Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Community Leadership
Timeline
Generic

William Vance

Centerville,IN

Summary

Sales professional with a proven track record in the innovative food equipment manufacturing industry. Closed the largest single service project sold globally and consistently secured significant deals for single machine businesses. Demonstrated exceptional sales growth, achieving a 30% increase in extrusion parts and service sales over the past two years, as well as a 22% increase in upgrade and retrofit sales. With over 27 years of experience in food manufacturing, adeptly navigated industry change, showcasing perseverance, flexibility, and confidence in improving business results.

Overview

33
33
years of professional experience

Work History

Sales and Services Manager - Extruded Foods

Bühler Group
02.2022 - Current
  • Utilize existing petfood experience to leverage new equipment sales, service and parts in the petfood category increasing sales by 30%
  • Sold the largest single project services contract on record for the company in Q12023
  • Increased retrofit and upgrade sales by 22% within the customer base through identification of opportunities during customer interaction $1.8M
  • Over $2M in new machine sales with over $6M in upgrades, retrofits, parts and services.
  • Manage current relationships with existing customers to improve Buhler’s parts and services sales with the existing customer base traveling to various customer sites in US and Canada, approximately 100 customers in the human and pet nutrition portfolio
  • Perform administrative duties, such as preparing sales forecasts and reports, documenting annual goals and reporting against, monitor/track performance to sales forecasts, and documenting all activities in CRM.

Engineering Manager

Colgate-Palmolive
02.2019 - 02.2022
  • Developed and implemented the annual capital project budget selecting equipment and vendors for projects such as; Designing a custom batching solution that added formulation flexibility for new raw materials, reducing batch times, and increasing factory throughput by 25%
  • Selecting and procuring equipment for an entire production line with a new preconditioner, extruder, clamshell, and cooler
  • Selected vendor and procurement fresh meat processing equipment from Wolfking and Scan America to enhance the flexibility of the meat processing system
  • Digital Transformation projects: Implementing a predictive maintenance technology on critical plant equipment, implementing a predictive analytics technology on all four extrusion lines, installing inline quality measurement systems for density, moisture, protein, and fat, and implementing Everactive Steam trap monitoring saving the plant over $50k annually in energy losses


Operations Manager

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2016 - 01.2019
  • Worked collaboratively with the Strategic Team to develop and implement Strategic Operational/Technical plans, resulting in the network’s greatest throughput and lowest production cost managing the $40MM annual budget
  • Upgraded technician pay levels, certification process, and general staffing guidelines to optimize labor resources while also reducing temporary staffing for the plant
  • Developed quarterly business metric scorecard and communications system for plant personnel, which provided forward action plans necessary to reach the goals such as lowest cost/lb dry plant in the 3 plant NA network
  • Led Area Managers and Team Leads to drive improvements towards scorecard opportunities, resulting in a 75% improvement in operations and maintenance metrics within the first year of the rollout

Area Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2010 - 01.2016
  • Implemented key elements of our Digital Transformation Strategy, such as Autonomous Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, and Continuous Improvement, reducing unscheduled downtime by over 40%, reducing raw material scrap to less than 1.2%, and improving our yield efficiency metric to 98%
  • Data alone cannot transform a factory, thus I assumed responsibility for maintenance budgets and maintenance staff and led monthly Continuous Improvement meetings with engineers and quality staff to resolve systemic issues, reducing our UPDT Metric to less than 14% from 23% within 3 years and improved PM completion rates to over 70% from 38%
  • Site has the longest standing micro-free finished product record in the company


Quality Team Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2008 - 01.2009
  • Micro Task Force Manufacturing Lead - worked with corporate teams to identify sources of micro contamination in raw materials such as Choice White Grease (CWG)
  • Led the design of AMI injection system into extrusion receiving recognition from Hill’s President and Colgate CEO
  • Czech Plant Start-Up Extrusion SME / CI Lead

Processing Area Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2006 - 01.2008
  • Increased annual plant throughput by over 70 MM lbs through extruder rate increases
  • Tested and implemented extended wear screws and liners for the extrusion process, saving over $100k annually and dramatically increasing our first pass quality metric due to reduced extruder surging.

Quality Team Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2005 - 01.2006
  • Change Management Coordinator – introduced 75 new products/formulas into the facility per year and developed a change management process to facilitate rapid formula changes with minimal impact on factory performance, reducing the new product error rate from 10% to 0 after implementation
  • Capital Project – Project lead for the Key Nutrient Control project in processing, reducing product variation and customer complaints about inconsistent products by 25%

Processing Focus Resource

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2002 - 01.2005
  • Product Quality & Uniformity Initiative: Upgraded the extruder automation software to include a Recipe Management System allowing lead operators to save “best processing parameters” for each product.
  • Enhanced the extruder startup sequence to reduce line scrap by >35%, an annual scrap reduction of 450k lbs
  • Developed linear regression equations for pumps and valves to allow them to start/open near the target setpoint instantaneously.

Extrusion Operator and Reliability Coordinator

Colgate-Palmolive
01.1995 - 01.2002
  • Led operators/mechanics in maintaining four X235 Wenger extruders while also working as an extruder operator on shift.

New project sales

Bowen General Contractors
01.1993 - 01.1995

Infantry

United States Army
01.1992 - 01.1993
  • Honorable Discharge-Medical; ACL tear while training in California desert to prepare for deployment to middle east.

Education

B.S., Mechanical Engineering -

Purdue University, Indianapolis
01.2008

Skills

  • Sales
  • Staff Development
  • Service Delivery
  • Technical knowledge
  • Operations Management

Community Leadership

  • Purdue Advisory Board Member, Richmond, IN, Attend Semi-annual board meetings to discuss enrollment and propose changes to increase enrollment as well as how to better service the community.
  • Whitewater Valley Land Trust, Land conservation non-profit working with grants from the state as well as donations from corporations and individuals to acquire land in the community that becomes deeded as classified forest or farm ground in perpetuity.

Timeline

Sales and Services Manager - Extruded Foods

Bühler Group
02.2022 - Current

Engineering Manager

Colgate-Palmolive
02.2019 - 02.2022

Operations Manager

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2016 - 01.2019

Area Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2010 - 01.2016

Quality Team Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2008 - 01.2009

Processing Area Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2006 - 01.2008

Quality Team Leader

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2005 - 01.2006

Processing Focus Resource

Colgate-Palmolive
01.2002 - 01.2005

Extrusion Operator and Reliability Coordinator

Colgate-Palmolive
01.1995 - 01.2002

New project sales

Bowen General Contractors
01.1993 - 01.1995

Infantry

United States Army
01.1992 - 01.1993

B.S., Mechanical Engineering -

Purdue University, Indianapolis

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William Vance