Biographies
*We are still working on gathering all speakers and biographies for the 2023 Leading Reliability Conference.
Dr. Marc Tremblay is an Operating Partner of Arsenal Capital Partners where he is part of the firm’s Industrial Growth leadership team. Arsenal is a New York-based private equity firm with more than $10 billion of capital under management and a current portfolio of twenty-three companies that are market leaders in the sectors in which they participate. Arsenal’s Industrial Growth franchise focuses on investing in high-growth, differentiated companies in various sectors, including industrial technology.
Prior to joining Arsenal in 2022, Marc was the President of Fluke Corporation, a global manufacturer and developer of electronic test tools, sensors, and software, including reliability and condition monitoring solutions. Prior to joining Fluke, he held numerous senior executive positions at leading testing, measurement, sensing, and imaging companies such as Thermo Fisher Scientific, DigitalGlobe, and Z Corporation.
Marc graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has a Ph.D., also in Mechanical Engineering, from Stanford University where his research focused on robotics and sensors. Finally, he received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Milan is the Head of Commissioning for Enel North Americas Engineering and Construction unit. His teams are responsible for startup, commissioning, and early operation for all of Enels new Solar, Wind and Battery Storage projects in the US and Canada. He is a renewable power industry professional with experience ranging from greenfield design through plant operations across numerous technologies and disciplines, including mechanical design, construction & commissioning, failure analysis, and various asset management disciplines. His current work focuses on developing strong systems to drive positive organizational behaviors, and studying how the balance of People, Business Process, and Product Performance is manifested in organizations, and what we can do to manage imbalances when they occur. Milan and his wife Marjanae live in Reno, Nevada where they enjoy the mountains, sports and the outdoors with their two children, Soraya and Marek.
Florian Buder holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Munich, Germany and an MBA from John Molson School of Business (Concordia University), Montreal. He has 14 years of experience in the industrial maintenance and reliability world.
Florian Buder specialized in Reliability Centered Maintenance. Following his work terms in Germany and Australia and completing his thesis at BMW during his graduate studies, Florian Buder joined PRUFTECHNIK AG located in Munich, Germany, as a Service- and Application Engineer in 2005. He conducted customer training, installations, commissioning and executed field machinery services related to PRUFTECHNIK’s products and technology worldwide. In 2008, he was appointed Condition Monitoring Division Manager of PT’s operation in Montreal, Canada where his mandate was to train the sales team, coordinate customer activities and promote the Condition Monitoring product line of PT in Canada.
In 2010, he was appointed Managing Director of the Canadian operation of PT and in 2015 CEO for all North American operations. In 2022 Florian joined the Senior Leadership team at ACOEM as VP of Technical Sales and Engineering. His key mandate is to structure and organize ACOEM in America and improve channel management while driving profits throughout the country.
Florian Buder has a background in competitive sports with soccer and tennis being areas in which he has excelled. He enjoys a lot of other sports such as skiing, bike riding, playing golf and loves spending time with his family and friends.
As our Technical Sales Manager, Mike primarily focuses on supporting the sales team with implementing our technology to new application domains, system integrations, conducting proofs-of-concept, feature prioritization, and gathering customer feedback. He has 10+ years of working in the reliability and maintenance industry with specific experience in machinery alignment, ultrasound, vibration analysis, and diagnostics. Mike has held roles as Field Engineer and Application Engineer. Most recently, Mike was the Technical Service and Support Manager at Fluke Reliability which involved guiding a team to handle inquiries within the country for alignment and vibration devices, software, and application support.
Tim is the Senior Vice President of Sales at RDI Technologies and is devoted to ensuring that customers are represented with solutions that can help solve their most challenging issues. He oversees the sales team and ensures they have the resources they require. Communicates with other departments on behalf of sales to represent the voices of our customers. Identifies and removes any obstacles that might interfere with the success of our customers utilizing RDI’s technology. Tim is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom and a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal. He served nine years of active duty in the United States Navy, primarily as an aviator in the E-2C Hawkeye platform. After ending his military career, he worked as the Managing Director of the Americas for Pruftechnik (later Fluke Reliability) and held various management positions at SKF.
Blair Fraser is a technology evangelist with a natural curiosity to think differently and challenge current thinking. He is VP of Global Business Development for UE Systems and the co-founder and advisor to many companies in the technology space. Blair is a passionate reliability and operational excellence professional with over 20 years of experience in designing, commissioning, maintaining and improving manufacturing equipment and processes for the manufacturing industry. A Certified Reliability Leader (CRL) and Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP), Blair has dedicated his career to combining sound reliability principles and processes with the latest technology to improve asset performance and uptime for customers across the globe.
