THIRTY UNDER THIRTY PROFILES
Katelyn Reno McCutcheon Age: 27 Ford Motor Company Lima, OH
UNDER THIRTY K
atelyn Reno McCutcheon, just four years on the job at Dearborn, MI-based Ford Motor Co., is dealing with one of its most important products, the new aluminum F-150 pickup. McCutcheon works at Ford’s Lima, OH, engine plant. The factory produces a new 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine for the F-150, a major source of profit for the automaker.
“One of the nice things about my job is I haven’t had two days that were alike,” she said. “My group assigns me and a few other folks to figure out the process to build the engine.”
For example, one of her responsibilities is to ensure stations where manual work occurs are “safe and ergonomic.” She’s also been involved in efforts to increase output of the assembly line. Job One was in July 2014 and the ramp up of production began in March 2015. “We’re in the phase where we haven’t quite made all the engines we’re supposed to yet,” she said in an April interview. “We try to deep dive issues we’ve had on the floor that have prevented us from meeting our numbers.”
“One of the things I think has made me appreciate
my job is the level of confidence the company had in me right off the bat,” she said. “I’ve really appreciated being on such a high-profile program. It makes me feel important. I think that helps me overachieve in my position. They don’t do that for everybody.”
McCutcheon comes from a “Ford family.” An uncle, George Reno, works at the company’s product devel- opment operation.
“We always had Ford cars,” she said. “To me, it was always idealized as a great car company.” Her father, Kevin McCutcheon, also worked for automotive suppliers. McCutcheon graduated from University of Detroit
“I’ve really appreciated being on such a high-profile program. It makes me feel important. I think that helps me overachieve in my position.”
Mercy as the valedictorian of the class of 2010 with bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and civil engineering. Her grade point average was 3.99 of a possible 4.0. In 2011, she graduated from the same school with a master’s degree in mechanical engineer- ing. Her GPA was 4.0. During school, she was a renewable energy intern at DTE Energy. In the summer of 2011, she joined Ford. The 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine, along with the truck’s aluminum body, is part of Ford’s plans to boost fuel efficiency of the F-150. Ford and other automakers are under regulatory pressure to improve mileage and reduce emissions. Ford, in nominating McCutcheon for 30 Under 30, said the engineer devised ways to reduce the space and equipment needed to install cylinder head assem- blies. There was a $200,000 capital cost savings and an improvement in uptime compared with the previous production process.
She has also organized teardown of finished engines for quality defects. McCutcheon “has organized this once costly and inefficient process into a well-document- ed operation that recovers over $1500 of components per engine,” the company said in its nominating letter. “One of the things I think is important is curiosity,” McCutcheon said. “Engineering is finding creative solu- tions to new problems. Curiosity is the most important part of that.”
July 2015 |
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