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The Executive Vice President-Director of Operations for AENS is John A. Ward, a senior manufacturing executive with over 29 years’ engineering and managerial experience in food and fine chemicals processing. A former Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) executive, Dr. Ward most recently served as their VP and Director of Group Operations for Corn Processing and Bio-Products based at the company’s headquarters in Decatur, Illinois.
A native of Ireland, Dr. Ward earned both a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Industrial Chemistry from Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He began his professional career with Pfizer Chemical Corporation in Ireland in 1977. Rising steadily through the ranks of engineering and production management, Dr. Ward was named Director of Production-Chemicals in 1990. In 1991 he left Pfizer following an acquisition and joined Archer Daniels Midland.
Dr. Ward first served as ADM’s Director of Production for a Citric Acid facilityin Ringaskiddy, Cork, Ireland. Within four years he was named Managing Director. Faced with increasing global competition and declining margins, Dr. Ward instituted numerous yield, energy and labor optimization projects to pull the plant through this difficult period.
By March, 1999, Dr. Ward was named General Manager of Citric Acid Operations with responsibility for ADM’s American and Irish citric acid plants. A year later he became VP-Fermentation Products Manufacturing, overseeing ADM’s bio-products complex in the United States as well as citric acid plants in both North Carolina and Ireland. Responsible for a complex manufacturing environment with multiple plants, Dr. Ward achieved significant improvements in safety, efficiency (particularly energy usage) and plant capacity.
In 2001 Mr. Ward became VP and Director of Group Operations-Corn Processing and Bio-Products for ADM. Over the past five years he had led the corporate manufacturing and engineering teams and assumed responsibility for 16 manufacturing facilities; among them, major Midwestern corn processing plants incorporating the largest ethanol, corn sweetener and bio-products capacity in the world.
Dr. Ward has achieved multi-million dollar reductions in operating costs, successfully integrated two major plants into ADM following an acquisition, implemented both an in-house, ISO-based quality management system and a multi-million dollar environmental compliance program, and greatly reduced recordable injuries by creating a safety culture, where safety was the first consideration among all groups and in all work areas design, construction and plant operations. Also under his direction, operational methods and step capacity adjustments led to significant increases in overall ADM plant capacities as much as a 50% improvement, in one case. | 