Board of directors

Dr. Klaus Blache is a leading authority on reliability and maintainability. His work as an industry consultant along with the work of his students through the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Reliability and Maintainability Center, with over a dozen training partners, helps businesses develop strategies to instill best practices, reduce costs, and maintain or improve operations and culture. He has extensive experience in the fields of engineering, manufacturing and large-change efforts, and has held a variety of positions in industry. His work at General Motors (GM) included designing new production facilities and heading up its Mfg. Reliability & Maintenance for North America. In addition, he designed and ran an automotive assembly plant as Mfg. Engineering Director, Cadillacs that received the J.D. Power Gold Award for Quality and Most Productive Luxury Car Plant in North America. Other accolades include GM Research’s Most Valuable Colleague Award; GM Chairman’s Award – Lean Implementation; GM Award of Excellence – Maintenance Management; GM Institute Alumni Engineering Excellence Award; and Fellow – International Society of Engineering Asset Management. He also helped initiate and was a two-year Chairman of the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP).