Lead Consultant, Kevin Kennedy Associates Inc.
Providing expertise in electrical engineering, engineering management, technical consulting, patent consulting, intellectual property management, product design and development, and related expertise to a wide variety of clients.
President and Founder, Consulting Firm
Ran consulting business that helped small- to medium-sized companies improve execution, especially in the area of product development. Provided technical and management expertise, as well as product enhancement and improvement. Is a Registered Patent Agent.
Senior Director, Advanced Concept Engineering, Altec Lansing Technologies, Milford, PA
Led department with mission to explore technology and create concept products for audio and other consumer electronics. Identified and drove development of key technologies including developed proprietary Class D amplifier technology. Provided technical expertise to business development activities. Established, executed, and maintained Intellectual Property Program.
Director of Engineering, Altec Lansing Technologies, Milford, PA
Worked with other senior managers on corporate objectives and strategic planning. Led cross-functional department of 30+, comprising Electrical, Mechanical, Acoustic, Regulatory, Program Management, and Sustaining functions for product development from concept to manufacturing. Established department goals and priorities, including development and change initiatives. Coordination with Far East Engineering and Manufacturing in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. Maintained Intellectual Property Portfolio. Invented new portable audio product (patents issued and pending), which significantly improved company revenue and bottom line. Product technologies included analog circuits, digital circuits, speaker design/specification, acoustic enclosure design, linear power supplies, plastic injection molding, active and passive crossover design, ultrasonic welding, linear amplifiers, preamps, mixers, filter/EQ design, power supply filtering/isolation, audio over powerline, RF wireless audio, IR wireless, class D and switching amplifiers, bluetooth audio, A/D and D/A conversion, audio signal processing, digital audio interfacing (SPDIF), PIC uC code (assembler and C), LED displays, user interface design, light pipes.
Electrical Department Manager, Altec Lansing Technologies, Milford, PA
Established controlled design practices. Instituted document control. Established Sustaining Engineering function. Wrote component derating guidelines. Led electrical department of 6 engineers and 3 technicians.
Acting Director of Quality, Altec Lansing Technologies, Milford, PA
Reorganized quality control efforts with emphasis on root cause failure analysis, data collection, corrective actions, process improvement, customer focused quality efforts. Primary responsibility was interfacing with a major OEM customer to resolve quality issues and establish procedures to prevent recurrance. The
quality improvement initiatives implemented were heavily structured around 3 areas: prevention (including reliabilty testing); detection (including manufacturing tests such as burn-in and production line testing); and root cause analysis for field failures. After establishing the Quality practices, this consultant returned to the Engineering department as Electrical Department Manager and set up a Sustaining Engineering team to oversee all engineering aspects of the Quality initiatives including Reliability engineering, component derating and qualification testing, System reliability testing including factory burn-in testing, long term reliability testing, HALT testing, Root cause analysis (to component level) on all failures generated during reliability tests, manufacturing tests, and field failures, and ECO/ECN system management for corrective actions.
Electrical Team Leader, Altec Lansing Technologies, Milford, PA
Led development of project team for new powered speaker development. Wrote Assembly language code for embedded microprocessor. Worked with OEM customers to develop microdrivers for embedded applications.
Project Engineer, Audio Product Development, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Indianapolis, IN
Involved with program planning, segment budget, and resource loading, as well as development process improvement. Was responsible for overall system design and product development for personal and portable CD products. Worked directly with marketing counterpart to define strategy for portable and personal audio product roadmaps and launches. Proposed and designed an audio system for PC applications incorporating: audio preamplifier/mixer, power amplifiers, active crossover, tone control, SRS surround sound, power supply and MIDI wavetable. Project won a “Design and Innovation Award” at 1997 Winter CES. Led design of CD player using a new CD chipset, resulting in significant cost savings across the portable and audio systems businesses. Designed a high-end CD boombox including PLL AM/FM tuner, drawer load CD player, cassette player, power amplifiers, power supply, active EQ, custom LCD display with backlighting, rubber keypad, audio processing, user interface design.
Project Engineer, Mikron Instrument Company, Wyckoff, NJ
Worked with and designed equipment for industrial and laboratory temperature measurement. Proposed, designed, and coded (Microsoft C) a product simulator for an infrared thermometer. Wrote embedded code for 8051 microprocessor-based infrared thermometers. Designed new analog front-end for signal conditioning and A/D. Increased A/D conversion (V to F) from 13+ to 15+ bits resolution through code optimization. Designed optical and electro-optical systems for IR thermometers. Coordinated efforts of cross-functional team to develop new models and move designs into production. Directed production start-up efforts. Designed production test fixtures. Wrote procedures for production and quality personnel. Technologies employed included microprocessors, LCD displays (custom and alphanumeric), visible optics, infrared optics, LCD backlighting, thermocouples, RTDs, programmable logic controllers, black body calibration sources, tungsten filament calibration sources, NIST traceability, low noise analog circuits, digital circuits, battery charging, digital communications (RS-232, 422, 485), analog control signals (4-20mA, scaled voltage, mv/degree), injection molding, investment and sand casting, machining operations.
Assembly Technician, RSI World Communications, Sloatsburg, NY
Assembled and installed data communications equipment and enclosures. Supervised on-site equipment installations.
