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Brian Cooke’s career in production management has taken him into a wide range of goods and services, from baby products and analgesics through snack foods to aerospace, defense and automotive products. Now he’s VP of manufacturing and technology for the building efficiency business at Johnson Controls, Inc (Milwaukee, WI).
Johnson Controls works in power solutions and other areas as well as building efficiency. But of the company’s 140,000 employees worldwide, some 54,000, nearly 40 percent, are in the building efficiency area. The business includes mechanical equipment and systems that provide heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, security and life safety for nonresidential buildings and residential complexes.
Making business decisions
Cooke’s education is in management science and business admin. But his broad experience with Frito-Lay, Johnson & Johnson, Booz Allen Hamilton and other big companies has taken him deep into engineering management. Managing change and setting and attaining goals have been constant themes in Cooke’s varied career.
“I don’t have a pure product engineering background,” he admits. “I rely on the strong technical expertise of a team of engineers. My role is to help review options that make the business operate most efficiently, and to communicate with the technical side as well as with people in the business end and those who are manufacturing-oriented. I’m able to work with people from a lot of different backgrounds.”
Meeting with a heavy mix
Cooke has thirteen direct reports in the global organization. He travels about 40 percent of his time, meeting with a “heavy mix” of engineers and product management employees.
He visits factory floors to observe production and push the latest strategies for continuous improvement using Six Sigma and lean manufacturing concepts. He talks with teams about where their businesses are headed and meets with product development folks about priorities and performance. He also spends time with sales teams and the clients and potential clients themselves to find out what types of products interest them.
“With energy efficiency, for instance, we must satisfy the need in the market, evaluate and develop technologies and work with potential suppliers.”
Management science
Cooke grew up in Compton, CA, the son of an aerospace engineer and a teacher. He has four sisters: a lawyer, a doctor, a researcher and one in law enforcement.
In 1988 he received a degree in management science with a concentration in ops research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His 1994 MBA is from the University of Chicago.
After college, Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, NJ) recruited him to work in ops planning, an interface between manufacturing and sales. In 1990 he moved to a similar job with McNeil PPC Inc (Fort Washington, PA), the maker of Tylenol. In 1992 he went back to grad school full time.
A summer internship in the Cleveland office of Booz Allen Hamilton led to a job in the company’s Chicago ops management group when he finished his MBA. From 1994 to 1997 he helped aerospace, defense and a variety of other clients improve their operations in manufacturing and distribution. “It required a high level of comfort with engineered products,” Cooke says. It was also a very high-travel job.
In 1997 he moved to Frito-Lay (Plano, TX) as a business planning manager. He worked in the finance organization, involved with new product launches, pricing and ways to support the business.
Joining Johnson Controls
He moved to Johnson Controls in 1999. “A colleague at Booz Allen who was posted there saw the company from the inside and described it to me,” he says.
Cooke started as director of strategic planning for the automotive systems group. He went on to other roles, including managing the company’s production for Toyota in Europe. He lived in England and Germany for more than four years. “It was a great experience, living in a foreign country and working with people with different backgrounds,” he says.
Cooke took over his manufacturing and technology job late in 2005, after Johnson Controls acquired the York Co (York, PA), an HVAC manufacturer. He says the job is a constant learning curve; the challenge is “getting up the curve as quickly as possible.”
Mentoring and more
During the recruiting process, Cooke selects likely young people to mentor. “I want them to see management as a viable career path and understand their opportunities,” he explains. He’s also a member of the African American affinity network at Johnson Controls.
And at home are his wife and three children. “I’ve had opportunities to ramp up and ramp down and I’ve made lifestyle tradeoffs to be fair to my family. There’s a different balance when you’re married with kids,” he says with a smile.
“You have to have a direction you want to go, but don’t be afraid to take other opportunities as they come. Mine has been a journey of learning.”
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