Manufacturing
Warehouse Design, Automation Strategy, & Operations
Objective
Build a fully automated hair colorant dispensing line from scratch — custom equipment, zero precedent, and a production target nobody had hit before.
eSalon had a great start-up concept and a growing customer base. What they didn't have was a manufacturing operation that could keep up. I spent 7+ years fixing that.
What I've done
1. Facility Strategic Planning & Floor Layout
2. Custom Hardware Design & Automation Engineering
3. Production Optimization — 500% increase, 60% cost reduction
4. Quality Control Infrastructure — built from zero
5. Manufacturing Cost Engineering
6. International Expansion — London facility buildout
Process
Assessment: Mapped every bottleneck in existing production — material flow, labor constraints, equipment limitations — before touching a CAD file.
Conceptual Engineering: Built multiple automation pathway configurations in CAD to pressure-test throughput assumptions before committing to hardware.
Equipment & Integration: Sourced equipment and contractors against hard budget and timeline constraints. Coordinated implementation alongside Industrial Prosoft Solutions, a local machine integrator.
Testing & Refinement: Validated the line against production targets, then designed ancillary support systems — monitoring, spare parts infrastructure, operator training.
Scaling: Took everything learned in El Segundo and applied it to a semi-automatic line buildout in London.
Results
500% production increase. 60% manufacturing cost reduction. 10x dispensing accuracy improvement. The line ran — and then we built it again overseas.
The dispensing system I designed became the foundation for US Patent 10532335. Custom kiosks from the same platform were deployed in CVS retail locations nationally and salon installations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Düsseldorf.
Conclusion
This project is where my manufacturing philosophy took shape — understanding how materials and people flow, and designing systems that support both. Every facility I've worked in since has been built on what I learned here.
That approach has touched hundreds of products now in retail: tube fillers, hot pours, sticks, powder filling lines. The eSalon line was where it started.
The dispensing platform built for this line became the foundation for a patented custom machine — and every facility we've optimized has been paired with full cGMP documentation to protect what we built.