Ø      In addition to a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering (Emphasis; Behavior of Metals); the President of WA Technology, Jerry Uttrachi, also holds a Masters of Science Degree in Engineering Management from the Industrial Engineering Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

In his graduate degree programs he focused in Statistical Techniques and Manufacturing Engineering; courses including:

o       Advanced Management Engineering

o       Managerial Economics

o       Industrial Costing and Managerial Control

o       Engineering Reliability

o       Vector and Tensor Analysis

o       Statistical Design of Experiments

o       Advanced Analytical Engineering Statistics

o       Statistical Inference

o       Design of an Enterprise (welded aluminum boats)

Ø      In addition he has attended a number of related courses while in industry including the following:

o       Reliability and Maintainability by Dorian Shannen (AMA)

o       MRP/Costing by Ollie White (Ollie White & Associates)  [Attended this Management Overview Course given personally by Ollie White -considered the father of Materials Requirements Planning.  After working within this manufacturing system for a number of years I now understand that this approach was based on a very poor assumption!]

o       MRP II (R.D. Garwood, Inc)

o       Achieving Process Improvements Through Activity Based Analysis (National Association of Accountants)

Ø      TEAM TRAINING techniques were reinforced in the following courses:

o       Team Training Skills (Cornelius)

o       Team Training Management Update (Don Lyttle)

o       Team Skills (AWS)

o       Conflict Management (AWS Colloquium)

o       Quality Quest Leadership (FDTC)

Ø      As a Senior Manager, Mr. Uttrachi participated in the expenditure of over 1 million dollars with DeWolff Boberg and Associates, Management Consultants.  They worked closely with the production team and hourly workforce and saved well over the expenditure.  Each of the work teams would report results summaries to the senior management team.  The analytical approach learned and used by many of the hourly workforce was impressive.

Ø      While Welding Materials and Process Laboratory Manager the charter included Manufacturing Development.  We worked closely with two manufacturing plants developing innovative techniques and procedures to improve quality (including developing a simple test production workers used to define MIG welding wire cleanliness and maintaining chemical cleaning tank quality,)  reduce rework and scrap and develop new manufacturing procedures. 

      Statistical techniques were used to answer the question often asked throughout by Production Managers (often those involved in welding fabrication)…”But it was working fine yesterday and we did not change anything!”  (The answer often is, "You may not have a made a significant change but the manufacturing (or welding) process variables were far-off centerline and you were close to a disaster!")

Ø      Participated in a complete change in a production operation to Cellular Manufacturing.  Gave hundreds of tours of the facility an encouraged discussions with hourly work force.  It's of interest to see their perspective of why the Cellular Manufacturing was much better than the previous MRP driven system. Benefits were very significant, including a substantial increase in product quality and decrease of work in progress.  Outsourced a number of raw material supplies to in-house vendors and watched while they managed inventory of their products far better than we had, often decreasing total amounts by 80%! 

      The production workers relayed to the visitors how frustrating it was to find with the previous MRP system a $5000 item being assembled was missing the proper bolt!  With Cellular Manufacturing a representative from a hardware supply company kept all fastener bins at each cell filled with several days needs.  Instead of having thousands of fasteners we didn't need in stock because the sales force didn't forecast the future we had much less of the correct inventory!

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Outline of Modules

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Program for Welders

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