Paul Stafford is an Engineering Manager stationed at Toyota’s Engineering Headquarters in Georgetown, Kentucky for the past 6 years. He is responsible for New Technology development and Manufacturing Innovation throughout North America. His career with Toyota spans over 30 years. He leads Body Weld Production Engineering development of new technologies and manufacturing innovation initiatives that are developed for mass production environments, improved, then released to the manufacturing sites to improve KPI. He recently lead the development and teaching of a graduate level Electrical Engineering class at the University of Kentucky, designed to streamline the onboarding process and reduce the learning curve for direct hires to Toyota.
Prior to transferring to Engineering Headquarters, he spent 25 years at Toyotas’ largest manufacturing location, TMMK in Georgetown, KY. During his time at TMMK, Stafford held numerous positions in Body Production Engineering, Weld Quality Engineering, Mass Production Engineering, Pilot Engineering, Production Administration, Power Train Production Planning, Project Planning and Management, Plant Expansion supplier localization, & New Model Introduction planning. One of his key cost reduction projects was the design and implementation of a 120 unit AGV system for 3 plants, spanning 8 years and realizing over $6 million in annual labor savings. A portion of this system was featured as the cover story in Modern Material Handling in October of 2012 and awarded the Productivity Achievement Award for Manufacturing in the February 2013 edition.
For 8 years prior to joining Toyota, he was a supervisor for Whirlpool Corporation in Reynosa, Mexico, McAllen, TX., and Danville, KY., where he held various positions in Production Planning, Manufacturing, & Engineering Change Management.
