3276 Shadylake Drive
Loveland, OH 45140–5598
Mobile Phone: +1 513–295–4739
Home Phone: +1 513–677–2172
Email: Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com
URL: http://agileconsultingllc.com
To impress the clients of Agile Consulting LLC by applying my knowledge and skills to help acheive their objectives.
Key member of the team selecting and evaluating a possible replacement WMS for retail and direct-to-consumer facilities. Phone screening, vendor visits, customer site visits, and intensive, four-day evaluation of the two finalists (Retek DMS, Manhattan Associates PkMS). I personally led the technical evaluations of the vendors' systems.
A third-party warehouse management system taken in-house by Gap in 1998. I developed application coding standards and initiated a code-review process. Tremendous improvements were made following the adoption of Parasoft Insure++ to automate the discovery of many erroneous and questionable source code constructs. I have been continually involved in the specification and design of enhancements to the system.
In 1997–1998, Gap used Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner to drive a performance test of the RGTI system. I was involved in the initial implementation of the vUser (“virtual user”) programs which simulated the system activities performed by workers with mobile RF data terminals. Based on average task timings provided by Gap's industrial engineers, realistic delays for startup and travel time were incorporated into the scenario. This work led to the discovery of bottlenecks in the WMS task assignment algorithm early enough to implement improvements prior to the system's operational launch. A separate set of vUsers was developed to provide a basic, automated “smoke test” that exercises the essential capabilities of the WMS. This smoke test has been maintained and enhanced continually and must be “passed” by the WMS prior to beginning any integration or acceptance testing.
Ensured that the introduction of support for the Euro into Gap corporate systems did not adversely impact the distribution centers and participated in the integration and acceptance testing. Price ticket downloads to the UK system that supplied EU stores was necessarily impacted and was modified accordingly, but the same application is in place in the US and Canada.
Acted as the “facility lead” for the startup of an automated full-case distribution facility in Gallatin, TN. Reviewed the “Description of Operation” document with the facility director and the receiving and shipping managers. Wrote functional designs to incorporate new procedures into the WMS. Worked with facility managers to determine the storage location naming scheme and putaway protocol to minimize aisle congestion and reduce total travel for putaway and retrieval.
Managed the first conversion from internal systems to the RGTI WMS at a Gap full-case distribution center. Facilitated the emergency retro-conversion from RGTI WMS back to Gap's Legacy WMS at the first break-case distribution center when serious performance problems surfaced just days after going live. Managed the “live-test” of the RGTI WMS to prove acceptable performance. This involved a planned conversion to the RGTI WMS, full scale processing in a production facility, and conversion back to the Legacy WMS in a single week.
A multi-year effort to identify and eliminate the root cause of store delivery failures — those shipments not delivered within a two-hour window on the planned date. Improved data quality and timeliness and provided additional reports to help the transportation department with root cause research.
Originally designed and deployed to permit more accurate and timely resolution of freight claims, carton information from the DC shipping manifest is matched against the receipt information provided by 3PLs and by stores. This provides the Transportation department with a rich and detailed story of the life of each carton that leaves a DC en route to a store. Reports are produced using Business Objects™ from the data stored in an Oracle database.
Simulated allocation and DC shipping activity in a production-equivalent laboratory environment.
Worked with a vendor (Avicon) to demonstrate Radio Frequency Identification technology to Gap Inc employees at a two-day internal "tradeshow" event. Explained the results obtained during Gap's four month, single DC, single store pilot in 2001 of all denim tagged at the unit level. Discussed benefits and obstacles of RFID tagging at the unit and case level including current Wal*Mart and Department of Defense requirements.
Assisted in the technical evaluation of mobile hands-free, eyes-free system for manual unit picking based on a device with speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities. Both speaker-dependent and speaker-independent systems were considered.
