Drew Noble

My task was to lower the cost, based on estimates from vendors and production plants, to make the Toyota hybrid transmission in North America. The current estimates showed the North American transmission would cost $98 more than the Japanese transmission.

I used a lean methodology called Plan for Every Part to break down the transmission's cost. I worked with a large team to create an accurate cost comparison of each step each part took for both North America and Japan builds. I presented these findings regularly to both NA and Japan teams, gathered feedback, and continued to make the cost estimates more accurate.

This process raised opportunities to remove waste and unite the teams in a common goal, to lower cost and build locally. It provided the insight that Japan's costs were artificially low because some processes were being left out, and once including all relevant steps, North America became more competitive. Additionally, a level of cost and process transparency was provided that typically wasn't available that early in the R&D process, which allowed the purchasing department to see where they had more work to do with the suppliers to lower costs. This resulted in a $38 decrease in cost per unit.

I was responsible for prioritizing the roadmap of a global payment system. An internal stakeholder, Ariv, needed an eCommerce site and payment system in 52 countries, with Australia and New Zealand being launched first.

My task was to work with Ariv to learn about their needs and enable all integrations with the eCommerce site, payment gateway, bank system, customer account system, and accounting system to occur for their launch. Based on the customer impact and revenue potential, our team prioritized the features Ariv needed for their launch. I worked with the contracting team to make sure that every effort could be made to complete acquiring bank integrations to enable the system to transact legally in Australia and New Zealand.

Because we were able to enable local acquiring bank services in our product, we could save on conversion fees and foreign transaction fees. Contracting was finished prior to launch, and the entire team jumped in to test all integrations to launch on time.