Jeff is the CEO of RDI Technologies. He thrives on creating innovative products that disrupt industries and help customers see things in a whole new way. He believes that cameras are the sensor of the future.
Jeff’s background is in Applied Optical Physics. Before founding RDI, Jeff held a Research Scientist position at the University of Louisville where he developed and patented a method to measure motion remotely with the use of a video camera. His roles focused on data acquisition, signal processing, software development, and data analysis. In addition to these technical roles, Jeff was responsible for overseeing the commercialization aspect of the grants he was involved in.
Since starting RDI, he has created and patented multiple methods for using camera technology to measure and visualize motion that is integral to RDI’s products. In addition to research, Jeff also manages the development team at RDI and oversees all product development. He is also actively involved in customer demos, training, and site implementation because he believes that customer feedback and success drive better products.
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Louisville.
Brian’s Purdue Aerospace Engineering & U.S Marine Core background provides a distinctive experience and a unique perspective to Training, Process Reliability, and Change Leadership. Brian has diverse experience serving as Maintenance Manager, Reliability Engineer, and Planning Manager. During that time, Brian co-led the development of a reliability program which resulted in drastic improvements in Overall Equipment Effectiveness. After his time in Industry 4.0 Space, Brian now serves as Principal Trainer and Consultant at Eruditio. Brian loves helping others see the Reliability Lightbulb turn on and is excited to help others have as much success in the Industry as possible.
Shon specializes in Adult Learning, Leadership, Asset Management, and Reliability Engineering and has lead improvement initiatives for industries such as pharmaceuticals, metals, petrochemical, automotive, paper, power generation, among others. Shon has spoken at numerous professional conferences on these topics in the US as well as Europe, South America, and the Middle East.
Shon is an engineering graduate of North Carolina State University and has become an expert in the implementation of holistic reliability solutions using tools such as Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA), as well as Six Sigma and Lean to drive significant bottom-line results.
Shon is a Past Chairman of the National Board and past Director of Education for the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals and is a past committee vice chairman in the area of benchmarking. Shon also serves on the boards of other global asset management and education organizations including the Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM), Association for Talent Development (ATD), and World Partners in Asset Management (WPiAM). Shon is a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP), Certified Asset Management Assessor (CAMA) and has been certified by Prosci and Colorado State University as a Change Management Professional (CMP).
Shon is a Plant Engineering Future 30 honoree and a USA Science and Engineering Festival Nifty 50 Speaker as well as being the recipient of the Solutions Magazine Best Article Award.
Shon currently writes and manages one of the most visited industry-specific blogs: www.ReliabilityNow.com. The blog is viewed monthly by over 6,000 visitors and contains over 200 posts on topics ranging from manufacturing to leadership, reliability, and education.
When away from the asset management world, Shon lives reliability as a helicopter and airplane pilot and an avid fisherman. Nobody likes to be stranded in the air or on the water.
Bob Kazar is the son of a master plumber and in spending many years working with his father he has learned the value of measuring twice and cutting once. Currently Bob has 30+ years as a maintenance and reliability professional. In his career he has worked in both Food and Manufacturing sectors in multiple roles; an Electrician, Maintenance Manager, Project Manager, and Corporate Director of Reliability. A great deal of his experience has been in computerized maintenance management systems including Oracle and SAP PM. Bob’s experience had a focus on Asset Management and MRO inventory projects including multiple ERP deployments with Owens Corning and the Wonderful company.
Bob joined the SMRP Association (Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals) and volunteered to serve on the board of directors and several committees over the past 20 years. He was on the Board for 5 years and was the Chairman in 2016.
Currently, he is a Maintenance and Reliability Manager for a plant-based facility producing Almond and Oat milk in California. He holds a degree in Information Systems from the University of Toledo, an MBA from the University of Findlay, and has his CMRP and CMRT professional certifications.
Stan Riddle joined VibrAlign, Inc. (now Acoem USA) in 2008. He has over 35 years experience in aligning industrial machinery. Stan received his AAS Degree in Machinist Technology from Surry Community College in Dobson, NC, and also holds a diploma in Industrial Systems Technology from Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, NC, where he was also an instructor in the program.
Stan began his maintenance career working as a machinist and millwright for companies such as Weyerhaeuser, R.J. Reynolds, and Tyco Electronics. He also has over 25 years experience in Predictive Technologies, such as vibration analysis, thermography, oil analysis, and ultrasonic inspection. He is a certified Level III Vibration Analyst with the Vibration Institute, and is a Past Chairman and Board Member of the Piedmont Chapter.
