Manufacturing Expert Witnesses in Tennessee

This expert is a registered professional mechanical engineer with extensive hands-on experience in thermodynamics and testing. He earned his Masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has held a number of engineering positions and is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering focusing on thermodynamics at a technical university in the Atlanta area. Primary activities have focused on basic and applied research in the areas of constitutive model development and processing, mechanical property characterization, and structural testing & analysis for advanced materials including high performance and ultra-lightweight polymers, polymeric composites, and metals. Specifically, areas of expertise include formulating new constitutive relationships and associated experimentally-based methodologies for characterizing the time, rate, environmental, and temperature dependent mechanical response of materials; the development of laboratory testing techniques and instrumentation for investigating and determining structural and material behavior, low velocity impact effects, and related phenomenological events in composites; and the development of analytical and numerical methods for characterizing and modeling the environmental degradation, long-term durability, and damage tolerance of polymer matrix composites and MEMS structures. Current topics include experimental mechanics, MEMS, structural analysis and design, rheology, thermochemical analysis, fatigue life assessment and prediction, micromechanics and long term durability.

This expert earned his BBA from Marshall University in West Virginia before beginning his career as a buyer at Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Thereafter, he moved to Mercedes-Benz working as an assistant manager of purchasing. He then held leadership positions in the purchasing departments of Hyundai Motor America, Eisenmann Corporation, Akebono Brake Corporation, and Robert Bosch GmbH. A certified purchasing manager (CPM), he currently serves as the director of procurement for a German industrial services firm while operating an independent automotive purchasing and procurement consultancy.

This expert has published extensively in magazines, in-house journals, and textbooks. He is a participating member of numerous societies. He has over 40 years personal experience in management, consulting and expert services in the fields of design, manufacturing, testing of hydraulic, pneumatic and electro-mechanical lifting and load bearing machines, equipment and devices: industry experience including automotive, construction, industrial, material handling, warehousing and transportation: forensic engineering including product liability, accident investigation, reconstruction and expert testimony: incidents involving industrial trucks, aerial work platforms, forklifts, telehandlers, tuggers, pallet jacks, automatic storage and retrieval systems, dock boards, dock levelers, trailer restraints, trailer jacks, racks, conveyors, overhead bridge cranes, trucks, shop cranes, scissors lifts, shop cranes, automatic doors and lift gates: heavy equipment involving telehandlers, powered industrial trucks, automatic storage and retrieval systems, gantry cranes, truck cranes, tower cranes, cranes with hydraulic booms, cranes with lattice booms, grapple and magnet equipped excavators, and side boom cranes: conformity issues involving environmental, health and safety, warnings, instructions, training conformity with recognized standards, codes, industry custom and practice and government regulations.

This expert has more than 32 years of experience in the asphalt roofing manufacturing industry. He is a certified Lean Trainer and a certified Six Sigma Champion. While at Owens Corning, he spent 20 years as a plant manager for 3 separate asphalt roofing facilities, 8 years as a production manager, and 5 years in various supervisory and support roles. He also served on a product development and design team that specialized in high wind and impact resistant shingles. While at Owens Corning, this expert was a six sigma champion and continuously worked on process standardization in various shingle plants. He has a great deal of experience working with raw material suppliers to reduce variation in their product/process in order to achieve finished product consistency and performance, and was very involved with process monitoring design to assure finished product specification compliance.