In
Rodney Bryner
Profile
When Rod came to college, he was sure he wanted to be an engineer, but he wasn’t sure what type. He tried ChE, EE, and ME before he decided that IE would be the best fit for him. “I liked the bigger picture issues that IEs dealt with,” Rod says.
When Rod graduated, he went to work for Masland Industries, a manufacturer of automotive carpeting. At first, he did classical IE work including time studies, material flow, and plan layout. While Rod was stationed in Carlisle PA, he worked at other plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Mexico.
It was a joint venture between Masland and a Japanese company that changed Rod’s career path. “I learned about the Japanese approach to continuous improvement and started doing these type of projects long before they became popular in the U.S.,” Rod says.
Rod joined Lear Corporation, another automotive supplier as its operation director and eventually became a plant manager. He wasn’t happy with the huge corporate environment and decided to go into consulting.
Rod formed his own consulting firm. “This was a tough experience.” It’s hard doing the front end work to initiate a client engagement,” Rod describes.
Rod joined Quest Worldwide in 2004 as its Vice President of Operations. Rod’s consulting projects were in sites all over the world. With the death of the founder of Quest Worldwide, Rod was provided the opportunity to again have his own consulting firm, Quest Excellence Group.
From Rod’s experiences, he has several insights to share with students:
- “You need exposure to the entire value chain not just operations. This includes marketing, finance, purchasing, etc.”
- “You need to be able to relate to many different people and cultures.”
- “IE is needed in every type of business, not just manufacturing. Every business has processes which can be improved.”
- “Don’t think of Six Sigma and lean operations as two different strategies. They need to be done concurrently.”
Bio
Rodney joined Quest Worldwide in 2004 and is a management/operations consulting executive. He has over 17 years’ experience in management consultancy primarily in the areas of continuous improvement, change principles and leadership development that are strategically focused towards the client’s needs. His key expertise lies in lean tools/techniques, lean leadership, process re-engineering and total quality approaches. He provides development, training and implementations in world-class techniques, world-class assessment tools, strategic process analysis and client project management. He has consulted and managed client projects in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe and the Middle East. His ability to quickly identify process improvement opportunities and to drive team-oriented activities, leads to financial and operational gains for the client. He has been involved continuously in cost reduction and quality improvement activities for clients and firms throughout his entire career.
Prior to this, Rodney gained 11 years of automotive industry experience; working in engineering, quality, maintenance, production and management positions, giving him valuable hands-on knowledge. His management experience in operations and engineering has led to the development of processes and people that produce, meet and exceed organizational goals.
He is responsible for the engagements in North America by managing client assessments, project delivery and overall client relationships. He has experience with a wide variety of clients and industries; building materials, consumer products, industrial products, textiles, aerospace, automotive, food processing, electronics, power generation, transportation, utilities, chemical industries and oil/gas industries (energy, drilling, pipelines, and product/service providers).
Rodney holds a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering degree from West Virginia University and a Master of Business Administration from Xavier University.
