GFGarrett Fehrman

Professional summary

Integration and deployment leader in warehouse automation.

Five-plus years delivering large-scale automation and material handling systems for retail, e-commerce, grocery, automotive, heavy equipment, 3PL and industrial distribution customers. I lead the people and own the processes that take a system from design to a successfully integrated system.

By the numbers

10 → 30 FTEsdepartment growth driven and sustained by the resourcing and capacity-planning process I built
70.4%fewer customer-facing defects per test case in one fiscal year
$55Mlargest warehouse execution system rollout managed
24,000+ hourslargest single execution I directly managed
15+concurrent automation deployments overseen by my team
80%project utilization held while the department tripled
50%less leadership meeting time from new workforce planning models
5+business units integrated into one standard testing process
Under 3years before I made Team Lead. Earliest in all of project operations
10Direct reports, Integration Managers and Integration Engineers

Highlights

  • Creating new rolesDefined the Integration Manager role, its scope and career path. The role owns integration timelines and test plans. IMs ended duplicate onsite testing across Controls, Software, Robotics and Autonomous Vehicle teams.
  • Building design governanceDefining the Solution Architect role and a Description of Operations (DOO) process, with three Solution Architects being hired to own system design through handoff.
  • Company-wide test systemDesigned and deployed the test case management and reporting system now used on every project.
  • Hoshin initiativesDirected company-wide Hoshin initiatives to improve internal and external testing standards, procedures and templates.
  • AutoStore integrationLed end-to-end integration of third-party technology including AutoStore, and hold several AutoStore certifications including Grid Designer.
  • Long-range planningBuilt 5–7 year roadmaps for each position and the department, plus training plans and structured onboarding.
  • Resourcing & capacityBuilt the resourcing and capacity-planning process that showed where the department was short, growing it from 10 to 30 people while holding 80% project utilization.
  • Interim product managerRan the standard warehouse execution software offering: approved enhancements, resolved customer-facing issues, and wrote product documentation, SOPs and internal wikis.

Experience

  1. June 2024 – present

    Project Integration Engineering Team Lead

    Toyota Automated Logistics (TAL), formerly Bastian Solutions
    • Direct people leader of 10 Integration Managers and Integration Engineers across 15+ concurrent automation deployments, owning commissioning, testing, resourcing, budgets, design changes and contractor utilization.
    • Established resourcing and capacity-planning processes that identified department gaps, driving growth from 10 to 30 FTEs while holding 80% project utilization.
    • Own and enforce the standard integration and testing processes; reduced customer-facing defects per test case by 70.4% within one fiscal year.
    • Review engineering designs for commissioning feasibility and safety; improved company standards for throughput validation and uptime reporting.
    • Estimate testing and commissioning timelines during the sales phase, and improved the commissioning calculators used to do it.
  2. July 2021 – June 2024

    Project Engineer / Project Manager

    Bastian Solutions, a Toyota Automated Logistics company
    • Managed software scope, resources, schedules and budgets for warehouse execution system (WES) implementations up to $55M and 24,000 labor hours.
    • Served as interim product manager for standard software offerings: approved enhancements, resolved customer issues, and wrote product documentation, SOPs and internal wikis.
    • Negotiated customer scope changes and set daily priorities for cross-functional teams across concurrent projects.
    • Tested and integrated WCS software with a wide range of material handling technologies.
  3. May 2019 – December 2020

    Intern and Research Assistant

    HIRRT Laboratory, Purdue University
    • Designed, produced and evaluated assistive devices for a variety of patients.
  4. June 2020 – August 2020

    Robot Motion Image Processor

    XYZT Laboratory, Purdue University
    • Developed C++ algorithms to process 3D images from high-end sensors for autonomous vehicles, 3D video conferencing and additive manufacturing.

Education

  1. August 2017 – May 2021

    B.S. Mechanical Engineering

    Purdue University · Minor in Global Engineering Studies · GPA 3.90/4.0
    • Dean's List and Semester Honors every semester.
    • Scholarships: W. Coleman Atkins Alumni, SAIL, and Mechanical Engineering Department.
    • Study abroad at ESTACA, Paris (Global Professional Practice).
  2. January 2020 – May 2020

    Exchange semester, Aerospace Engineering

    Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain

Projects & leadership

  1. January 2021 – May 2021

    Senior Design: TRP International

    • Designed and built a dynamic test structure to safely measure braking torque on a modified electric drum brake.
    • Verified redesigned parts with calculations and FEA; the final prototype raised mechanical advantage by 45%.
  2. January 2018 – May 2021

    Engineers Without Borders, Purdue

    New Member Design Team Lead / Technical Sub-Team Lead
    • Rebuilt the New Member Design Team and its structure.
    • Led development and analysis of a water distribution unit for a rural community in Bolivia.

Skills

Integration & delivery

  • Automation deployment
  • Commissioning
  • Test planning (FRT/ORT)
  • Test case management
  • WCS / WES integration
  • AutoStore
  • System design review

Leadership & process

  • Team and role development
  • Capacity and workforce planning
  • Training programs
  • Toyota Production System
  • Kaizen
  • Hoshin Kanri
  • Mentorship

Project & product

  • Project and program management
  • Integration management
  • Product management

Technical & languages

  • SQL
  • Excel
  • MS Project
  • C/C++
  • MATLAB
  • SolidWorks
  • English (native)
  • Spanish (B2)

Get in touch

The best way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.


Side project

Forkast is a meal planning web app I designed and built for my household and friends: weekly dinner picks, a shared recipe library, and a grocery list that builds itself. It runs on Cloudflare with a Supabase (Postgres) backend, sign-in, and live sync across phones.