Harrison Schatz

Industrial Engineer — Kreg Tool Company
Leading the 300 series cobot bin-picking integration — chute system design, project management, and hands-on programming — resulting in the full automation of three employee roles. Managing the VersaCall IoT system across two facilities, conducting costing analyses for new product launches, and mentoring interns. The throughline: I don't stop at identifying what's broken — I stay until the fix is running reliably on its own.

Continuous Improvement Engineer — Rees Associates
Implemented a sensor array on mail-inserting machines that cut gear-related breakdowns by 95% and saved $52k annually. Introduced jaw gauges that increased production output by 14.2%, built an in-house 3D print farm saving $26k in parts costs. I learned here that the best solutions are the ones the floor crew will actually use — elegant on paper means nothing if it sits in a binder.

Industrial Engineering Intern — CIRAS, Iowa State University
Returned to CIRAS for a second stint — simulating production flows and consulting with Iowa manufacturers on floor layout and process optimization. Seeing dozens of different facilities in a short span gave me a useful lens: the same inefficiency shows up everywhere, just wearing a different uniform.

Continuous Improvement Engineering Co-op — Collins Aerospace
Led two Kaizen events targeting production scheduling bottlenecks, achieving 60–100% compliance with daily and weekly schedules. An A3 problem-solving project increased set-up efficiency by 36.8% and run-time efficiency by 10.1% over three months. Kaizen taught me that most waste isn't hiding — it's just that no one's been paid to look at it carefully yet.

Industrial Engineering Intern — CIRAS, Iowa State University
Simulated production flows and consulted with Iowa-based manufacturers on floor layout design and process optimization. First time seeing that the problems were structural, not personal.

Industrial Engineering Co-op — Collins Aerospace
Co-led a Kaizen event to implement an employee idea capture system. Contributed to 13 projects spanning kaizen, 5S, and ergonomic design. Doing 13 projects back-to-back is how you learn which improvement frameworks actually hold up under pressure and which ones just look good in training slides.

Manufacturing Engineering Intern — Danfoss Power Solutions
Designed and programmed a Fanuc robotic arm quality process integrating automation and human interaction. Led an Andon light system installation and an eight-waste reduction project to increase OEE. This is where I got hooked — watching a robot reliably do something a person was doing a hundred times a day, and freeing that person up for something better.

Engineering Intern / Fabrication & Assembly Operator — ChemGrout, Inc.
Summers from high school through college — assembly operator, fabrication operator, and eventually engineering intern. Learning how things are actually made, from the floor up, before I learned how to optimize them.

B.S. Industrial Engineering — Iowa State University