Celebrating JMP Champions: Jim Gillard, Polar Semiconductor

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Jim Gillard, Operations Master Black Belt, Polar Semiconductor

JMP User since 2003

Fun Facts: Jim is an amateur astronomer, has built a roll-off roof observatory at his home and attends the Texas Star Party each year.

What is your favorite feature in JMP?

My favorite feature about JMP is, by far, the JSL scripting. Being able to automate tasks and create dashboards for communication saves so much time Graph Builder is my favorite built-in feature because of its versatility. It’s easy to see what you are going to get!

What was your first job (ever)?

I grew up on a dairy cow farm, so my first job was completing all the chores that come with caring for dairy cows. This also included building and fixing equipment and buildings. My first paid job was working for a canning company, moving and labeling cans of food. 

What is your proudest professional moment?

I was involved in getting a third of the entire company’s annual capital budget approved with one of the toughest executives I’ve ever encountered. I was able to anticipate which questions he would ask and was always prepared with answers.

How did you get interested in operations and process improvement?

I was a young process engineer with little statistical knowledge, but I worked with a statistician who was running DOEs on a very tough issue. I was amazed how he was able to identify the important factors and assess where the setting should be to improve yield. I quickly understood the power of statistics and experimental design. Getting trained in Six Sigma was a natural progression.    

What do you like most about the work you do?

Making the invisible (data and information) visible to others. Providing scripts for others to use so that they can do their work more efficiently. Helping others understand and use statistical tests and methods. 

How are you currently using JMP?

Running scripts to summarize data and pushing results to a dashboard for others in the company to reference. I also provide scripts that others can use to run ad hoc reports, thus reducing the time to discover information by hours when it was done manually.   

What is the first project you worked on using JMP?

Summarizing yields for wafer manufacturing.  

Is there anything you would like to say to JMP development or John Sall?

Thanks for the interactive, visual tools. And keep listening to your customers for improvements! 

How do you see the field of data science progressing in the next 20-50 years?

Machine learning and dealing with messy and incomplete data to find the important factors are key. Building models will greatly help. We will continue to find ways to relate disconnected data.

What advice would you give a beginning JMP user?

Get the data into a table and start looking at it graphically. Everything you need is under the red arrow!