Frank Watts is a product of a University of Illinois engineering education and over forty five years of industrial and consultation experience. He founded his own company to specialize in exceptional configuration management with specific expertise in product release, change control, change costing, field & factory retrofit and bills of material for your company and its supplier / customer relationships.
Frank is a golfer, hiker and skier and has 26 kid-seasons of coaching kids in a variety of team sports, plus five years helping developmentally disabled kids to ski.

Experience:
Formally a Director of Engineering Services, Director of Operations and a Director of Manufacturing Engineering; he has also managed Configuration Management, Cost Estimating, Industrial Engineering, Test Engineering, Pilot Production and Repair Operations. He has contributed as a Design Engineer, Industrial Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Systems Analyst and Project Manager.

Successful Projects:
Frank has guided the development of the engineering request and change control process at many companies and made significant contributions toward improving the new product/document release process, order entry process, installed MRP II systems, new numbering systems, helped companies attain a single BOM database and guided improvement of the CM processes by continuous improvement and re-invention.

Background:
His industrial experience was with Caterpillar, Collins Radio, Control Data, Storage Technology, UFE and Archive. He is currently instructing an EDC/CM course via his company, EC3 Corp. He has given seminars to about 3500 people via university sponsored programs. He has over 70 clients from all segments of manufacturing. Ask for a Clients List

Credits:

• BSME - University of Illinois
• Graduate Studies - University of Iowa
• Over forty professional courses and seminars including teachers like Schonberger, Shingo and Costanza.
• Is an NDIA Certified Configuration and Data Manager (CCDM).

Author:

• "Engineering Documentation Control Handbook - Configuration Management in Industry" Elsevier Publishing, Third Ed 2008, 365 pages. Over 10,000 Copies Purchased
• "CM Metrics - Product Lifecycle Measurement and Improvement" Elsevier Publishing, First Ed Released 2009.
• "48 Ways to Faster Design Changes", copyright second edition 1998
• "54 Trolls Under the CM Bridge" copyright 2000
• Numerous magazine articles and white papers - Free on this site - see LITERATURE.
• EDC / CM Benchmarking survey - now in "CM Metrics"

Membership: - ACDM . . . . . Past member - ASME, SAE, AIIE, ADPA, APICS