4moms

Technical Lead

Jan, 2016 – Jun, 2016

Brought the car seat from engineering prototype to pre-production.  Contributed and managed the continued development of the Self-Installing Infant Car Seat. This involved continuing to collaborate daily with Industrial Design, Marketing, Supply Chain Engineering, and Quality departments.  Lead the team to assure modifications were made to improve the quality of the mechanisms while in development.  Communicated with the manufacturer about said modifications and if they were possible and cost effective.  Participated in trips to contract manufacturer in China to solve issues with the production process and manufacturing. Organized multiple trips to crash testing facilities for multi-day testing, as well as heading each trip to ensure success.

Mechanical Engineer

Aug, 2012 – Jan, 2016

Participated in New Product Development for Self-Installing Infant Car Seat team.  Helped develop new mechanisms to achieve a carseat that could install itself. Began with a small override mechanism and ended with full ownership of the project when promoted to Technical Lead.  This position included wholly owning a subsystem and iterating it until it was ready for production.  The team followed an agile approach to hardware including daily stand-ups and weekly meetings to communicate where each team member was with their focus area.

Responsibilities:

• Conceptualizing new mechanisms/solutions
• Designing the mechanism in CAD (Solidworks)
• Defining test methods for said design
• 3d-Printing and testing the new design
• Identifying problems/interferences/issues
• Iterating design based on identified issues
• Releasing finalized designs for manufacture
• Refining designs once in manufacture based on testing
• Handing over project to supply chain once production starts

Accomplishments:

• Acquired copious of hands on prototyping experience building in-house prototypes
• Worked continously with contract manufacturers
• Travelled to testing facility on multiple trips
• Travelled to Contract Manufacturer in Asia multiple times
• Was able to see and help build engineering prototypes at CM
• Promoted from owning a small sub-assembly to owning the base assembly to eventually becoming the technical lead of the project
• Prepared the team and project to enter into pre-production
• Product was sucessfully launched after my departure and was eventually discontinued after a few years