Preparing for Production and Sales
Key Additions to Product Marketing and Production Team
We are pleased to introduce 3 new team members: Craig Riediger, Al Sabin, and Tom Dennison, retired Caterpillar experts with distinguished careers in manufacturing, product development and product marketing.
Together with manufacturing partner Mennie Machine Company, we have a seasoned team preparing for initial low-volume pilot production of compressors in 2011 for sales to select OEMs for testing and pilot demonstrations.
Craig Riediger
Craig Riediger
Craig brings a diverse background in product engineering, marketing and manufacturing support. He has a record of successful product development over his 38 year career with Caterpillar, and was a recipient of the prestigious Innovator’s Award. At Cat, he focused on helping decision makers understand the critical relationships among customer needs, technical fundamentals and product design to leverage business opportunities - with lean product development approaches. Craig is facilitating the production planning work at EcoThermics, which includes a part-by-part review to lock in designs, reduce production costs, establish manufacturing processes, and identify special application vendors, processes, components and tooling. He is working closely with our engineers and manufacturing engineers from Mennie Machine to pave a clear path to the production of a robust EcoThermics compressor that will be cost competitive in the global market.
Tom Dennison
Tom enjoyed a 35 year career in product development at Caterpillar. He has an extensive background in component, complex systems and machine development. Tom was an integral part of key program development initiatives - from bringing 6 Sigma discipline to business units, focusing on the quality of validation and influencing design, to creating systems-engineering organizations that influenced product and business direction. At EcoThermics, Tom is focused on evaluating specific end-user application opportunities where our value proposition relative to existing products is greatest. This product marketing work involves a technical assessment of how our compressor can help OEM manufacturers improve the competitive profile of existing assembled system products. An outcome of this process will be the selection of initial target markets for specific products, a prioritized list of qualified prospective OEM customers, and a focused sales presentation to facilitate the acquisition of new customers.
Tom and Craig are also supporting our technical team with design review and compressor testing and evaluation .
Tom Dennison and Al Sabin
Al Sabin
Al brings deep manufacturing and logistics experience from a 33 year career at Caterpillar. He was a key member of the leadership team that established Caterpillar’s engine business in China. In this position, Al led a team responsible for all facets of facility and process design, construction, equipment procurement and facility start up. With large scale manufacturing perspective and process review experience, Al is focused on integrating the work of our technical team with production processes and is managing our relationship with Mennie Machine. He has a keen product manufacturing perspective and brings focus to the discussions between the production team and R & D engineering team. Additionally, he has a great deal of experience in liaison collaboration with outside companies and vendors, and seasoned negotiating skills.
We’re off to a great start!
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“In our 40 year history, we’ve been involved with a number of successful ventures and therefore recognize the value and huge potential of EcoThermics leadership team and technology. The Mennie family is extremely pleased to be a part of this dynamic endeavor. ” David Mennie, Vice President |