few months down the road, our Sales Director told me that over 75 new customers that received my communications had placed orders. This was a huge win."