Frank Wagner
Biography
Frank Wagner is a global operations leader who creates highly effective processes, metrics, and teams to ensure outstanding business results. A lean expert in manufacturing and supply chain, he consistently delivers quality and productivity while establishing a strong followership through his positive and trustworthy leadership. He is an authentic and accessible communicator who connects with a variety of audiences, working to understand and actively address the true needs of the business and its employees.
As Senior Vice President of North America Operations for Electrolux until early 2019, Frank helped drive a 34% improvement in product quality and more than doubled revenue growth in the residential development market. He was asked by the CEO to lead the evaluation and integration planning for a proposed acquisition of GE Appliances but after the deal did not progress, he quickly moved on to help generate many of the positive results the company had hoped to achieve. He partnered with outside firms to build a final mile delivery process covering 98% of the U.S. population within a two-year period, restructured leadership, enhanced the IT structure, and implemented more user-friendly, customer-facing software.
From 2010–2015, Frank served as Electrolux’s first Senior Vice President of Global Manufacturing Operations. Based in Stockholm Sweden, he created a reliable and consistent operations structure in 35 plants across 13 countries to optimize organizational design, management processes, and metrics. He then leveraged this new structure to make significant improvements in key areas, including achieving the company’s highest customer quality level of 95% and reducing manufacturing energy per product by 47%. During this time, he navigated many cultural differences to establish an inclusive worldwide communication process that aligned all units toward business objectives.
Frank transformed Electrolux’s manufacturing operations as Vice President of North America Operations from 2003–2010 through creating a formalized metrics system and improving plant safety by a factor of 10. He played a key role in identifying and building Electrolux’s first appliance manufacturing site in Mexico, where he implemented a successful, lean-based infrastructure that was replicated in other global locations. This process included significant interaction with the Mexican government on a variety of issues from land acquisition to employee relations.
Earlier in his career, Frank served as Vice President of Global Operations for Garrett Turbochargers, a subsidiary of Honeywell (Allied Signal). Based in Paris, France, he instituted lean manufacturing in 15 sites around the world to drive cost savings and engaged the entire workforce in a team structure to help solve problems and enhance results. He began his career at IBM, where he set the foundation of his encouraging and engaging management style that he considers critical to his success.
Frank holds an M.B.A. from Duke University and a Master’s and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University. He lives in the Charlotte area and has two adult children.
Frank is a speaker at the upcoming IfM Briefing: devleoping industrial capabilities, 23 September 2019, IfM, Cambridge.
