Art Hammer

Vice President and Account Director

Art Hammer is an accomplished master of QualPro’s proprietary methods which combine advanced quantitative methods, Deming’s principles of top management and local work force roles and responsibilities, and a proven strategy of organization and rapid execution. His list of successful projects is in the thousands.

His work has been featured in multiple articles in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and a hundred other general and industry publications. He was the subject of “The Numbers Man” in The Economist. Art has been featured on television business programs like "Managing with Lou Dobbs" and "Science & Technology".

Art has brought over one-hundred very successful projects to our annual symposium – the QLS. Routinely his speakers include hourly workers, local union presidents, shop floor supervisors, engineers and scientists, all the way up to the top executives of CEO and Chairman. The processes reported range from ones with literally 100 year old manufacturing equipment to the latest high tech wizardry. In retail, the stories run from the most modern retailers with thousands of locations and extreme high tech global intelligence data systems to basic stores run on the back of an envelope. The QLS audiences always give these enjoyable presentations high ratings.

In manufacturing, Art has led efforts in semiconductor, telecommunications, chemical, pharmaceutical, paper, textile, mining, precious metals, oil, automotive, and other industries. In addition to his American experiences, he has led projects in Europe, Asia, and South America as well as individual projects which spanned the globe. Art has taught advanced multivariate quantitative analysis to Japanese semiconductor engineers and German chemical engineers as well as led teams made up entirely of hourly workers to produce breakthrough results when the company had already given up, but the local workers did not have that option.

Fortune 500 operations managers have called Hammer their “Go-to-Guy”. They call him in when a product with a global footprint is having problems of corporate significance, knowing that they can bank on the “fix it” schedule. Within the first week, Art has the potential solutions being tested on the shop floor and in the control room. The greatly improved results are implemented, and the financial benefits realized in the same financial quarter. Executives bring in Art on their most sensitive projects like improving the most prescribed pharmaceutical in the world when it is critical that the drug not need to be re-approved, or when The Wall Street Journal is reporting that an “unscheduled” plant interruption is going to affect corporate earnings. He has tackled scores of environmental compliance problems without ever having to resort to new capital projects. Using QualPro’s proprietary methods, he has helped companies come back from bankruptcy.

Art has led many retail projects with clients as varied as AutoNation, Big Lots, Bridgestone-Firestone, Disney, LensCrafters, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Meijer, Rent-A-Center, and SAK’s. He has run several advertising media mix optimization projects allowing clients to eliminate $50 million in annual advertising expenditures and reduce agency fees by 30%, while increasing sales comps of over 9%. One retailer reported a 14 to 1 return by implementing the recommendations and was the best performing retail stock on the NYSE that year. Art has run lots of pricing projects which produced large sustained margin comp increases in extremely volatile closely-watched competitive markets. Retail operations and merchandising are common focuses for improvement – as are store remodeling, grand store openings, private label branding, adjacencies and cross-marketing, internet functions, and call centers.

In business-to-business sales, one corporate chairman reported a 20% increase in market share by implementing the project findings which (1) cost nothing to implement, (2) his competitors could not copy, and (3) allowed an increase in average price per unit and subsequent margin increase in what was a down market. A turn-around executive, who for the fourth time brought QualPro into one of his companies, was able to sell the company for double the previous asking price after executing both a business-to-business sales project and a manufacturing improvement project at the same time. Discovering the counter-intuitive items that really do work and eliminating age-old arguments about things which turn out to be irrelevant are some of the most rewarding parts of the business for Art.

In the non-profit and education sector, one client recently reported a 700% increase in fundraising contributions after doing just one mailing – all during the worst charitable fundraising year in world history. A college reported an increase in qualified applications of over 50%, allowing them to be more selective in their acceptance of incoming freshman. This allowed them to offer fewer scholarships while filling the class with even more highly qualified students.

Before joining QualPro in 1983…

Art graduated from the 200-year-old University of Tennessee at age 19 in the top1% in the entire history of the school. One year later he completed his master’s degree.

Art went to work in nuclear weapons. He pioneered the applied quantitative methods for controlling nuclear weapon materials which are still used to this day in weapons work. He taught PhD scientists multivariable analysis. He worked on developing the concept of the Weapons Interactive Graphics system. He solved critical problems on two different weapon systems which had stumped scientists. Within two years of completing school, Art was reporting directly to the head of the division bypassing many.

Art left weapons work to enter the semiconductor industry back in the Pleistocene Epoch when the technology was about kilohertz and 4 micron geometries. Working for what was then the largest custom chip maker in the world, Art introduced and developed their use of statistical methods for rapid product development and extreme high-quality, high-reliability, low-cost production. He oversaw their first CAM systems. Though Art worked in operations, the corporate sales group named him the company’s top person for working with customers. Again, within a couple of years Art was reporting directly to the company president and had global responsibilities.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming immediately took a liking to Art when they met in 1981. Deming especially liked for Art to join him on the podium for Q&A sessions with corporate executives.

Art Hammer and Dr. Charles Holland have known each other for forty years.

For the past thirty years, Art has lived on his cattle and horse ranch outside of Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons on the western slopes of the Continental Divide. Art’s wife is a principal engineer in the semiconductor industry with responsibilities in Asia and Europe. His daughter works in investment banking specializing in the health care industry. His oldest son is a consultant for QualPro – learning from his old man what the university professors might have skipped over. Art’s youngest son is starting college as a second-semester sophomore this fall having tested out of all his freshman and first-sophomore-semester classes during freshman orientation. Additionally, his household has put several others through medical and engineering school.

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