Otto Funke

Otto Funke is an Advisory Engineer at IBM who has been involved with the lean transformation at IBM’s 200mm semiconductor manufacturing facility near Burlington, VT since it began in the early 2000’s. In his current role, Otto is an internal lean coach with emphasis on structured problem solving, standard work for leaders, visual controls and daily accountability processes. The IBM team has been applying lean methods to transform their semiconductor factory from a captive supplier to IBM to a specialty foundry serving clients in the consumer electronics, power management, and secure foundry industries. Along their journey, they have sampled most of the usual lean techniques, starting with Value Stream Mapping and 5S, and advancing into the broader topics of Strategy Deployment, Problem Solving, and Standard work. In 2005, the organization was struggling to find an effective approach to develop standard work on complex tasks across multiple shifts. Otto was part of the IBM team which began learning about the Job Instruction and other TWI programs as the methodology to support the implementation of standard work. The result has been a large-scale implementation of TWI programs throughout the semiconductor fabricator, test floor, and in many support operations such as equipment maintenance, manufacturing engineering, supply chain, and management. Otto holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University and a MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Lehigh University.