Stewart Spanbauer

About Stewart Spanbauer

I am a cross-functional leader with experience spanning quality, operations, process improvement, and commercial strategy across manufacturing and consumer brands.Earlier in my career, I built a strong foundation leading teams, improving systems, and solving operational problems at scale. Over time, I became most interested in the strategic side of that work: setting direction, identifying growth opportunities, designing better systems, and helping organizations make smarter decisions.That led me to pursue my MBA at UNC Kenan-Flagler, with concentrations in Healthcare and Marketing, to broaden my perspective and transition into strategy-focused leadership. During the program, I worked on growth strategy, segmentation, and go-to-market projects, and completed an internship at Hershey, where I helped build a $22M brand growth plan grounded in consumer and market insights.After graduation, I joined Dexco as Director of Quality in a role with broad organizational scope. It gave me the opportunity to shape systems, improve decision-making, build cross-functional alignment, and influence the direction of the business. Through process standardization, ISO 9001 leadership, and data-based decision making, I have helped strengthen the organization while expanding my own leadership range. That experience has reinforced that I want my next role to center more directly on strategy, growth, and business decision-making.I am especially interested in roles where analytical thinking, customer insight, and strong execution come together to drive growth, improve performance, and build better organizations.

Experience

1. Director of Quality

   Dexco Machining & Fabrication

   Aug 2025 — Present · Burlington, NC, US

   Lead the quality function for a precision manufacturing business supporting CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication, and busbar manufacturing. Responsible for customer quality, internal quality systems, inspection effectiveness, corrective actions, audit readiness, and continuous improvement across the organization.• Led the company through ISO 9001 certification with zero nonconformances • Drove a sustained reduction in cost of poor quality (COPQ), with NCR volume decreasing by ~30% year over year• Improved inspection productivity by implementing UniPoint digital inspections for operations, reducing inspection time by ~50%• Standardized inspection processes across work centers and both shifts, increasing jobs with correct inspection documentation from ~50% to 95%+• Built management dashboards that centralized data from multiple systems into a single view, reducing administrative workload by ~30% and improving decision-making speed and visibility

Education

• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  Master of Business Administration - MBA

• North Carolina State University

  Bachelor of Science - BS, Industrial Engineering

Skills

• Research and Development (R&D)
• Leadership
• Microsoft Word
• Project Management
• Management
• Public Speaking
• Microsoft Excel
• Sql
• Microsoft Office
• Strategic Planning