Engineer Manager

Curtis E. Taft

*** ********* ***** ? Madison, MS 39110 ? Phone: 601-***-**** ?

abmr88@r.postjobfree.com

Summary

Passionate and dedicated employee with 20+ years of increasingly

responsible steel mill operations experience in hot rolling and cold

rolling of sheet and plate including pickling, slitting, galvanizing,

galvanneal, galvalume, temper rolling, coil coating and bar products.

Enjoys the opportunities associated with mentoring employees and assisting

individuals in realizing greater achievements through teamwork, focus and

commitment to continuous improvement.

Open and honest individual who values integrity and a good work ethic based

on safety, quality, cost management, productivity and profitability.

Professional Experience

Nucor Steel - Jackson, ms

Merchant and Rebar Mill

Plant Metallurgist, Feb 2008 to Present

Responsibilities include managing and directing all Quality department

activities involved in the successful operation of a 400,000 ton/year bar

mill and scrap recycling operation consisting of the production of angles,

bars, flats, rebar, strip, squares and rounds products. The team is made

up of 12 teammates covering the melt shop/recycling and rolling mill

operations.

Selected Accomplishments:

Successfully implemented a quality management system that was certified to

the ISO9001-2008 standard requirements in May 2009.

Successfully designed and implemented a melt shop model-based dynamic

chemistry package for modeling chemistry additives to heats. This resulted

in a 50% decrease in heat diversions due to off-heats in the melt shop with

no downgrades at the rolling mill from poor mechanicals.

Successfully passed federal requirements for compliance to the AASHTO

federal highway requirements for NTPEP testing of DOT related jobs. Once

recognized by this agency as being complaint to a third party audit,

individual state DOT audits are no longer required and can be waived.

Worked with a small team to develop and install an in-house software

package that would eliminate the paper reporting of all characteristic data

that the tensile lab measures. This data is now stored electronically and

is fully visible by all operations personnel in the mill. This has led to

more transparency but has also resulted in a readily retrievable system of

mill process records that can easily be accessed during customer calls or

complaint investigations.

Consolidated Systems Inc - Columbia, SC

Coil coating, metal deck and building components company

Quality Director, Jan 2006 to Feb 2008

Responsibilities included managing the Quality department activities

involved in the successful operation of a 450,000 ton/year operation

including locations in Columbia, SC, Memphis, TN, Terrell, TX and Phoenix,

AZ.

Selected Accomplishments:

Converted the Memphis, TN paint line from a two-pass paint system to a one-

pass paint system for all business associated with Wal-mart. This resulted

in savings of approximately $630k/year based on 2005 business levels.

Determined all cold roll supplier thickness capabilities so that purchase

orders could be uniquely designed to match mill capabilities for thickness

variation and profile control. This was a very nice project that resulted

in yield improvements of about 1-2% across 11 suppliers. Ordering

practices were then revised to include order points based on mill

capability.

Launched a new dry-film lube product line for the company targeted at the

automotive market. Estimated sales volume from this product was estimated

to be $250k/year in the first year and $750k/year in the second year.

Worthington Steel - Delta, OH

Steel Service Center

Plant Superintendent - Galvanizing, Oct 2002 to Dec 2005

Quality Manager, Oct 1999 to Oct 2002

Advanced through the Quality Manager function where I was responsible for

all Quality department activities involved in the successful operation of a

pickling, slitting and galvanizing operation with shipments to various OEM,

construction and automotive locations such as Ford, Chrysler and GM.

I was then promoted to Operations Manager responsible for the galvanizing

operation consisting of 4 teams of 6 people responsible for safely

producing 450,000 tons/year of galvanize and galvanneal product. Had

complete oversight for all activities involved in successfully

accomplishing team goals including safe production, staffing, employee

development, production scheduling, outage maintenance planning, capital

expenditures, continuous improvement, budget, merit increases and

promotions and employee performance reviews.

Selected Accomplishments:

Managed the successful start-up of a $1.5 million roll-coater project used

in securing a sizable contract order with Butler Manufacturing without any

downtime for construction.

Optimized production of all cold roll products produced on the galvanizing

line and increased production by 8% through furnace model changes designed

specifically for cold roll product.

