Karen Contessoto Lima- Heat Treat Today 40 Under 40
During college, Karen Contessoto Lima decided to drop out and care for her grandmother who was battling a serious illness. This leaving did not hold her back in the slightest. Academically, Karen excelled. Her work with CEOs of automotive plants on self-driving technology won her a best paper award at George Washington University. Professionally, Karen advanced even more.
With over thirteen years of experience in sixteen countries in the automotive industry behind her, Karen is now responsible for the entire heat treat area (including gas carburizing, induction hardening, magnetic particle inspection, and Barkhausen technologies) at MAHLE.
As a certified project management professional, Karen’s management skills and passion have led the company through many improvements from radiant tubes technology replacement, elimination of soft spots, elimination of cracked body in component, and now to GoPaperless projects for the entire heat treat area. Karen saved the company over 700TUSD along her entire career, eliminated two main sources of scrap during her first 6 months in the Arkansas facility and reduced customer complaints by 85% for a specific case while in Brazil. Her strong problem-solving skills and leadership have led to improvement actions since the beginning of her career with MAHLE.
Karen has been in multiple locations with the company, always in the metallurgy/heat treatment area: Brazil, USA-Ohio and USA-Arkansas. In her first year in Arkansas, Karen managed a complete upgrade of the metallurgical laboratory including a new XRD technology for retained austenite evaluation. Karen manages eleven employees directly in Russellville, Arkansas, including metallurgy quality technicians, heat treat furnace operators, and induction hardening processes. During the past year, Karen sought to reduce the negative impact of the pandemic on her team.
Karen is the only woman on the team and is extremely respected due to her leadership skills and technical expertise. She created a “Heat Treat Board Game” to train new and current employees on main processes and quality aspects which reduced costs from external training. She leads the CQI-9 improvements in the plant and also leads IATF 16949 and ISO 9000 audits in the area with zero nonconformities during her ten-year span. Karen has a Six Sigma Black Belt, a Six Sigma Green Belt in Lean Manufacturing, and is certified in APQP/PPAP. If that was not enough, Karen also wrote and implemented the work instructions and setup manuals for the entire strip’s manufacturing and heat treat areas. She created over 30 procedures, with 130 employees fully trained in eleven months.
Company: ThermoFusion, Inc.
Position: Quality Manager
Years in Industry: 9
Nominated by: ThermoFusion, Inc.
Although with ThermoFusion for less than a year, Katie Bastine is using her nine years of industry experience to modernize and streamline the quality system, leading the company to a complete ISO9001, AS9001 and Nadcap recertifications, and adding new Nadcap certified processes.
Specifically, Katie brought all TUS and SAT work in-house, including procuring the equipment, training the operators, and validating the work. She then prepared herself and the company for a series of audits, which ThermoFusion passed with only two major findings. During that process, Katie more than doubled the Nadcap certified processes in which ThermoFusion had been previously certified.
Katie’s dedication to her job has resulted in greater opportunity for ThermoFusion and customers and allows the company to remain one of the top-quality heat treating shops in the Western U.S.
