The Detective: Problem-Solving Expertise in Action

Egbert's role often makes him a "first responder" when issues arise, requiring investigative skills that he's honed over decades to determine whether problems stem from the product itself, testing equipment, or tooling.

"You really do have to do a little detective work," Egbert says. "Am I looking at a product that's bad, or am I looking at a test fixture that's bad? Making that determination sometimes takes a lot of trial and error to rule things out until you can come to a root cause."

This problem-solving approach extends to improving productivity throughout the repair process. Under Egbert's guidance, improvements range from small adjustments to complete restructuring of production lines.

"We've done improvements as small as moving a monitor from one side of a workstation to the other," he explains. "Doesn't seem like a lot, but when that technician is working on his product and needs to see the documentation, turning from side to side sometimes is very challenging. That small thing is an improvement."

The engineer's mission: speed with quality

For airlines, minimizing the time that galley equipment spends in repair is critical. Egbert takes personal responsibility for ensuring rapid turnarounds without compromising quality.

"The speed at which we do repairs is really important," Egbert emphasizes. "The airlines count on us to get things done in a timely manner. It's akin to something that you might have at your house that breaks down. You don't want that out of your house for two months. You want it back as soon as you can get it."

This pressure to deliver rapid repairs while maintaining quality has driven Egbert to continuously refine processes. "The improvements we look at, number one, are throughput. Obviously, we want to do things faster, get more things done during the day," he explains. "We've also tried to improve the way that they put them together, maybe to reduce errors, maybe to give them some fixtures and things that they can do the job a little bit better and not make mistakes."

The collaborative leader

Over his career, Egbert has become a mentor and knowledge resource for newer team members, fostering a collaborative environment that leverages everyone's strengths.

"We have a lot of product knowledge in our group, some people that are brand new and some people that have been here for a lot of years," he notes. "We, as a group, collaborate with one another to help each other out. If there's an issue that maybe someone that's new hasn't experienced before, maybe somebody else on the team has."

This collaborative approach led to one of Egbert's proudest achievements, a project to increase productivity on the beverage maker repair line. "That took a lot of effort by a lot of different groups," he says. "We had people from the production line helping out. We had production supervisors, manufacturing engineers, lots of support staff to understand how the process would work the best."