A new print-and-apply labeling system was installed as part of the capabilities for a full-case only facility. Pallets of cartons would be delivered to a conveyor throw-on area where the cartons would be scanned and a shipping label would be automatically applied. Labeled cartons would be automatically conveyed to the appropriate dock door for loading. Main designer of the WMS interface to the system and the contact point for the third-party developer constructing the software for the print-and-apply scanner.
Worked with Gap's electronic commerce team to evaluate a new data transport system to replace the “EDI via FTP” solution for internal communications between Gap's headquarters applications (mainframe) and WMS applications (Unix). Reviewed various products from six vendors before selecting IBM's MQSeries and performed the Unix-based portion of a proof-of-concept pilot.
Developed the suite of utilities and libraries to insulate applications on HP-UX, Solaris, or WindowsNT from direct interaction with MQSeries. With only minor changes, these applications are still in use in 17 DCs after eight years.
Maintained internal departmental web site using HTML, CSS, and CGI (Perl with HTML::Template and CGI modules). Posted monthly dashboard results from the Supply Chain IT and Transportation departments. Trained an Administrative Assistant in the business-focused engineering services group on how to publish their monthly project status reports and dashboard to this web site.
Perl scripts to collect data from all DC-to-HQ transactions and send copies in real-time via TCP to a Java-based server to facilitate functional and performance testing. These scripts were required to have no impact to production processing and yet be delivered to the test system at an equivalent rate.
Determine the adjustments to security rights and policies required to install and use the suite of Java development tools for a new project. (WebSphere Studio Application Developer, XMLspy, PVCS Dimensions)
Affinity Group, Inc. Englewood, CO Consultant August 2005–Present
Conversion of HP-UX Korn shell scripts to Perl in anticipation of a migration to an MS-Windows platform in 2006.
Triplefin, LLC Blue Ash, OH Information Systems Consultant June 2005–August 2005
Implement solutions using Java and various utilities to support order management and fulfillment services provided by Triplefin to its clients. Environment was mixed Linux and Windows platforms with MS-SQL and Oracle databases. A warehouse and distribution management system from Tecsys was integrated with a proprietary, in-house application supporting web-based B2B and B2C order fulfillment.
Achievements:
Gap Inc. Erlanger, KY Senior IT Team Leader 1996–2005
The Northern Kentucky branch of the Supply Chain IT department managing the application systems used in Gap Inc's distribution centers and centralized transportation management.
Led a Technical Architecture Team (2002–2005) consisting of members drawn from across the various application-focused areas. This team set the strategic vision for the technical infrastructure across all projects and systems including the relationships between internal and vendor-supported applications.
Led the Business Solutions Services team (2000–2002) within Supply Chain IT consisting of eight Analysts. Responsible for consulting on business processes and system enhancement issues for distribution and transportation systems. Produced functional designs for system enhancements arising from projects, new material handling equipment, and prioritized requests from distribution center personnel.
IBM User Centered Design for MQSeries 5.1 (1998) — Invited by IBM to participate in the UCD session held at their development headquarters at Hursley Park in the UK.
Participated in a series of organizational transformation discussions at Gap's IT headquarters in San Bruno, CA (1996–1997). Represented a non-management perspective of the team in Northern Kentucky to the group of about thirty including the CIO and selected VPs, Directors, and Managers. Continued to work with RGTI toward the delivery of a new WMS package including the supervision of Gap-retained contract programmers.
Metro Information Services, Inc. Florence, KY Information Systems Consultant 1995–1996
Assigned to Gap Inc. to implement a pilot WMS for use in training Gap distribution employees in “CD Flow” processing. Gap was planning the launch of a third-party WMS in a new 300,000 sq.ft. facility devoted to full-case processing. Cases were received pre-allocated to stores and would be palletized for shipment prior to putaway into storage. Receipts from several vendors would be processed over several days or weeks and released for delivery together in accordance with Gap's marketing strategy. Led the Unix development team in the enhancement of the CD Flow WMS to prepare it for installation when the third-party system was not delivered on time. Provided significant support for the facility during startup and into the post-implementation period.
