The organization had already launched its first generation of products - an Aqueous Hybrid Ion battery, plus a corresponding Battery Monitoring System to optimize battery performance - so the first step was to learn more about the existing product teams and processes.

Never afraid to get our hands dirty, we participated in research & development battery builds and spent many days at the manufacturing facilities. While we were officially part of the Product and System Engineering group, we reported directly to the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and therefore interfaced with all aspects of the business - Manufacturing, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, etc.

Spending time with and learning from the Engineers, Researchers, Technicians, and Executive Team allowed us to identify and implement process and communications improvements such as:

• Updating the product development process to reflect changes made since the early days of the company. This included clarifying terminology used across the organization, tightening up requirements for moving between product development phases (Research & Development, Alpha, Beta, Pre-Production, etc.), and identifying process bottlenecks such as supplier lead times and analysis of test data.

• Leading and streamlining the product compliance efforts necessary to achieve UL, CE, and FCC compliance. We developed simple checklists, schedule templates, and test plans that guided the products through multiple successful certifications.

• Leading multiple cross-functional (Manufacturing, Product Engineering, Supply Chain, etc.) product part cost down efforts, resulting in a lower per unit product cost.

• Facilitating weekly product portfolio status updates, challenges, and action items with the entire Operations department, leading to earlier identification of product development issues and plans to address each issue.