Ernest Silva

Technical manager of the Oral Care team with 7 direct reports and 15 indirect reports. Responsible for ensuring the efficiency of plastic injection, sealing and packaging processes. During the last two years in which I managed the Oral Care process, the efficiency of the process increased by 15% and the volume made available to the Latin American market increased by 11%.

Owner of the finished product quality systems, reducing alerts and quality blocks by 60% and manager of the cost of materials, where I reduced the manufacturing cost by 1.5% in the last 12 months.

Tools used: 6W2H, Ishikawa Diagram, Why-Why, Times and Methods and Spaghetti Diagram

Plant Leader of all Operational Excellence/Continuous Improvement initiatives, focusing on developing people and teams on Lean/Quality Tools, as well as Leadership principles, through the management of Kaizen, 5S and Self-Directed Work Team programs.

Leader and coach of all Plant projects (DMAICs and Kaizens) directioned towards Manufacturing Cost reduction and Process Optimization.

Leader of Plant Lean initiaves; Hoshin Kanri deployment.

On total, 200 Kaizens were implemented and 8 projects delivered, bringing plant savings and cost avoidance to a total of 7 million dollars.

Led the implementation of projects in the solid coating area, increasing machine availability through the SMED methodology, resulting in a gain of 5.5% in OEE per month. Coordinated multidisciplinary teams involving Quality Assurance and Control, PPC and Production, validating new production processes reducing the need for setups, resulting in a gain of 8.33% in OEE.

Managed Quality Assurance (CaPA) programs through waste elimination initiatives, including machine audits, preventive and corrective maintenance activities. Resolved chronic process failures, improving performance and reducing operational costs, resulting in 30% savings in maintenance budget and 13% increase in daily production.

Involved the operations teams on the shop floor through the use of Autonomous Maintenance methodology to develop equipment ownership and technical capability on machine operators to reduce machine unplanned downtime.