Jason Wagner

About Jason Wagner

Experienced manufacturing manager with a process engineering background who is passionate about leading teams to business results through a sustainable continuous improvement culture that maximizes employee engagement, education, development, and individualized personal ownership of key metrics at all levels.Recognized for a wide range of analytical and deployment tools for reducing costs, coaching teams, and leading strategically to key business objectives. Strengths include: • Lean Manufacturing • Six Sigma Black Belt • Kaizen Events • Gemba Walks • Visual Workplace • Behavior-Based Safety • SPS (variation of TPS), including PM, TPM, and DTM • Continuous Improvement • Statistical Process Control • Root Cause Analysis

Experience

1. Plant Manager

   H.B. Fuller

   Apr 2020 — Present

   Currently leading the manufacturing site to annually produce ~75M lbs of adhesive while delivering safety, quality, cost, service, and people objectives.• 1 year injury-free for the site on 2 separate occasions.• Reduced COPQ from $151k in 2021 incrementally each year to a projected $76k for 2024.• The capacity of the Water-Based department was increased by 40% through capital expansion and equipment additions to provide room for business growth.• The WB department efficiency has improved from 1,410 lbs/man-hr in 2022 to 1,896 lbs/man-hr in 2024, resulting in a 34% improvement that equates to $469k in labor savings per year. The Polymers department efficiency has improved from 1,890 lbs/man-hr in 2019 to 2,801 lbs/man-hr in 2024, resulting in a 48% improvement that equates to $286k in labor savings per year.• Launched new business plan to manufacture all wood glue products for the Gorilla Glue brand. Installed bulk tanks for Type 2 formulation to be sold in tanker trucks. Installed a new high speed bottling line and started a new bottling department to package all commercial sizes for the Type 1 formulation. Successful launch to meet demand in 2020-21, then improved line performance to double production in 2021-22. Continue to service the business to customer expectations and won the Supplier of the Year award in 2023.• Reduced site distressed inventory from 315 mt down to 55 mt, eliminating $347k of inventory liability from the site. To sustain, established continuous improvement process/culture to eliminate the creation of distressed inventory through strategic batch sizes and the reduction of sources of overage inventory in the supply chain methods, now resulting in productivity savings of $198k annually.• In order to support a more cost effective business structure for the company ($2M/year), led workstreams that managed the transition of 300+ formulas from a plant closure into our site according to the scheduled plan.

Education

• Purdue University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Chemical Engineering

  1997 — 2001