Deepak Gidhwani

Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence professional with 6+ years of international experience leading Lean transformation, digital manufacturing, and operational performance initiatives across greenfield and advanced manufacturing environments.

Lean Six Sigma Green

Belt with expertise in Lean deployment, Kaizen, VSM, TPM, KPI governance, and Industry 4.0. Proven strength in project management, cross-functional leadership, stakeholder engagement, and organizational capability development, with a track record of standardizing improvement systems, driving data-driven problem solving, and delivering sustainable operational improvements.

Lean Process Specialist at AUMOVIO (formerly known as Continental) (2024-06 – 2026-05)

• Improved OEE from 68% to 86% through plant-wide Lean transformation initiatives during greenfield ramp-up, implementing standardized operational systems, KPI governance, Daily Management, and capability-building practices.
• Led a plant-wide Operational Excellence transformation, driving cross-functional initiatives that elevated the site to the highest level of operational maturity and earned recognition as the organization’s sole reference plant.
• Led a cross-functional TPM project involving 15+ employees across 5 departments, driving stakeholder alignment and implementation of 15+ sustainable systems, resulting in Bronze-level certification during a global cross-plant audit.
• Coached and guided the project lead in optimizing critical spare-parts management across VLM and SAP, developing an in-house automation strategy that avoided ~$25K in external costs and 3 new hires while delivering the project 3 months ahead of schedule.
• Resolved a $2M+ physical-to-digital inventory discrepancy through RCA, end-to-end process mapping and redesigning standard procedure with defined ownership and audits ensuring accurate inventory reconciliation.
• Facilitated a targeted continuous improvement Jishuken event involving time studies, bottleneck analysis, and workflow optimization to drive an improvement in OEE, from 79% to 85%.
• Reduced MTTR by 57% and improved MTBF by 45% by driving root cause analysis (RCA), CAPA implementation, and structured problem-solving training, improving equipment reliability and failure prevention.
• Implemented plant-wide digital manufacturing and Industry 4.0 solutions, automating data collection, enabling real-time performance visibility, eliminating paperwork and 75 seconds/hour of manual reporting effort per production line.
• Digitalized 70+ operational tasks across five roles and achieved 90% compliance with standardized Leader Standard Work across 20 production lines and 80+ employees.
• Led Lean workshops and coached 150+ employees on 5S, Gemba, standardization, and structured problem solving, strengthening Lean capability and continuous improvement adoption across the organization.

Manufacturing Engineer 2 at Axiscades Inc., (Client – Caterpillar) (2021-11 – 2024-05)

• Led a $400K business transformation project deploying RFID-enabled poka-yoke and digital controls to improve process reliability, quality, and operational governance.
• Resolved customer issue through structure problem solving and corrective actions, generating $23,000 in annual savings and eliminating 1,190+ minutes of rework.
• Automated process capability analysis for critical assembly processes, saving 7,000+ minutes, and developed Power BI dashboards to improve performance monitoring and data-driven decision-making.
• Led a cross-functional tooling interlock project that saved 4,000+ estimated labor hours, reduced RCA time by 70%, and strengthened process controls across critical engine assembly operations.
• Supported Lean industrialization through takt-time analysis, capacity planning, line balancing, layout optimization, and workflow improvement, reducing cycle time by 13%.
• Reduced diesel engine manufacturing defects by 28% through root cause analysis, corrective-action implementation, and assembly drawing revisions to improve manufacturing quality.
• Leveraged JIRA and KPI dashboards to track sprint progress, risks, dependencies, and delivery performance, enabling transparent stakeholder reporting and data-driven prioritization.
• Developed variant-specific Bills of Materials (BOMs) for a new product introduction (NPI) engine using the master BOM checklist, ensuring accurate component documentation across product configurations.

Volunteer Laboratory Assistant at Clemson University (2021-08 – 2021-10)

• Collaborated with frontend and backend teams to define product development and implementation strategies, aligning technical deliverables with internal customer requirements and project timelines.
• Developed KPI dashboards enabling real time monitoring and faster data driven decisions of tire performance metrics.
• Supported research on predictive maintenance applications utilizing IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

Research & Development Assistant at Advance Energy Solutions (2021-01 – 2021-05)

• Designed and developed Solar Tree structures using PTC CREO for 1KW, 2KW and 5KW power configurations.
• Presented current-state operations and future business models to prospective investors and local media representatives, communicating business strategy and growth opportunities.

Design Intern at Optimizt Solutions (2018-08 – 2019-01)

• Developed and maintained Bills of Materials (BOMs) to support product development, component traceability, and manufacturing readiness.
• Developed 2D drawings and 3D concept models of plastic components using CATIA V5, evaluating alternative designs to support product development and design validation.

Process Intern at Ashok Food Products (2017-07 – 2018-07)

• Developed 70+ standardized procedures to strengthen process governance, discipline, and operational consistency.
• Conducted Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to identify waste and bottlenecks for process and workflow improvements.
• Achieved 100% 5S coverage across production floor and office areas and trained 100% operational workforce.
• Led process compliance audits to sustain standard operations and corrected deviations through on-the-spot coaching.

Master of Science (M.S.) in Mechanical Engineering – Clemson University (2019-08 – 2021-05)

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Mechanical Engineering – SGBA University (2013-07 – 2017-05)