Dirk Kvale – President, IRD Glass

Dirk Kvale (Kwallee) grew up in Battle Lake, MN. After high school, Dirk left home to attend college at the United States Military Academy. He graduated from West Point in four years with a degree in Engineering Physics, and entered the Army’s Military Intelligence branch. While in the service, Dirk was fortunate to lead an electronic warfare platoon, in addition to holding several intelligence planning positions. It was in these high profile positions that Dirk honed his ability to work with people and plan strategically to achieve specific goals.

After five years of service in the Armed Forces, Dirk took a systems engineering position with Avtec Systems in the Washington D.C. area, helping to design and troubleshoot space-born communications systems software. In the fall of 2000, Dirk left Avtec and returned to Minnesota where his background in Physics and Engineering helped him earn an Engineering position with IRD Glass.

Since starting with IRD, Dirk has been involved in product design, process design, and process improvement engineering efforts. These efforts have focused on improving company productivity by reducing process variation and defects. He has implemented a tracking system that enables IRD to determine how well production is performing in any given month, and on any given product, enabling them to see and react quickly to the slightest of trends. This also helps IRD focus their ongoing improvement efforts on any specific part, with a goal of reducing scrap and improving cycle times.

Dirk was promoted at IRD into the Operations Manager position and recently into the General Manager position, where he initiated a new shop organization based on the cell concept, allowing operators to work with any given part from the start to the finish. From day one Dirk has also been focused on customer intimacy, getting to know the engineers and purchase agents. This direct interaction helps the customer to design their product with an eye to manufacturability, improved production flow, and meeting unique customer shipping requirements. He enjoys working within the customers’ process to better understand how IRD can help solve the issues that are most important to the customer.