A quick About Me...

Supply Chain Management and engineering has always appealed to me, although I probably would not have classified it as such early on. My choice reading in the 6th grade was generally military related: Airplanes (WWII to present day), submarines, ships (Robert D Ballard had a great book on the Bismarck!), and even my lifetime game choices were SCM/strategy related: Stratego, Risk, Axis v. Allies, Warcraft, Starcraft, Company of Heroes. Over the years my interests have sometimes changed, but overall as I grew up my reading topics transitioned from military to computers in approximately junior high school, cars were added once I turned 16, firearms once I passed 21, and manufacturing interests really took hold over that entire duration. As I read about all of my interests (cars, computers, firearms) I learned more and more about how they were designed, manufactured, marketed, distributed, etc.

While volunteering in high school for Race for the Cure, I was working with other students to put together the gift bags for race participants. The setup was a simple production line with an empty bag starting at the front of the line with students adding items as the bags moved towards the end of the line where I was stationed. I specifically remember directing others around me to help align our activities with the speed of the line. By the end of the day, my boxing team was always running approximately the correct speed, and I would reallocate some of the members to other areas to help alleviate some of the bottlenecks (as best I could gauge them). Maybe my experience is idealized in my own mind, but nevertheless it made me rethink "manufacturing" in a whole new way. If managing a picking line was that much fun, real manufacturing would be a blast! And so it was...

Upon graduating high school, I attended The University of Texas at Austin where I earned a degree in Supply Chain Management with supporting classes in Electrical Engineering. Overall, this major fit me perfectly because I wanted to work in the business world and work with technology as well.

My experience includes the following:
*Inventory Associate at Carmax during High School (Automotive)
*Inventory Control/Accounting/Shipping Manager for the VanillaIce.com online store during College
*Production Control Planner at Applied Materials (Semiconductor)
*APICS Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM)
*Production Planning Analyst at Maxim Integrated Products (Semiconductor)
*APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP)

I love supply chain management, but manufacturing holds a special place for me because when working with manufacturing, things are tangible in a way unlike most other company roles. When suggestions are implemented, one can often directly see the results, and being in the middle of the chain allows you to see your impact on your own company and suppliers/customers (and also their impact on you).

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