*Q3 2021 Employee Recognition Award Recipient

As broad-based manufacturing and operations professional, Brad Staats has over 30 years of experience contributing to performance improvements that can be measured by increased productivity, efficiency, quality, throughput, revenues, and profitability. His experience includes retail management, operations management, executive management and consulting for large and small firms in steel, musical instruments, heavy equipment, apparel, furniture, construction materials and other industries. He has experience with turnarounds and startups as well as improvements at well-established companies with revenues ranging from millions to billions of dollars. Brad has experience in ERP, Supply Chain/Materials Management, Lean Manufacturing, Project Management and integrating business and process systems in highly automated manufacturing environments. Half of his career has been in the steel industry involving systems integration and operations planning, and one third of his career has been in consulting in the areas of business process improvement with a focus on ERP implementations and Lean Manufacturing. At one point, Brad was instrumental in integrating seven steel plants into a single supply chain as part of an overall automotive strategy. The balance of his career includes being the President of one company and General Manager of another, which was a start-up business where they achieved steady state operations with international sales in under three years. Brad earned a BS in Administrative Management from the University of Arkansas and an MBA in Operations Management from DePaul University. Early in his career, he earned the CPIM certification from APICS. He currently serves on the NE Indiana Lean Network advisory board and enjoys playing classical music (percussion) and volunteering at an exotic animal sanctuary.