Thomas Hinkle

• Safety focused
• Practitioner of Servant Leadership
• Collaborated with cross-functional departments to achieve company-wide goals and maintain optimal production levels.
• Managed direction and planning for plant with focus on optimization of daily functions, exceeding customer expectations and achieving KPIs.
• Responsible for performance in Injection, transfer and compression molding, insert overmolding, pre and post operations.
• Documentation and oversight of lathe cut seal department. Utilizing hot feed extruders and vulcanizers for production of hoses comprised of a wide range of material types from natural to silicone.
• Oversight of the department manufacturing natural and synthetic rubber stocks.

In my position as Plastic Extrusion Department Manager I had responsibility for improving productivity of the department as a whole and creation of a training program. The benefits of the training program includes improved employee retention through demonstration of a path for growth for the employee, scrap reduction and improved changeover times.

• Products ranged from flooring base profiles to 10" cylinders.
• Developed team communications and information for daily production meetings
• Working closely with quality department to define root causes of quality spills and develop corrective actions
• Reinstating KPI of operator efficiency, changeover efficiency and scrap
• Enhanced communication between shifts and within shifts
• Collaborate with maintenance department on establishment of PM program

• Training of employees on new standards and practices
• Identify and measure KPIs in extrusion production processes
• Create associated forms for tracking KPI
• Edit policy manual and create associated forms
• Create document salt cure CV profiles in cold feed extrusion processes
• Implement safety measures related to new extrusion processes
• Perform dimensional layouts of new program profiles and FG
• Implement process changes to hit dimensional targets
• Planned and directed production schedule
• Create/implement product pricing and quoting models

• Manage manufacturing processes including plastic and rubber injection molding, compression as well as transfer molding of rubber
• Managed pre and post-op for molding operations
• Managed shipping and receiving
• Planned, directed, coordinated and assigned manpower to meet production schedules
• Defined manufacturing performance standards and reviewed the outcome of performance goals to set future targets
• Directed maintenance staff.
• Implemented key performance, quality and efficiency measures to achieve aggressive production goals
• Lead daily plant wide department meeting to communicate status of operations and performance measurables
• Drive daily action items for all departments
• Performance reviews for production supervisors
• Facilitated internal and external training for supervisory staff
• Identified and developed employees for opportunities in supervision within the company
• Performed layered process audits
• ISO and TS experience

• Communicated production requirements to plant supervision
• Organized, maintenance projects.
• Participated in lean and 5S events.
• Implemented cellular manufacturing in plastic injection, TPR and PUF molding
• Managed processes including assembly lines, metal and plastic over-molding of engineering grade plastics.