Stan and his wife live in Yadkinville, NC.
Ana Maria Seltenright is a Maintenance & Reliability Engineer contractor at NASA Kennedy Space Center, where she specializes in the use of predictive techniques to assist in condition and predictive maintenance of NASA’s GSE (Ground Support Equipment), potential failure identification & root cause identification. She has also served as Cryogenic Engineer and held a position at the Launch Control Center for the Artemis I Mission.
Ana Maria is Chemical Engineer from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and worked for 20 years at BP (British Petroleum) in the Oil and Gas Industry in various roles from Lubricant Blending Plants, Petroleum Production, Field Production Optimization. During her career she worked on multiple petroleum fields around the world, from the Alaskan arctic fields of Prudhoe Bay, Houston, Colombia and Azerbaijan.
Certifications: NASA System Engineer-LH2 Level II, CMRP, Machinery Lubrication Analyst II, Ultrasound II, Infrared Thermography II, Vibration Analyst I, Motion Amplification I
Brian Shanovich graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee with a BS in Computer Science and a degree in Marketing. He has been involved in reliability for over 30 years, including infrared imaging, ultrasonics, precision alignment, and vibration analysis including sales, training, and assisting in starting condition monitoring programs. Started as a Representative for, SKF Condition Monitoring, Agema Infrared, SDT Ultrasonics, and VibrAlign, Inc. (now Acoem USA) until 2003.
In 2003, Brian was hired by SKF Condition Monitoring for 3 ½ years as a territory manager, successfully selling online vibration monitoring solutions to the paper industry throughout the upper Midwest, including configuring 8 paper machines with complete monitoring of each machine.
In 2005, Brian became the regional sales manager for VibrAlign, Inc. and grew the sales by 400% in a 5-year period, selling to all industries. He was the wind energy specialist sell to O & M’s, and OEM’s, helping establish the industry standards for alignment procedures including GE Wind and Siemens. In 2014, he back the Product Line Manager for the Acoem series of vibration monitoring systems, and was responsible for introducing the OneProd product to the US market.
Evan is the Program Manager for Asset Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has nearly 15 years in maintenance, operations, and reliability within the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. In his current role, he led efforts to define and re-engineer maintenance execution and materials management processes within two cutting-edge scientific organizations. Evan also led reliability engineering efforts that resulted in detailed equipment maintenance plans on critical equipment. He is now defining an institutional implementation plan at LANL, to drive standardization and centralization of the asset management approach. He holds a BS from Penn State University, MS from Old Dominion, and earned his RMIC from the University of Tennessee in 2022.
Prior to his current role, Evan spent 8 years as a commissioned officer in the nuclear Navy serving as Assistant Engineer onboard USS OLYMPIA (SSN 717) where he contributed to several successful maintenance overhauls, operational reactor safeguards exams, and western pacific deployments. After ending his military career, he held Maintenance Management and follow-on R&D/Operations Management roles at the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) accelerator facility. He remains motivated to play a vital role in improving the reliability, maintainability, and operational predictability of our nation’s premier scientific capabilities. Evan is married with three children and enjoys hiking northern NM, golfing, and cooking with his family of five.
Allen Welter is a Reliability Manager with over 25 years’ experience in maintenance and plant engineering.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Colorado Tech and an associate’s degree in Aviation Maintenance Technology from the USAF.
Allen is a certified Plant Engineer (CPE) and a certified maintenance and reliability professional (CMRP). He retired from the USAF Air National Guard in 2011, after serving 22 years as an F-16 Electrical and Environmental Technician. During his service, he travelled to many parts of the world, including 4 tours in the Middle East.
Allen is currently the Reliability Manager for Rousselot Dubuque, where he has spent the last ten years building a world class maintenance operation. Additionally, he serves as the Rousselot North America Regional Maintenance Lead and is a Maintenance Performance Assessor for Rousselot’s Global Maintenance Council.
Chris is the Director of Training for RDI and devoted to making sure that RDI’s customers leave training with a deep understanding of how to integrate the Iris M™ into their current processes so that they can make the most of RDI’s exciting technologies. Chris brings with him over 20 years of vibration analysis experience, as well as 10 years of training experience with Emerson, where, as a senior instructor, he taught advanced vibration analysis, field balancing, alignment, and software classes. He was also instrumental in creating Emerson’s ISO-compliant vibration analysis certification program. Chris was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps in 1989 and is a certified Category IV vibration analyst.