<\/p>\n
Wabtec Corporation is celebrating a key business leader at the Erie plant \u2014 a woman who has built a 40-year-career in manufacturing.<\/p>\n
Diana Kitchen started as GE apprentice right out of Seneca High School, while she was also going to Gannon University for a degree in Industrial Management.<\/p>\n
Working her way up through the ranks she is now the most experienced business leader at the Erie Wabtec facility, leading a team of more than 155 employees.<\/p>\n
Business leader Diana Kitchen, who hit that 40 year anniversary this fall, walked us through the sprawling facilities of the Wabtec teams that she leads. For the last 19 years, Diana has been leading a team of 155 hourly employees and an exempt team of eight.<\/p>\n
They assemble the complex wiring harnesses used in Wabtec locomotives, and that involves a lot of wires. \u201cIt\u2019s 3,200 wires roughly depending upon the locomotive and it’s broken down into individual harnesses,\u201d Kitchen said. \u201cSome can have as many as 1,200 wires, some can have as many as two, so it’s all the wiring required to make that locomotive move,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
And her teams also build auxiliary locomotive cabs for power distribution.<\/p>\n
In her early days, she says assertiveness was viewed differently coming from a woman than from her male counterparts. But she determined to prove herself with her actions. \u201cYou can say a whole lot of words but if the action doesn\u2019t follow it up, then really there is no respect gained, and that was really what I did — I’d go in, we would solve problems, we would act quickly, we would do follow-up or I would do follow-up and that’s really worked for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vice President of Operations at the Erie Wabtec plant, John Singleton couldn\u2019t agree more. \u201cThe way Diana works with her team, she communicates very well, they have a great back and forth dynamic \u2014they solve problems together and they really work as a cohesive team, whether hourly or salary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kitchen believes her success is also about listening to those who do the job everyday. \u201cThere’s a lot of engagement there with our hourly team and they have a lot of good ideas and it’s really working to solve the problems – it’s working with them and it’s listening to what the team has to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 25% of her reports are women. Kitchen would love to see more women take the plunge into manufacturing opportunities. \u201cI would tell them to just do it — have the confidence to take on that degree, to come in and work in an operations environment it is a great experience, everyday is different,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
All the attention to her 40-year-milestone has been a little overwhelming to someone who is just focused on the job. \u201cFor me it’s coming in and doing my job and feeling at the end of that day that I’ve made a positive impact. Some days are a little tougher than others but it has been very much appreciated what the company has done to mark my forty years here,\u201d Kitchen smiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wabtec Corporation is celebrating a key business leader at the Erie plant \u2014 a woman who has built…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[31307,31305,136,138,137,31306,1881,31304],"class_list":{"0":"post-56762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-business-leader","9":"tag-diana-kitchen","10":"tag-erie","11":"tag-erie-headlines","12":"tag-erie-news","13":"tag-erie-plant","14":"tag-manufacturing","15":"tag-wabtec-corporation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}