Nathan Hanson

Background

About Nathan Hanson

Growing up on a dairy farm instilled in me a solid work ethic required to persevere through the challenges that life brings. Interest in mechanical assembles drove me to study Mechanical Engineering. From developing the assembly work instructions, fixtures and tooling to jumping in when short staff to ensure the team succeeds. My career at Polaris allowed me to start as an entry level Manufacturing Engineer and work into progressively higher Leadership positions. I learned the value of being a Servant leader who understands and expands on the value of hourly employees. I have a take charge mentality and drive hard for results, looking for solutions when others stop. I exhibit a transparent, efficient style that sets clear goals, mentors and grows my team allowing metrics to be achieved. Demonstrating the ability to adjust based on audience’s experience, company level and message. Through these engineering and leadership roles, I have supported progressive assembly lines, off line subassembly and back shop support components as a Manufacturing Engineer, Front Supervisor and Unit Manager. Part count of products varied from 10’s to and cycle times from 30 sec to 20+ min being both seasonal and year-round production. Successfully demonstrated development and use of standardized work to ensure consistent performance. I am naturally drawn to leading and developing teams. In my last 2 roles – Polaris Roseau Plant Director and Polaris VP of Central Ops involved mentoring and growing teams to achieve our SQDC metrics. In Roseau managed 12 direct Managers covering SQDCI. In VP role, led efforts to recruit and hire 3 of 6 Directors on my team. I left my Central team as one of the highest performing in the plant network. To drive this improvement, I had set schedule for 1-1 meetings, staff meetings and check ins for my team. We completed benchmarking, trainings, development sessions and stretch assignments to grow and develop our team and provided mentoring for new hires. To ensure our teams were pursuing common goals, team goal setting started year and was cascaded down to hourly level. Tracked progress during 1-1’s. Formal reviews at mid-year and end of year reviews. Leveraged progressive disciplinary, when necessary, via Performance Improvement Plans. After goals were set and communicated, we embraced Metric, Pareto, Action, Reward methodology. Metrics were relevant, understandable for work force and visible. Leverage pareto approach to focus resources on top issues and then drive action to resolve and celebrate the successes!