Rhodes Hileman

cell: 206 240 2234 . voicemsg: 206 760 8619 . email: rhodes@smsys.com
web: www.smsys.com . resumes: www.smsys.com/resumes/

Overview

• Distinguished and diverse background with emphasis on startup team development, engineering services, operations and manufacturing management, and design team support.
• Team-oriented, insightful management professional with broad technical knowledge, highly developed organizational talents, and collaborative leadership style.
• Inventive designer with proven skills in the design of printed circuit assemblies, mechanical devices, databases, and operations procedures.
• Articulate communicator with demonstrated ability in technical writing, editing, and tutoring, as well as facilitation of working meetings for engineers.

Professional Experience

B. E. MEYERS & CO. - Redmond, WA - 2003-present
Engineering Services Manager

Created engineering infrastructure to bring this company from startup mode (staff of 30) to a disciplined ISO9001 engineering and manufacturing organization (staff of 130) with sales approaching $100M. Designed part naming/numbering conventions, documentation and library management practices, and an SQL database to control parts, BOMs, and product design information. Brought over two dozen electronic designs from schematic through PCB design to manufacturing release. Installed the DX/PADS suite with DX Databook to read parts from SQL through ODBC. Presenter at Mentor Graphics User2User Conference, San Jose, March 2007, showing a demonstration of this work. See www.smsys.com/pub/eedb.pdf

SMALL SYSTEMS Co. - Berkeley - 1997-2002
Designer/Producer/Owner

Providing PCB design, engineering services, documentation, and management services to an international list of clients.

ULTRACAD DESIGN Inc. - Bellevue - 1998
PCB Designer

UltraCAD Design is a PCB design house offering fast turn, high density designs with attention to high performance signal integrity. Designed PCBs to 18 layers and documented their post-production process.

GIGAOPERATIONS Corp. - Berkeley - 1991-1997
Director of Operations, Director of Manufacturing

This team produced advanced high speed parallel processing hardware and software using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as reconfigurable computing engines. Recognized as the pioneering development platform for reconfigurable computing.

• Built the infrastructure for this company from scratch. Managed operations, inventory, engineering documentation, and manufacturing. Brought two generations of design from concept to completion, manufacture, and market.
• Designed printed circuit boards for both product lines.
• Co-editor for software documentation of the first product line, the "G200".
• Member of the founding team.

ARRAY TECHNOLOGIES Inc. - Oakland - 1986-91
Dir. of Operations, Dir. of Engineering, Mfg. Engineer.

This team developed a high fidelity color image scanner for both PC and Mac platforms. The camera uses piezoelectric transducers to microposition an inexpensive 2D color image sensor. Built this company's infrastructure from scratch, helped develop the design team, and produced some of the designs.

• Responsible for building this company in its first year, on a budget of $650K, growing the staff from 6 to 14, and providing an engineering development environment for the camera. Brought two generations of design from concept to market.
• Directed the engineering effort, while, as manufacturing engineer, produced the PCB designs for the first camera.
• For the second version of the camera, produced a tightly integrated PCB and mechanical design, including a piezo-driven microstage.
• Member of the founding team.

GENIGRAPHICS GP Inc. - Berkeley - 1984-1986
Engineering Operations Manager, Project Manager

Using no exotic components, this group created an advanced (for the time) hierarchical object-based graphic arts system featuring 3 pipelined 68020 CPU cards, a family of 26 PCBs, and "paint" software providing resolution independent output to all media.

• Managed engineering operations for the Berkeley development group from start-up (a staff of 5) through alpha-testing (a staff of 35 employees and a half dozen engineering consultants). Responsible for a $2.2MM budget. Produced and maintained all development and target computer systems, as well as administrative computers, while managing operations at this division.
• Initially, supplied all engineering services: project planning, purchasing, technical support, documentation, and liaison for contractors. Subsequently hired/supervised engineering services staff of 12.

With two partners, produced a multi-tasking Z80-based computer which provided A/D conversion, data storage, and device control for a novel gas chromatograph, used for cardio-pulmonary diagnosis and anaesthesia monitoring.

• Built the company, and managed the design project. Completed on time (11 weeks) and within budget.
• Built the software development computer, purchased components for the target computer, built the prototype, and documented the system.

Technical Summary:

CAD tools for electronic, PCB, mechanical, and architectural design. Enterprise database design, MRP systems design, and components purchasing. 'Timeline' project management software. Computer systems integration, network installation, and systems administration. WinNT4, OS/2, Unix, DOS. Internet site design. Languages: Assembly, Bash, Perl, Java, Cisco. Electronic fabrication, assembly, and testing. Experience in heavy industry. See list for software knowledge. See Industrial Design & Production resume for broadest view.

Education:

Published Material:

Choosing a Display Card for OS/2 and Linux, Extended Attributes, the magazine of the OS/2 community, February 1999, Phoenix, AZ.
Forests are a Community, Forest Trust Quarterly Report, October 1999, Santa Fe, NM.
Pulling Designs into an Enterprise Database, Mentor Graphics User2User Conference, March 13, 2007, San Jose, CA.
"Design Methods: seeds of human futures; by J. C. Jones", an introductory lecture for digital designers, talk given to Company of Friends, Seattle, 1998.

Prior to 1983:

Objective:

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Last Rev: 10/22/2007