Compounding - Global at The Yokohama Tire Company (2025-01 – 2025-08)
Following Yokohama's acquisition of Goodyear's OTR business, I led the compounding team to develop a unified global compound lineup across both Goodyear and Yokohama plants. This included standardizing raw materials, aligning processing methods, and ensuring consistent performance properties across all manufacturing locations
Senior Technical Project Manager - Global at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
- Manage a multi-million dollar business unit through releasing of new products, developing new technologies, plant troubleshooting, and improving field opportunities in all regions
- Provide strategy to maintain / improve Tire performance while minimizing costs with budget cuts
- Provide strategy and recommendations to the Business and Field of opportunities in development
- Track progress of in-flight technologies, and ensure a full pipeline of new development
- Managed a team of 11 in compounding, tire design, FEA analysis, and plant support
- Ensured proper problem solving techniques were utilized (A3, fishbone, 5-whys, etc.) to solve complex opportunities
Radial OTR Compounding – R&D Associate at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (2012-01 – 2023-12)
- Developed & industrialized a compounding solution to eliminate a lower sidewall durability opportunity that accumulated $400k+ in warranty payments
- Completed role as extruder process owner for a $250MM plant expansion in NGT. Developed processing conditions for ALL compounds to maximize compound performance and throughput. Critical role in pushing production from a plan of 4.0 to the stretch goal of 6.2 tires per day
- Presented a CTO Award for my development of a novel processing extruder solution to eliminate a substantial bottleneck in NGT
- Drove the characterization & development of a critical compounding technology (masterbatch). Guidelines for usage & processing conditions were established, and currently guiding four development projects in other product groups as the Technical Expert. The technology has shown enhancements in wear rates (25+%) and tire temperatres (20% reduction). Managed relationships with the supplier throughout development
- Developed a new innerliner compound that reduced compound cost, improved air permeability, and improved the rate in which finished tire repairs were required by 40%
- Known as a subject matter expert for OTR benchmarking. Proven track record of isolating, reformulating, and physically testing various components. Used this information to leverage tradeoffs in compound design and an understanding of competitor tire design strategy
- Worked alongside composite testing team to develop 2 novel fatigue crack growth tests to build dc/dn curves for Tire components (bulk and interfacial tear). Allowed for result to be utilized by FEA team to determine differences in whole tire fatigue life
- Owner of 25 trade secrets and 18 patents (2 more in process)
- Developed and maintained relationships with multiple material suppliers to cross-functionally and cross-company material development. Utilized model compounds to share results with the suppliers to allow for collaborative growth. Traveled with a hosted these suppliers to gain mutual respect and a strong sense of teamwork
- Worked collaboratively with Quality Function on multiple instances to build standards of practices to optimize Throughput, quality, and performance
- Leading the Competitive Patent Landscape analysis program for the OTR team to understand competitor activity and drive development in new design spaces
- Recognized as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) within Goodyear for OTR compounding, UFS processing, & natural rubber masterbatch mixing/compounding
- Originator of utilizing advanced data analysis tools within the OTR team to statiscially understand tire performance for optimal decision making on development projects. This data view has greatly expanded now to various programs within OTR to track performance
Internship at OVATION Polymers Company (2002-01 – 2005-12)
- First opportunity to see lab and upscaled polymer production
- Tested various formulations of commodity Polymers with unique fillers
- Innovative highly filled materials developed with strategies and alterations followed by me
- Followed the development lab mixing to production trials
