Jerome Meier

 

Jerome Meier has over 25 years of experience in operational improvement and line management, including fourteen years as a consultant with Boston Consulting Group, Partners in Performance, and Axis Consulting. He was previously Vice President, Group Strategy and Business Development, at Pratt & Whitney, a US$12B division of United Technologies, where he was a member of the Executive Committee. Prior, he was the founder and CEO of Rentmaker, a rental equipment sourcing company operating throughout North America. Previously, he held various process engineering positions with DuPont, Dow Chemical, Chevron, and BASF. Jerome has lived and worked in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Japan; he is fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

 

 

Experience Highlights

 

  • Open pit mining and milling/flotation: debottlenecked and substantially improved the operating performance of the world’s largest zinc and lead mine and mill, located in northern Alaska, USA, resulting in record production months with no increased cost or capital expenditure.

  • Underground mining and milling/flotation: Led the implementation of an operations improvement program in an arctic nickel and copper mine and mill complex in northern Québec, Canada, including Mine Ops, Engineering, Geology, Exploration, Mill Ops, Environmental Health and Safety, Mine and Mill Maintenance, Transportation, Logistics & Lodging.

  • Several South American open pit mines: Led the throughput improvement of mining and processing operations (milling & leaching, SX, EW), principally copper and precious metals and involving all major functional areas.

  • Various diagnostics and engagements in underground and open pit, base and precious metal mines and processing facilities, principally grinding & flotation, leaching & SXEW, and smelting.  Most work focused on increasing throughput via operations improvement and/or reducing operating costs.

  • Cement: 20% revenue and 25% EBIT growth via the development and putting into place of a consolidation strategy for the Caribbean operations of a major cement company.

  • Industrial Glass: 25% mold production cost reduction by enabling the post-merger integration of one of the largest US and Mexican industrial products companies, relocating key production facilities to low-cost countries.

  • Construction Equipment: Improved Asset Utilization by 15% by developing new ways to source, operate and maintain equipment fleets within and across company divisions.

  • Turbine parts manufacturing for aerospace and utilities: Led 3 acquisitions, 2 divestitures, and the formation of 2 joint ventures in North America, Europe, and China as head of Mergers and Acquisitions (combined value in excess of US$500 million in closed deals).

 

 

Qualifications & Interests

 

Jerome has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was inducted into the Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi Engineering Honor Societies.  He is an accredited lecturer at Melbourne University in the field of Operations Improvement.  He enjoys languages, reading, classical guitar, and soccer.

Ernesto Cangas

 

Ernesto Cangas has over 28 years of experience in operational improvement and line management, including 10 years as a consultant with Boston Consulting Group and Partners in Performance. He has worked across many industries, including finance systems, construction, energy, metals, and mining. Ernesto has advised mines in Mexico, Spain, the United States, Canada, Central, and South America.

 

Experience Highlights

  • UG mining diagnostic in Spain: focus on operational and cost improvement, data analysis, front-line operations, and identify opportunities to increase production. 
  • UG mining diagnostic in Canada: Diagnostic to make operations more efficient, capturing a cost reduction of US$ 20 million. 
  • UG mining optimization for a Silver mine in Mexico: Fast business improvement project modeling operations in underground mining, increasing production by 20%, drilling meters by 19%, and development meters by 29% in 6 weeks
  • South American Gold Mine: Business Improvement program across all the organization ideas pipeline US$90 M. Coaching development plan for 110 Supervisors.
  • Canadian Gold Mine: Improved filter plant at a new gold mining company in Mexico, working with supervisors and crews to establish disciplined operations, increasing filtered tons by 20%, worth >US$30 M per year of cash flow.
  • Central American Dominican Republic Gold Mine: Improved grinding availability by 8%, capturing over US$15 M.
  • South American UG Gold Mine: Implemented a new Maintenance Strategy and increased reliability by 5%; improved planning to increase the ratio of preventive to corrective maintenance.  The engagement resulted in a bottom-line improvement of >US$20 M per year of cash flow.
  • Major Mexican Open Pit Mine: Implemented Management Operating System (MOS) tools to achieve performance improvements of US$69M of throughput increases. 
  • Global Gold Mining Company: Utilized Strategic Procurement to reduce costs in the supply chain of two of their principal mines, resulting in a 7% reduction in costs compared to the baseline.
  • Canadian Gold Mine: Improved filter plant, working with supervisors and crews to establish disciplined operations, increasing filtered tons by 20%, worth >US$30 M per year of cash flow.
  • Central American UG Mine: Modeling production and mill throughput, improved the zinc, lead, and silver recoveries and reduced costs in outbound port logistics, resulting in a US$6M in cashflow increase.
  • Panama Cooper Plant in construction: project planning regarding the production and operations team. Review of process flow and links between departments.

