Our Team

Jason Merschat APO Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt

Jason Merschat

President and Principal Consultant

Jason Merschat is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and an accredited Lean Six Sigma trainer by the IASSC® and the SSC®. He also holds a BS in Electro-mechanical Engineering from Penn State University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. Jason is also a Project Management Professional – PMP accredited by the Project Management Institute® and can instruct on the Project Management Body of Knowledge – PMBOK®. Jason is also a Professional Scrum Master (PSM1) accredited by Scrum.org, the founders of the methodology and authors of the Scrum body of knowledge. Jason is a master facilitator and trainer having led and facilitated hundreds of training classes and kaizen events. Jason’s industry experience is in highly regulated industries with tight process tolerances and zero tolerance for defect escapes i.e. aerospace & defense, nuclear, metals, super-precision machining and grinding, electronics, and oil & gas.

Jason is a member of the SME, ASQ, IASSC, SSC, PMI, and AIST. Jason serves on two committees for the AIST – Maintenance and Reliability, and Material Handling and Transportation.

Bob Bailey APO Consultant

Bob Bailey

Lean Six Sigma Consultant

Bob is an experienced consultant and for the past 25 years has actively applied the technologies of Lean/Six Sigma, Strategy Alignment & Deployment, and Cultural Transformation leading to measureable business results and increased client competitiveness. He has consulted in numerous industries including Department of the Air Force with emphasis on remanufacturing and sustainment of AF weapon systems.

Prior to entering the consulting field, Bob worked for Hewlett-Packard Company in Colorado for 15 years and held a wide range of challenging positions in R&D, Manufacturing and Quality.

Bob served as an Air Force Captain. While stationed at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, he conducted research on the affects of neutron damage on bi-polar semiconductors and subsequent circumvention techniques.

Bob received his BEE from the University of Detroit, and MSEE from Colorado State University. He is a member of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.

He has published numerous papers covering topics on application of Lean techniques in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing environments, stress testing as a product development tool, and production line measurements.

Current areas of interest and study are: simulation modeling, scenario planning, and complex adaptive systems.

Rob Riazzi

Consultant and Trainer
Rob Riazzi is an experienced Project Manager and Engineer having managed and engineered complex and successful projects for Carnegie Robotics LLC, Carnegie Mellon University – National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), Impact Technologies, LLC . Rob currently brings his talent to manage projects for APO and train professionals in project management. Rob is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Rob holds a M.S. Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Skip Quinlivan

Lean/TPS Expert

Skip Quinlivan is a Lean Sensei with over 35 years of direct kaizen experience. His “every day” is a kaizen event improving the processes of companies of all shapes and sizes. Skip has led events at 40 different Danaher plants as well as more than 200 additional facilities, leading over 1400 Kaizen efforts to date. Skip received extensive Kaizen training under the direction of Dr. Shigeo Shingo at Utica Tool from 1982 – 1987. He received additional Kaizen training from Shingijutsu’s Masters, Chihiro Nakao from 1985 – 1992. While at Danaher and Copeland he developed a corporate SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) training program. He has also developed and implemented TPM and Machine Lubrication programs at several plant sites.Skip Quinlivan attended Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York and Orangeburg Community College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He has 36 years of experience as an engineer as well as being a tool and die designer at Utica Tool and Danaher Tool Group.

Skip is affiliated with North Carolina State University, The University of Dayton, Saint Vincent College, The University of Alabama in Huntsville and Haywood Vocation Opportunities.

Dan Cannon

Quality Management Systems Expert
Dan Cannon is an expert in Quality Management Systems and Strategy Execution. Dan has over 15 years’ experience working with two industry leading Certification Bodies to ensure he can provide the most current information on standards and their interpretation. NASA, Boeing, Caterpillar, Dell EMC and Raytheon are among the over 300 management systems that he has assessed or developed as an auditor, quality manager, consultant or leader. Dan is a Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard Certified Practitioner helping organizations align strategy and business performance measures to ensure results. He is on the leading edge of changes and new requirement development for standards including ISO 9001, AS9100, ISO/IEC 17025, and 10CFR50 Appendix B. Dan specializes in integrating internal audits, risk management, and performance measures, along with traditional quality requirements, in a quality system approach that is organic to the way companies manage their business. Dan possesses an B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire.
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