Ashley Pickford, 30
Automation/Digitalization Engineer
Sibelco
Spruce Pine, NC, United States
What Makes Ashley an Engineering Leader
Ashley excels in her primary role in automation and digitalization, but her ability to lead cross-functional teams further distinguishes her. She has quickly become a leader in reliability and quality-improvement initiatives, with Sibelco management, including the CEO, seeking her input and participation in projects involving digitalization, process and automation improvements.
Ashley’s ability to draw on data sources across multiple platforms helps identify the need for improvement and demonstrate whether initiatives have achieved their key performance indicators. This capability is invaluable to the organization.
Leadership & Industry Contributions
Ashley leads a special reliability team focused on a specific process. The team includes peers, upper management, maintenance and operations personnel. She excels at bringing these cross-functional groups together around a common goal.
Ashley’s weekly meetings are precisely run, and she consistently shares data that demonstrates the need for improvement and tracks the ramp-up curves of projects in progress. She also creates space for team members to bring new ideas forward freely.
Through honesty and integrity, Ashley helps keep management expectations at the appropriate level. She has earned respect from every team she works with and demonstrates the same respect in return.
Ashley has also volunteered for community outreach projects, including local mineral festivals. At work, she goes above and beyond to train operations and maintenance personnel when process changes are made or new equipment is commissioned.
Why Ashley Chose This Career
Ashley studied mechanical engineering and began her career in machine design. She discovered that she enjoyed the software and computer work more than the mechanical aspects of the role, leading her to pursue software design.
Ashley thrived in that area, which naturally led her into the digitalization and automation field. She still enjoys mechanical engineering and applies that expertise to the reliability team she leads. Ashley also values data-driven decision-making and works to provide the information needed to support it.
