Brandon Apple

Experience

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  Volvo Construction Equipment

  Jan 2004 - Jan 2010

  Mechanical Engineer

  - Primary design responsibility for mechanical and structural machine systems including mainframe, operators' area, hood/doors. Shared design responsibility for conveyor and auger systems.- Responsible for 3D model, technical drawing, and bill of materials creation, release, and upkeep.- Worked extensively with manufacturing to improve design quality and ease of manufacturability.- Secured tradeoffs decisions between technology platform groups and worked together with those groups to package and layout the machine.- Led on-the-line support for PF6000 and P7000 (Asphalt Pavers) prototype and pre-serial machine builds ensuring issue documentation and resolution.- Coordinated efforts with virtual product development group to predict machine performance through the use of advanced analysis tools. Show less

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  Volvo Construction Equipment

  Nov 2010 - Feb 2019

  Systems Engineer

  - Create technical product requirements based on customer needs defined by Sales and Marketing.- Led design team (consisting of hydraulic, electrical, mechanical, driveline, and powertrain designengineers) as the product expert by influencing and guiding system design to meet the needs of the end user.- Integrate sub-systems into the final machine design ensuring their compatibility in working together to fulfill the final machine level requirements.- Create and released technical 3D models, drawings, and bill of materials.- Troubleshoot prototype, production, and field machines using hydraulic and electrical schematics and software logging/analysis tools.- Assist in development and execution of machine testing plan to verify product performance requirements.- Provide duty cycle and input requirements for virtual analysis (i.e. FEA) and assist in planning improvements base on the results.- Led Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) of various machine sub-systems.- Monitored direct material cost throughout the design phase and made early changes to deliver a total machine design that came in 5% under target.- Communicate and negotiated trade-offs with Dealers, Marketing, Manufacturing, Purchasing, and Aftermarket to ensure the best decisions for the product.- Captured feedback from design reviews with customers and internal stakeholders and integrated the feedback into the design.- Create machine specification documents intended to help predict machine performance in different applications.- Review and edited product material including: operators' manuals, product marketing brochures, and field service bulletins.- Led customer and dealer machine walk-arounds at private and public company events describing the features of the machine, answering questions related to the product, and capturing feedback for future improvements. - Authored script and performed walk around for P7000 (Asphalt Paver) introduction video (see link below) Show less

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  Volvo Trucks North America

  Feb 2019 - now

  • Software Group Manager

    Jun 2022 - now

  • Software System Architect

    Mar 2020 - Jun 2022

  • System Verification Engineer

    Feb 2019 - Mar 2020