Robert Richards serves as Manufacturing Advisor of Worl Precision, where he provides enterprise-level advisory across the aerospace and defense precision machining platform. He focuses on operational efficiencies, quality systems, manufacturing strategy, and turnaround execution, environmental/sustainability, ensuring the platform grows with discipline, capacity, and durable value creation.
His career spans more than three decades, from process control engineering at General Motors to Chief Executive Officer of Rhenus Automotive North America, a major Tier 1 automotive supplier. Along the way, he held Vice President, business unit, and operations leadership roles with full P&L ownership across industry leaders including Herman Miller, Avery Dennison, Kennametal, Oerlikon, and Weir Minerals, delivering manufacturing and quality transformations across seven industries and five continents.
Robert has led a $250M business unit with full P&L responsibility at Herman Miller and directed the turnaround of a $210M manufacturing operation for Weir Minerals in Shanghai, China. His career is defined by hands-on operational execution, process re-engineering, and building high-performance teams in demanding, high-volume manufacturing environments.
He brings deep Lean and quality transformation experience. At Herman Miller, he led one of the first Lean Manufacturing implementations outside the automotive industry, increasing production capacity 417% while reducing customer lead time 71%, results later documented by Dr. Jeffrey Liker, author of “The Toyota Way.” At General Motors, his problem prevention process delivered more than $500M in EBITDA savings in its first five years, and he implemented the industry’s first automated assembly plant roll test inspection and real-time quality feedback system, now a global standard.
As Vice President of Central Operations at Weir Minerals, he redesigned the company’s regional divisional structure and streamlined its global manufacturing and distribution footprint. He has deployed global strategies across the United States, China, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Chile.
Robert serves on the Board of Trustees of Cleary University and is a member of the Private Directors Association. His board-level collaborations include Oerlikon’s $50M Additive Manufacturing greenfield and Kennametal’s Global Management Based Safety Program.
He holds a BBA from Cleary University and completed Executive Development at Harvard Business School.