ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Feb. 18, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) announced today that it has appointed Rich Fitzgerald, Margaret (Peggy) Gulick and Sapna Sharma to its board of directors, effective December 4, 2019. They will serve as directors-at-large for a two-year term ending in December 2022.

“Rich, Peggy and Sapna have decades of leadership in key areas of the lean enterprise that are vital to our future programming and strategy,” said William C. Fierle, chair of AME’s board of directors. “They bring new energy and perspectives, which will help our members share, learn and grow on their journey to enterprise excellence.”

Rich Fitzgerald is the chief operations officer of SMTC Corporation (Nasdaq: SMTX), where he leads global design, manufacturing, program management, quality, lean and supply chain organizations in the electronics-manufacturing sector.

Margaret (Peggy) Gulick is the director of digital transformation for global manufacturing at AGCO Corporation in Duluth, Ga. She has more than 20 years of experience in the consumer products and manufacturing industries.

Sapna Sharma is the vice president of continuous improvement at Safran in Ajax, Ontario, where she drives operational excellence at seven worldwide sites.

These appointments bring AME’s total board membership to 14. The board’s five-seat executive committee now includes Jason Semovoski, senior manager, global procurement at Johnson Controls, as past chair; William Fierle, chief operating officer of Conax Technologies, as chair; Wayne Pitchford, vice president of operations for Neptune Technology Group, as chair-elect; Marc Braun, president of Cambridge Air Solutions, as treasurer; and Jenny Snow-Boscolo, senior director of customer support and business planning at Genie, A Terex Brand, as secretary. Both Braun and Snow-Boscolo previously served as directors-at-large.

About the Association for Manufacturing Excellence
Since its founding in 1985, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) has grown into the premier not-for-profit organization for the exchange of enterprise excellence knowledge. The association’s 4,000 members come together through practitioner-to-practitioner experiences to explore lean thinking and other operational improvement methods, exchange best practices and network. Through engaging workshops, plant tours, summits and industry-leading conferences, AME members discover and implement new continuous improvement strategies in order to share, learn and grow. For more information, visit  www.ame.org.

Contact: Jeff Puma
Phone: 224-232-5980, ext. 234
Email: jpuma@ame.org