 

Qualifications & Interests

 

Ernesto graduated with Honors in Electronic Communications Engineering from the ITESM Monterrey (Class Valedictorian). He holds an MBA from the Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresa. Ernesto’s interests include reading, traveling, and bicycling.

 

Antonio Perez

 

Antonio has over 20 years of experience advising and operating companies, including 7 years as a consultant with Boston Consulting Group and Partners in Performance. He has worked in mines in North America, Central America, and Europe, and has managed several successful construction projects.

 

Experience Highlights

 

  • Open pit gold mine: 10% cost reduction achievement in select expend categories.

  • Open pit and underground mine complex: Cost reduction of 6% in select categories.

  • Large open pit mine: rationalization of maintenance practices, resulting in a 10% increase in availability for two critical equipment types.
  • US$6 bn mine construction project: Design and implementation of new supervisor organization with customized KPIs, resulting in better organizational performance and reduction of Head of Operations workload to a manageable level.
  • Portfolio of 6 large gold mines: Detail model of operational levers, which created a tool to prioritize continuous improvement initiatives.
  • Gold mine: Strategic diagnostic and valuation insights that were promptly embraced by CFO and Region CEO, reflected in the company financials, and resulted in executive organizational changes.

  • Underground copper mine: Diagnostic of actionable operational levers and immediate low-cost recommendations to increase production.

 

Qualifications & Interests

 

Antonio is a CFA charter holder and graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2005, and with a joint JD/Business Degree from Madrid’s Pontific University. Antonio enjoys scuba diving and hiking.

 

Alejandro Garro

 

Alejandro has 20 years of experience in industry and management consulting. worked for AT Kearney, Audare Consulting, Europraxis, and Partners in Performance.

Early in his career, he actively participated in the management and turnaround of a shipbuilding and engineering group in Argentina. Later on, he developed a wealth of experience across a broad spectrum of strategic issues, while assisting clients in successfully achieving operational excellence in Europe and Latin America, in mining, oil and gas, telecoms, financial services, aviation, and entertainment.

This rich background helps him to provide innovative perspectives and solutions when delivering programs that cover revenue boosts, business turnarounds, large-scale cost optimization, strategic sourcing, and commercial performance enhancement.

 

 

Experience Highlights

 

Implementation of Business Improvement programs obtaining

  • increased underground production and reduced variability in throughput to the processing plant for an underground silver mine.

  • procurement and operational improvements in hauling cycle and maintenance among others underground copper mines.

  • over USD50M in results for a Copper open pit mine with concentrate and cathodes plant after a multi-stage program that included strategic sourcing, rapid sourcing, contractors’ management, and other operations improvement.

  • over US$50M reduction with a direct impact on the bottom line with a right sizing program in an open pit gold mine.

 

 

Qualifications and Interests 

 

He has a Bachelor´s Degree in Business Administration and earned his MBA at IESE Business School in Barcelona. Spain.

Alejandro traveled all around the world for business, holidays, and studies. His multicultural perspective and easiness to adapt himself turn him into an asset for every team he joins.