About Tom Kress
Personal
Tom was born and raised in the Midwest as part of a large family in Ohio. He has been blessed by his marriage to his wife, Joan, for over 35 years. They are the parents of 5 grown children who continue to bring them joy and make their life "interesting".
His career has provided the opportunity for them to live in numerous places around the US and they have enjoyed living from New England to the Wisconsin. Tom and Joan currently live in Milwaukee where they are busy enjoying all that this great city has to offer and doing what they can to make it even better place through involvement in non-profits and other organizations
Tom and Joan enjoy discovering new places, spending time with their children and extended family, getting outside for activities, and enjoying local festivals, parks, and beer gardens.
Career
My focus is providing solutions to complex issues through operational and strategic initiatives deployment. The skills, approach, and experience needed for that developed through my career filled with high-impact manufacturing roles in various businesses and challenges.
Out of school, I held various roles in three General Electric businesses manufacturing aircraft engines, electrical distribution, and measurement equipment. Here I built solid skills in continuous improvement, six sigma, operations leadership, and management of significant manufacturing projects.
After GE, I moved on to Danaher where I concentrated on lean implementation and in defining and executing major improvements using their well-known Strategy Deployment process. I led lean and strategic initiatives there that included plant execution, cost, and service improvement, business process simplification, and plant rationalization.
Leveraging what I learned at these two excellent businesses, I moved on to Rexnord Industries in its process and motion control platform where I worked for the next 17 years. I continued my manufacturing focus but with a much broader scope. I led improvements in plant cost, sharing skills and technology between global sites, transferring production between locations, creating robust business processes like product development, and simplification through an 80/20 approach.
My final contribution at Rexnord was in defining and leading their strategic initiative to optimize the North American manufacturing and supply chain footprint. This multi-year initiative spanned from defining the overall roadmap through plan execution. It delivered annual EBITDA increase of over $20M and the capability to continue the improvement through a robust process and low-cost capability for production in Mexico
Along with the execution skills I’ve developed, my approach has also evolved to a much stronger incorporation of team engagement, change management, and team leadership that is needed to address more difficult issues and opportunities.
My passion to lead business transition from operational and strategic ideas to action is how I summarize myself after the impact of this career. My skills, experience and approach offer a unique ability to deliver impactful and sustainable improvement deployed today through my consulting business, Strategy Accelerator. The firm aids clients define and deploy manufacturing and strategic initiatives critical to their success with an approach catered to their specific situation and capability.
