Operations Engineer

Education/Background:

Jennifer (Jenn) Pidima is from Bartlett, IL, a northwest suburb of Chicago. She is a University of Iowa graduate with a BS in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Business Administration.  Both in high school and college, Jenn worked as a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) and Patient Care Technician (PCT).  She has always been interested in and excited by the medical field.

After graduation, Jenn was hired at a large equipment agricultural manufacturer, Kinze Manufacturing, in Williamsburg, IA.  They have been doing Lean and have had a culture supporting process improvement for many years. Jenn worked for a variety of different departments and held multiple titles in the fourteen years she worked there.   

Jenn began her career as a Manufacturing Engineer providing shop floor support.  She improved quality of finished products by writing standard instructions, tracking scrap and rework, and classifying and removing non-value-added tasks.  Her next role was a Continuous Improvement Engineer.  Jenn coordinated and led Kaizen event teams and Lean initiatives throughout the organization.  A key part of this role was to establish, measure, and monitor key metrics in production to encourage managing for daily improvement, drive problem solving, and reduce risk. 

Jenn was then promoted to a Project Manager.  In this role she worked with subject matter experts to develop and maintain time lines, coordinate scope changes, develop tollgate reviews, and serve as a liaison between different departments within the organization on multiple projects at a time.  Her success and invaluable system-wide knowledge resulted in her transitioning into a new role as a Lead Business Systems Analyst. She recognized the impact changes would have to the organization prior to implementation and delivered precise specifications to include functional hierarchy, workflow, business rules, interface design and definitions, data analysis, and data mapping to improve systems to the development staff.

Jenn joined the Operations Excellence team at the University of Iowa in 2019.  Her interest in healthcare was revived after her husband spent 90 days of inpatient care across three different Midwest hospitals.  Jenn realized then that there was a lot of opportunity for improvement in healthcare.

Her favorite process improvement tool is the FMEA process because it is proactive. It prioritizes actions to eliminate or reduce failures.

Responsibilities:

• Coach teams on optimal workplace design/layout
• Work with inpatient teams to develop short and long term methods for improving patient flow and length of stay.
• Facilitate and lead FMEAs, Risk Assessments, and Prioritization Matrices.
• Lead operational improvement teams, utilizing performance improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean, 5S, and Value Stream Mapping. Manage projects through entire life cycle within approved scope, schedule and budget.
• Collaborate with other OE staff to identify and support any emergent process needs within UIHC.
• Develop and deliver material for our two day training sessions.

Contact:

Address: C 251-2  GH
Phone: (319) 467-5668
Email: jennifer-pidima@uiowa.edu

When asked, “What inspires you?”

“I am inspired… by problems.  They are everywhere!  There’s nothing more satisfying than helping to find the solution to a problem that has been plaguing someone or some group for a period of time.”