Zayna Connor, PhD

Materials and Processing SME

Zayna is a materials and processes subject matter expert with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. She started her career as a four-year foundry apprentice in a cast iron foundry.  She has worked for more than 15 years in the foundry industry with aluminum and cast iron materials.  She has worked for more than 10 years in the wrought aluminum industry.  She is very knowledgeable of clad materials and processes, fatigue, and formerly held ASNT Level III certification in Ultrasonics and Liquid Penetrant.

She has successfully resolved many quality problems with both customers and suppliers, reducing scrap and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.  She has worked internationally in Germany, France, England, China, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Japan, US and Poland. She has developed foundries pouring gray iron, ductile iron and aluminum.

Zayna’s publications include an SAE paper awarded as having long term reference value and an invited paper to the International Brazing Conference in Dusseldorf.  Zayna also leads several research and development projects funded by DOE or DOD.

Zayna led a team to successful resolution of a quality problem which prevented an automotive line from being shut down.  She also identified root cause of early fatigue failures in ductile iron castings, saving one OEM several million dollars in potential claims.

 

BS in Metallurgical Engineering from Missouri S&T

PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University

Resume and publications available upon request.

SERVICES AVAILABLE

Support from concept to production as well as identification of best supplier with respect to cost and reliability

Casting Product Design or Redesign

• Assistance with design or redesign of parts to ensure they can be cast cost effectively.
  • Optimizes castability and throughput.
  • Reduces porosity, number of rejects and machining cost.
  • Weight reduction can be realized.

Assessing/Developing casting suppliers

• Assess current or new casting suppliers’ capabilities with respect to quality and technical.
• Implement quality improvement programs with existing suppliers.
• Cost reduction/profitability improvement realized through improved throughput.

Aluminum Sheet Materials

• Assistance with root cause analysis of sheet defects, including clad materials, such as those used for heat exchangers.

Research and Development Projects

• Assistance with writing proposals.
• Manage R&D projects including planning and oversight of manufacture, testing, report writing to ensure valid technical results.

Contact: Zayna Connor, PhD

E-mail:  zayna.connor@yahoo.com

Telephone: 309-229-6328