Jo-An Weddle has over 20 years both as a small business owner and service provider for small businesses. Together with the business, she work= s to reduce cost and improve the company's competitive advantage. As part of the Enterprise Excellence effort, Jo-An has worked w= ith dozens of local manufacturers to transform their companies through the "Journey to Excellence". These companies have achieved some notab= le improvements. They include: · Reduced cos= t of goods sold by 42 percent, · Reduced work-in-process inventories from $89,000 to $11,000 per month, · Improved first run yield 17 percent · Increased sales 12 fold.
Jo-An's specialties include strategic planning, development and facilitation of self-directed work team= s, linking measurement and reward systems to critical success factors, process redesign, quality system design and implementation, lean manufacturing and change management.
Jo-An has been associated with the American Society for Quality since 1993 and has acted as facilities liaison with the Fort Worth Section, hosting the meetings at the Automation & Robotics Research Institute since that time.
Jo-An has been a standing member of the Garland Perform= ance Excellence Council since 1998, working with local companies to bring a local quality award program modeled on the Texas Award for Performance Excellence= .
In 1996, Jo-An received the prestigious "Model of Excellence Award" from the U. S. Congress for helping small companies = get "Small Business Innovative Research" grants.
In 1998, Jo-An became a Cert=
ified
Texas Quality Award Examiner and was recognized by the
Jo-An earned a Master of Business Administration from t= he University of Texas at Arlington and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Scie= nce from Texas A & M University at Commerce.