Achievements:
American Computer Technology, Inc. Norwood, OH Software Engineer 1992–1995
Responsible for the enhancement, maintenance, and technical support of a third-tier warehouse management system. The system included full financial (A/P, A/R, GL, Payroll), inventory, purchasing, sales, manufacturing (bill-of-materials and job costing), and reporting modules. Assisted with pre-sale support, requirement analysis, functional designs, and implementation. Expert for system level issues and both customer and in-house technical support.
Plaskolite, Inc. Columbus, OH Manager of Information Services 1990–1991
Led a team of four developer/analysts and two operators for a plastics manufacturer and distributor in Columbus, OH. Oversaw and facilitated the implementation of a real-time inventory control system. Hired two additional analysts to focus on the new system.
Annual sales of $50 million. Controlled the departmental budget of $600,000.
Achievements:
Raytheon, Inc. Sudbury, MA Member of Technical Staff June 1987–June 1989
Part of a three-person team responsible for the detailed design; implementation; unit, system, and acceptance testing; configuration; and documentation of an air traffic control subsystem. Helped to define the internal standards for using a CASE tool to capture and document the detailed design of a weather radar project.
Languages and Applications: Java (3 yrs), Perl (8 yrs), C (expert; 20 yrs), MQSeries (MQI, 4 yrs; Administration 3 yrs), Bourne/Korn/POSIX Shell scripting (expert), Emacs-Lisp (18 yrs), SQL (Oracle, Sybase; 9 yrs), JDBC (1 yr), CLU (OO predecessor of Ada and others), JSP (novice), Ruby (novice).
Operating Systems: Unix (HP/UX, Linux, Cygwin, AIX, Solaris, SCO) (expert), Windows.
General: Debugging, Testing, Protocol Troubleshooting, Design, Desktop Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project).
Miscellaneous: Editting tools (Emacs, vi, awk, sed), Source Code Management (CVS, RCS, SCCS, PVCS Dimensions, PVCS Version Manager), Build Tools (Ant, Make), Web (HTML, CSS, CGI, JavaScript).
Attended: No Fluff Just Stuff – Southern Ohio Java Software Symposium (2004, 2005); RFID Journal Live! (2004, Chicago); Web Site Development and Design (2002, CompuMaster); Distribution/Computer Expo (2001, Chicago); ScanTech (1999, Chicago); ID Expo (1991); CUBE (Unisys users) (1990, Nashville).
Classroom: Understanding Sexual Harrassment (2004, Logistics Division, Gap Inc.); Java Server Pages (2003, ITCourseware); Java Servlets (2003, ITCourseware); Java Programming (2003, ITCourseware); Identifying and Confirming User requirements (2001, Learning Tree); Consulting Skills for the Information Processing Professional (2000, Ouellette & Associates); Strengthening the IT / Client Relationship (2000, Ouellette & Associates); Active Communicating (1999); Project Risk Management (1998, Learning Tree); MQSeries Application Programming (1997, Level 8 Systems); Introduction to SQL and PL/SQL (1996, Oracle); Software Unit Test Workshop (1989, AT&T Bell Labs); Unix Internals I: Files and Processes (1989, Northeastern University); Radar Technology (1988, Raytheon).
Online: Scalability and the Real Time Information Network (2002, SeeBeyond); CSS Level 2 (2002, WestCiv.com); CSS Level 1 (2002, WestCiv.com); HTML & XHTML (2002, WestCiv.com).
Gap's Learning to Lead and Manage series, 2001: Leadership and Management, Gap Style; Communicating With and Developing Others; Conducting Effective Performance Reviews; Delegating Successfully; Leading Your Team; Facilitating Change; Helping Others Adapt to Change; Partnering Internally.
A hands-on meeting to explore agile development methods and the practices of eXtreme Programming in particular.
Lakeview Estates is a 47 house development in Deerfield Township, Ohio.
Editor of the club newsletter begining in February, 2005.
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Last modified 29 December 2005.