David Diatikar

I established, resourced, and led an ad hoc five-person company project team.

• Met with the client team and negotiated project deliverables.
• Conceived and trained my team on project concepts and methods.
• Conducted discovery to identify gaps before interviews and workshops.
• Managed stakeholder expectations.
• Created drafts on post-its on roll paper of each end-to-end process.
• Conducted in-person workshops to validate and or update value stream maps. Documented immediate, short-term, and long-term pain points.
• Searched for and found duplicate processes that should be standardized or eliminated to improve processes.
• Delivered findings documented on roll-out end-to-end drawings and in excel.
• Client presented findings to senior management, with my team present to answer questions.

Assisted in the effort of establishing and implementing the Corporate Lean Six Sigma program for Verisk. Co-taught the initial two waves of Green Belt Classes and coached and mentored through the implementation of 25 Green Belt projects.

• Met all Ford and General Motors requirements for three new product launches.
• Introduced operations equipment efficiency (OEE) measures in manual-paced production.
• Created Kanban inventory systems that pull from the production line, delivery carts (parts warehouse), and central stores for high-volume products. Introduced a two-bin parts system to provide a clear signal to the material handler regarding when to replenish parts bins.
• Taught and implemented a basic 5S program on Ford, General Motors, and machine shop production lines. Conceptualized and executed a plan for every part for four production lines.

Managed a team of civilian and military personnel to complete the testing required to establish US Army firing tables for the 155mm and 8mm in artillery binary nerve agent rounds. This included planning, firing, spotting, and marking the dispersion cloud, impact location, and recovery of the spent round.

I conceived, planned, executed, and evaluated 10 combat and combat service support computer simulation exercises within a 5-state area, aligning closely with the client unit's objectives and requests.

WORK DONE
• Tailored exercises to meet specific needs and challenges identified by client units, ensuring relevance and effectiveness in exercise training objectives. - Conducted thorough evaluations of each exercise, analyzing performance metrics and participant feedback to assess effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
• Collaborated closely with client units to incorporate exercise outcomes into their improvement plans for the following training year, facilitating continuous growth and readiness enhancement.
• Utilized exercise outcomes as key indicators to determine the readiness of units for potential deployment, providing critical insights for strategic decision-making.
• Demonstrated strong project management skills, effectively coordinating logistics, resources, and timelines to ensure seamless execution of exercises.
• Fostered positive relationships with client units, earning a reputation for professionalism, reliability, and dedication to achieving training objectives.

Consulting engineering principal, program management (contract).

I handled program management support for the home equity line of business (operational excellence), including:
• Led a comprehensive re-engineering initiative, beginning with documenting the entire home equity line of credit process, mapping its stages from application to final closing.
• Identified errors, missing information, mistakes, bottlenecks, and other impediments hindering the flow of the HELOC process. Assessed the impact of these issues on capacity (productivity) and cycle time from application to closing.
• Leveraged our analysis findings to implement some improvements and recommend others for the process. These strategic enhancements eliminated defects at their source, elevated productivity, and significantly reduced the end-to-end cycle time.

This initiative ranked first out of the top 5 projects in the Enterprise IT portfolio for value delivered.

WORK DONE
• Consolidated project requests from three business groups (operations, advanced manufacturing, and site IT) into a single continuously prioritized backlog. This enabled the coordinated delivery of business-defined value.
• Transitioned the implementation and development team to Agile methods successfully. The outcome significantly enhanced team flexibility, responsiveness, and adaptability to continuously changing requirements.
• Implemented Jira and later integrated DevOps project management tracking tools, complete with dashboards and metrics, streamlining project monitoring and enhancing overall efficiency.
• Achieved a remarkable 50% increase in delivery efficiency, measured in hours per story of complex technical products.
• Led the 2023 follow-on project, focusing on stabilizing and identifying future optimization opportunities for the STX platform, demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement and alignment with strategic initiatives. The Navistar AME team, the local Navistar production and operations team, Navistar IT, and the vendor (Rockwell Automation) collaborated to understand the needs and requirements of Navistar and deliver the software products.
• Managed project deliverables in Service Now.