Newsmakers

Quality Project Engineer, New Position for Southern Division
Alice Upton and Scott Gibson have been named quality project engineers at the Inman, S.C., and Statesville, N.C., facilities respectively. In this newly created position, they will serve as liaisons between business unit and manufacturing engineers, coordinating all product development activities from production part approval through program end-of-life.

Upton brings 25 years of tool design and quality engineering and management experience to Mack Molding (Inman, S.C.). For the past 20 years, she worked for Dynacast, Inc., Spartanburg, S.C., where she was responsible for creating and implementing advanced quality plans and inspection requirements, supervised and trained quality inspectors, and served as continuous improvement project leader for several customers. An alum of Spartanburg Technical College, Upton is a certified quality engineer and has trained extensively in various quality assurance methods and processes.

Gibson, also a quality-engineering veteran, brings 17 years of experience to his new post at the Statesville, N.C., plant. Already a quality engineer at Mack for five years, Gibson previously worked as a quality engineer for Lacey Manufacturing (Bridgeport, Ct.) and a quality manager for Duda & Goodwin Manufacturing (Woodbury, Ct.), where he was responsible for developing and maintaining quality control systems to meet customer requirements. Gibson is a graduate of Naugatuck Valley Community College, Waterbury, Ct.

New Faces
As part of its planned growth in medical device manufacturing, Mack has added a regulatory compliance and system improvement manager to it medical manufacturing team at the headquarters plant.

Lee Fox, a 35-year manufacturing engineering veteran, has accepted the position. Prior to Mack, Fox owned and operated FOXCO Services Company, Needham, Mass., where he provided process validation, quality system implementation, metrology, auditing, clean room design and operation, and regulatory support services to medical device manufacturers. A specialist in developing, implementing and improving manufacturing operations for medical devices, Fox holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Also new to the headquarters plant is Leslie Downer, who has joined sales & engineering as program manager. She will work primarily with medical device customers, managing the life cycle of their products, including pricing, scheduling, design, prototyping, tooling, molding and assembly. A veteran engineer with 17 years of cross-functional engineering experience in design, manufacturing and quality assurance, she worked most recently for Whatman, Inc. (Sanford, Maine), where she was corporate quality assurance operations manager with worldwide responsibilities. Downer holds an MBA from Babson College, Wellesley, Mass., and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont, Burlington.

Dan Bombria has joined the purchasing department as a supplier engineer. Most recently, Bombria was plant manager at Patterson Medical Repairs, Inc., Shrewsbury, Mass., for four years. A 2001 graduate of State University College, Buffalo, N.Y., Bombria earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering technology. While there, he was instrumental in establishing the college’s first Engineering Baja Racing Team and in developing, testing and racing an off-road competitive vehicle.

Jim Whitcher has joined Mack’s Application Development Center, headquarters plant, as senior staff metals engineer, where he joins an engineering group dedicated to helping customers develop and bring new products to market. Whitcher comes to Mack from Abacus Automation, Bennington, Vt., where as a mechanical design engineer, he was responsible for integrating complex electromechanical assembly and inspection systems, and developing new approaches in automation. Earlier, Whitcher was national sales manager for Weber Knapp Co., Jamestown, N.Y. A graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y., he holds a bachelor of science in electrical/mechanical engineering technology.

Promotions
Recent senior staff promotions at Mack’s headquarters plant include Bruce Bixler to vp of purchasing, Joan Magrath to vp of sales & engineering, and Larry Walck to director of business development.

Bixler joined Mack in 1973, and has worked in several functional areas. For many years now, though, he has managed the growth of the purchasing department, overseeing its evolution into a supplier management organization that today purchases thousands of unique components from hundreds of suppliers around the world.

Another long-term Mack employee, Magrath joined the company in 1987 as account manager, and was later promoted to business unit director. In her new position, she is responsible for all program and account management activities, including tooling and customer service.

Walck joined Mack in 2000 as new business development manager, with 12 years of plastics-related sales and marketing experience already under his belt. He now oversees all new sales activity, including Mack’s design and application engineering group.

In the quality department, Kathi Bennett has been promoted to quality supervisor, and Andrew Bell has accepted the position of quality engineer.

In her new role, Bennett supervises all quality auditors at the headquarters plant. She is a long-time veteran of medical device manufacturing, with a concentration in quality assurance. Before joining Mack in 2006, she was a quality assurance inspector for Tyco Healthcare, Kendall Sheridan, Argyle, N.Y. Earlier, she worked for 23 years for Mallinckrodt Critical Care, also in Argyle. A graduate of Adirondack Community College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, Bennett has a degree in Applied Science.

Before his promotion, Bell was a manufacturing technician at Mack’s headquarters plant. In his new role, he serves as the primary quality engineer for a complex orthopedic surgery program. Before joining Mack in 2004, Bell was a manufacturing processes engineer for Hudson RCI, a medical device company in Argyle, N.Y. Earlier, he was a National Kidney Foundation Young Science Scholar for the David Axelrod Institute, Wadsworth Center, Albany, N.Y. A graduate of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., Bell holds a bachelor’s in biology.

Matt Simonds, a supplier engineer at Mack, has joined sales & engineering as a program manager, where he will be responsible for managing the development of a new Class III medical device. Simonds brings 15 years of diverse engineering and engineering management experience to his new post. Before joining Mack, he was most recently with General Cable, Inc., Willimantic, Ct., where he was senior process engineer and also led the plant’s LeanSigma council. He completed Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt Certification while there. Simonds holds a master’s in manufacturing systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Ct.