(616) 555-0148 ◇ Grand Rapids, MI
elias.thorne@example.com ◇ linkedin.com/in/elias-thorne ◇ eliasthorne.com
Manufacturing Engineer with 7+ years owning assembly and machining processes for automotive tier-one suppliers. Cut cycle time on a flagship assembly line from 94 to 61 seconds, reduced scrap from 3.8% to 1.1%, and delivered $1.4M in annual cost savings across 3 plants. Combines hands-on time studies and fixture design with disciplined process validation and lean problem solving.
Concentration in Manufacturing Systems; senior project on fixture design for a robotic weld cell.
Certification project reduced weld rework on a 4-station cell by 46% over one quarter.
- Own 4 assembly and machining cells producing 780,000 units a year, holding overall equipment effectiveness above 82% against a plant target of 75%.
- Cut cycle time on the flagship assembly line from 94 to 61 seconds through line rebalancing and 3 fixture redesigns, adding 210,000 units of annual capacity.
- Reduced scrap from 3.8% to 1.1% across two years by introducing poka-yoke checks at 6 stations, saving roughly $640,000 a year in material.
- Supported 11 CNC machining centers, improving first-pass yield on a high-runner part family from 91% to 98% in 8 months.
- Led the launch of 2 new programs from prototype through PPAP, delivering both to full production rate 3 weeks ahead of customer timing.
- Reduced tool change downtime by 34% by standardizing setup sheets and pre-staging tooling for the 14 highest-volume part numbers.
- Wrote and validated work instructions for 60 operations across 3 stamping lines, replacing documentation that had gone 6 years without revision.
- Ran 40 time studies that exposed 9 bottleneck operations, and the resulting changes lifted line output by 12% within two quarters.
- Designed 7 assembly fixtures in SolidWorks, cutting operator handling time by an average of 8 seconds per unit across the affected stations.
Assembly Line Rebalance. Ran full time studies across 12 stations, then redistributed work content and redesigned 3 fixtures to clear the bottleneck. Cycle time fell from 94 to 61 seconds, adding 210,000 units of annual capacity with no added headcount.
Scrap Reduction Program. Used Pareto analysis on 18 months of defect data to isolate the 4 failure modes driving most scrap, then added error-proofing at 6 stations. Scrap fell from 3.8% to 1.1%, worth about $640,000 a year.
Setup Time Standardization. Built standardized setup sheets and a pre-staging cart system for the 14 highest-volume part numbers. Tool change downtime dropped 34%, and the approach was adopted at a second plant the following year.
- Mentor a high school FIRST Robotics team of 22 students, coaching fabrication and design review through a 6-week build season each year.
- Member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, attending the regional technical conference and 4 chapter events annually.
- Volunteer instructor for a community makerspace, teaching a machining safety course to roughly 40 members a year.
- Lead the plant's continuous improvement team of 8 from production, quality, and maintenance, delivering 14 kaizen events over two years.
- Coordinated a $900,000 capital installation of 2 robotic cells, managing the vendor, runoff, and operator training with 4 days of planned downtime.
- Trained 26 operators and 3 technicians on new standardized work, taking adherence audit scores from 68% to 96% within one quarter.

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