2022 Engineering Leader Under 40: Monica Guess, 31

Monica Guess, 31
Customer Service Manager – Aftermarket Parts
Sullair LLC
Michigan City, IN, United States
BS Materials Science & Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Why Monica is an Engineering Leader

Monica Guess routinely demonstrates an extraordinary drive and innate leadership skills. She approaches each day with tremendous passion and optimism and is thorough and process-forward when tackling a project. She makes the tough decisions, excelling in ambiguous environments where the path forward is muddled.

Monica leads by example. She doesn’t assign any project that she wouldn’t also take on. She is totally collaborative and understands how to build and inspire teams, never shying away from the difficult discussions.

Finally, Monica is customer focused. She understands that no process or solution is of value if it doesn’t ultimately serve the customer.

Achievements, Advancement & Career-related Industry Contributions

After five years in quality and two in supply chain in heavy industry, Monica joined Sullair as a Continuous Improvement Engineer in 2019. While at Sullair, Monica worked extensively in planning for the portable compressor manufacturing team. She was responsible for scheduling and releasing work orders for machine builds while managing lead times and stock levels. She was instrumental in planning and creating onboarding and training documents for the department in addition to training new hires. For the next two years, Monica rotated between continuous improvement roles, planning and supply chain and co-lead on a customer-centric project, always willing and able to accept the challenge wherever she was needed. While in continuous improvement, she headed up the Sullair Lean Manufacturing roll out and process mapped the engineering release process for Sullair portable products at the Michigan City facility. She also developed a PowerBI report for leadership reporting on-time delivery, lead time, past due, inventory levels and more, as well as implemented two workflows for quoting lead times reducing turnaround by 50%. It was after this successful roll out that she was promoted to Customer Service Manager where she leads customer-forward process improvements and helps develop data-driven business systems.

Non-work-related Activities & Hobbies

Outside of work, Monica is an animal lover and is very active in philanthropy. She volunteers with a local animal rescue, working as a foster home for dogs looking for their forever homes. She also creates gift baskets for fundraising raffles for various animal-centric causes. Beyond her charitable work, Monica spends time with her daughter, working to instill in her a love for learning and compassion. Monica believes that the best memories are made in the messy little moments.

Interesting Details

Monica is a collector and lover of books. Her wedding was literary themed, complete with library check-out RSVP cards. Her home is full of old technical textbooks, including a 1959 calculus book and she currently collects books to support her newest hobby, growing and propagating plants. Travel is a key interest for Monica. She once drove nearly six hours one way to the Mackinac Bridge and back on the same day to buy a piece of bridge grating. Her favorite trip was to Alaska where she and her husband explored the state’s backcountry via ATV and spent time whale watching.

Why Monica chose this career

As a child, Monica loved learning how and why things worked. She had a deep interest in the properties, characteristics and material specifications of the objects around her. She once took apart her clarinet, drafted and then modeled it, just to understand more about what made it work. It was, however, a college camp for kids in metallurgy that sparked her interest in an engineering degree. Engineering processes and the improvement of those processes are what drives her on-going interest in the field, particularly as those improvements relate to customer service and satisfaction.

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