Jason Gillen

Established ownership and management of 3 product lines- Butyl (bulk and laminations), SMP sealants and PU Sealants. Leadership of cross functional projects at the intersection of Operations, R&D, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing and Finance. Bringing strong market/product intelligence and customer centric approach earning reputation as a trusted consultant across BU's customer base.

• Responsible for effective management/positioning of this portfolio of over 800 SKU's/$70MM in annual sales.
• Business justification/demand planning/capacity modeling for CAPEX requirements to enable growth
• Product road-mapping and Multi-Generational Portfolio Planning- Focusing on Margin improvement understanding global market trends and purchasing strategies.
• Maintain close working relationships with production facilities in France, Germany, Mexico as well as 3 plants in USA as Technical Operations Manager.
• Managed cross-functional teams to ensure timely delivery of high-quality products.
• Collaborated with sales teams to develop targeted strategies for expanding market share
• Increased product line profitability by implementing cost reduction strategies and streamlining processes.
• Drove innovation within the product line by identifying emerging trends in the industry and incorporating them into future designs.
• Captured new customers by optimizing business strategies and launching products to diversify offerings.

Brought 20 yrs of deep and broad experience in adhesive formulation and polymer science industries to the table and revamped entire product portfolio by reformulating stronger performance/cost ratio products, optimizing production, having pulse of the market/industry needs and working closely with customers to provide technical solutions allowing them to penetrate new application spaces and market segments. This best in class ability to formulate custom solutions dramatically increased private label presence and secured several millions of dollars per annum in new business.

• Directed all R&D programs, responsible for all R&D metrics, managed chemist as well as managed QC with staff of 4 EE's
• Competitive analysis, product benchmarking, performance testing and 3rd party product certification
• developed and maintained fast- agile, short time to market to meet expectations of this specific high paced B&C market segment.
• Collaborated with and secured sustainable, profitable business from multiple large industry leading accounts

Directly managed a group as large as 16 EE's comprised of PhD chemists, engineers, material scientists and technicians. Served as primary technical contact for multi-national accounts to provide innovative technical solutions and products to their portfolios and applications served.

• Managed multiple BU's-adhesives, sealants and coatings- paving and roofing and oilfield chemicals.
• My group handled 40% of all global application development work and tech service for Kraton. Project management and resource loading was a daily critical criteria here and excelled at it and were a prolific team.

Promoted in 2013 from Commercialization Engineer where my role was more focused on

• formulation/compounding, production, manufacturing
• process improvement, operational excellence, equipment optimization
• Strong working knowledge of industrial processing equipment, as well as all of the analytical testing equipment related to this field

Retained by Encore to design, properly equip and staff a USGBC LEED Platinum rated Research and Development Center of Excellence allowing for new market penetration, innovative best in class products, increased market share as well as ability to self certify products through various regulatory bodies that govern sale of finished goods such as Underwriters Laboratories.

• Long term, high investment project management- from empty field to complete LEED platinum certified, exceedingly well equipped and properly staffed R&D center.
• Prepared project charter, WBS, worked with architecture group, construction group, EPA, local city council, economic development committee, fire department, code enforcement everyone you have to when building a new commercial structure
• Roughly $8MM building, $3MM in equipment, secured $400K in supplementary funding from city, hired 12 staff EE's.
• Authored QMS- secured ISO 17025, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, ROHS/WEEE compliance

Gaining initial management of department and of 20+ direct reports experience. Learned a tremendous amount in short period of time.

• Six Sigma driven production facility, actually operated at less than 3.4 DPMO or better.
• Learned how to build relationships and function professionally with very large customers, Pepsi, Gatorade, Snapple, Coke, Kraft,
• Real time Statistical process control (SPC) and analysis, FMEA, HACCP, Six Sigma, managing massive throughput production volumes

As a new to career R&D Chemist at Henkel, I was exceedingly fortunate to be mentored and trained by some of the industries best and most recognized experts. I took every opportunity to learn and develop my skill set, and this particular group at that time enjoyed developing new talent, they liked coaching. In time I became a quite capable and successful adhesive formulation chemist across multiple base chemistries, SBC based PSA's, EVA HM, APAO HM, various rubber based chemistries, and water based systems.

• Developed strong aptitude for analytical equipment platforms that I further developed later in my career
• Fostered relationships with raw material vendors I still maintain today
• First began to make a bit of a name for myself in this adhesives industry and entered the adhesive industry community and never left it.