Replaced segmented roll brushes in the cleaner section with full-faced

brushes resulting in the elimination of brush segment line defects on the

finished coated product. In addition, the changes decreased brush costs

due to a better quality brush that was lower in price than the old brushes.

Installed AX gas generators as back-up capability for supplying atmosphere

gas to the reheat furnace in the event of a loss of liquid hydrogen supply.

AX gas generators are capable of converting anhydrous ammonia to

hydrogen/nitrogen gas that is typically used in galvanizing operations.

Successfully managed the installation of start-up of galvanneal production

at the facility. Galvanneal is primarily used in automotive applications

and was targeted for Chrysler business.

Directly responsible for the implementation of ISO9000, QS14000 and TS16949

management system certification at the facility.

ARMCO - Dover, OH

Carbon and Stainless Steel Mill

Quality Manager, May 1997 to Sep 1999

Responsible for all Quality related activities involved in the successful

operation of a 325,000 tons/year hot dip galvanize operation at the Dover

Works - galvanized sheet division.

Selected Accomplishments:

Directly responsible for coordinating the reduction of monthly field claims

from 5% to 2% of shipped product. This resulted in a reduction of field

claims of approximately $450k/month.

Developed procedures and policies necessary to initiate the process of

supplying all necessary substrate requirements and suppliers. ARMCO -

Mansfield, our previous supplier, discontinued the production of carbon

steel to concentrate strictly on stainless steel.

Integral part of an ad-hoc committee that was formed in an effort to take

out $1 million/month of cost from the operation.

IPSCO Steel Inc - Muscatine, IA

Coil and Plate Steel Mill

Rolling and Finishing Metallurgist, Oct 1996 to May 1997

Responsible for all Quality related activities involved in the rolling and

finishing operation of a start-up coil and plate.

Selected Accomplishments:

Developed all quality practices necessary for the successful start-up of

the coil and plate finishing operation including coiled plate, discrete

plate, plate finishing and coil slitting.

Assisted in the layout, set-up and staffing of the mechanical testing

equipment laboratory.

U. S. Steel - Fairfield, AL

Sheet and Pipe Steel Mill

Quality Assurance Process & Product Engineer, Feb 1988 to Oct 1996

Advanced my way through increasingly responsible positions within the

Fairfield operation including Hot Strip Quality Engineer (5 years),

Specifications Engineer (2 years) and Galvanize Product Engineer (1 year)

where I was directly responsible for all order management, quality training

and process development/improvements from a quality perspective.

Selected Accomplishments:

Developed the use of high speed tools steel rolls in the hot strip mill

which resulted in a 50% wear improvement without any surface degradation on

the strip. This also resulted in decreased roll cost due to extended roll

life.

Worked with the Operations team to develop production of light gauge hot

roll for purlin applications. This product developed into a 150k ton/year

market for our plant and involved developing the practices necessary to

successfully produce 0.053" min X 54, HSLA hot roll product.

Implemented run-out table laminar flow cooling water practices at the hot

strip mill that resulted in optimized pickleability rates at the pickle

line. Results of the study resulted in improved pickle line speeds without

negative surface quality effects.

Directly involved in the development of cold rolled motor lamination steel

practices for hot rolling/cold rolling which resulted in optimized

electrical characteristics in the final product used for making motors.

Quality liaison for the construction and start-up of the dual

galvanize/galvanneal line that was built at our plant. Responsible for

ordering all lab equipment and test equipment for the successful start-up

of that facility.

Galvanize Product Engineer responsible for all customer interactions

between Sales and Operations and order routing of all galvanize orders.

Directly responsible for operating a hydrogen generating plant that was

used for producing atmosphere gas in the annealing furnaces for atmosphere

protection throughout the facility. The plant was capable of producing

30,000 cfh of high purity hydrogen gas produced from methane.

Was part of a three person team responsible for combustion setting/tuning

of all annealing operations throughout the Fairfield operation including

galvanizing, box annealing and continuous annealing.

Education

University of ALabama at birmingham - Birmingham, AL

Bachelor of Science - May 1987

Major: Materials Engineering / Worked as a Co-Op student at Southern

Company - Alabama Power - Plant Gorgas

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