Karen Spahr, PMP

416 A East Waldburg Street

Savannah, GA 31401
Phone (912) 335-1283 / Cell (810) 610-6399
Email - karen.spahr@gmail.com
LinkedIn Profile – http://www.linkedin.com/in/kmspahr

SUMMARY
Program/Senior Project Manager with industrial engineering background. Extensive experience in the
automotive industry in both manufacturing and engineering IT environments. Solid leadership skills building
and managing successful project teams. Highly organized, team player known for her ability to resolve issues,
enabling project teams to focus on task completion, and to ensure project objectives are met on time and
within budget. Strengths include re-engineering and streamlining business processes, and determining
customer requirements. Excellent communication skills with proven success in negotiating client project scope
change requests.

EXPERIENCE
Hewlett Packard (HP) - Enterprise Services, Savannah, GA 2009 - 2010
Customer Proj/Prgm Mgr IV
Managed 12 month global corporate financial program consolidating processes and systems for Account
Business Management (ABM) organization.
• Produced cross charging process user guide merging HP and EDS legacy financial processes to
achieve global organizational consistency.
• Managed consolidation of 50+ EDS legacy financial systems to HP Corporate Controlling and
Managing Projects & Services System, reducing system maintenance costs by $280K.
• Led six month development of workforce planning web tool to manage 3,000 global resource account
allocations, ensuring accurate cost recovery and traceability. Developed release announcements,
training materials, and system change request process for 73 supervisors.

Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Troy, MI 1991 - 2009

Senior Business Analyst (2005 - 2009)
Facilitated business and technical requirements and metrics definition, in support of application transitions for
CIO service level and availability/capacity management organizations.
• Created 15 business design documents over two years, defining standardized and ad hoc reporting
data management requirements across five business functions.
• Managed assignments of six reporting data management testers performing system and integration
testing. Reviewed test plans, cases, and provided summary reports to 10 stakeholders for approval.
• Cultivated 25 business process outsourcing service level management metrics from requirements
gathering through production implementation, proactively indicating risks regarding contractual service
levels and non-compliance for all enterprise human resource outsourced clients.
• Administered 84 requirements for General Motors’ (GM) Assembly Process System (APS), generating
requirements traceability matrix for verification during system testing.
• Transitioned 154 GM human resource and legal applications to EDS consistent with contractual
obligations, resulting in no penalties.
Project Manager - Advanced (2003 - 2005)
Ran architecture integration programs for CIO integration framework organization.
• Constructed three month proof of concept demonstration integrating Configuration Management
database, Help Desk Ticketing system, and Service Oriented architecture, highlighting ITIL process area
integration capabilities for two of EDS’ largest clients, and subsequently expanded for other clients.
• Built and released three versions of asset analysis system to correlate data between and provide
knowledgeable insight into seven systems. Identified inconsistencies and determined inaccurate lease
end dates and hardware retirement dates, ensuring ROI for capital investments.
 • Procured variety of technical project resources and managed $2.5 Million project budget, including
variance reporting.
KAREN SPAHR Page 2

Applied Specialist – Program Manager (2000 - 2003)

Directed a wide variety of applications development and service excellence projects for Distributed Systems
Services (DSS) management organization.
• Upgraded Storage Area Network (SAN), increasing file storage capacity by 45% for five departments
and 320 users.
• Assembled security proof of concept to identify intrusion and vulnerability threats on 10 mission critical
client servers.
• Met divestiture requirements by designing and presenting proposals for GM network separation from
EDS, consequence of six month start-up and planning phase analysis.
• Automated collection of network, server and application data for DOW client, providing availability and
capacity reports and saving the client $440K.
• Defined metrics, created reports, and deployed processes to post information that determined
renewability and referenceablility for large (>$1M) global EDS clients.
Applied Specialist – Client Account Executive (1996 - 2000)
Contract Industrial Engineer for GM’s lean engineering and lean manufacturing teams.
• Reduced vehicle development process by six months leading the lean engineering initiative to merge
design and engineering activities, creating a design for engineering program.
• Developed and tracked lean manufacturing implementation plans, planned maintenance execution
timing and measurements, and Buick City plant closing schedule. Compiled and disseminated weekly
project status reports to plant management. Plant closing project used as model for other facility
closures due to its successful on time completion, without any quality degradation.
• Researched and implemented Toyota Production System (TPS) self directed work teams and error
proofing techniques, resulting in Buick City plant receiving 1999 J.D. Power Plant Quality Award.
• Supervised 20 GM UAW employees on the production line in General Assembly – Trim. Attendance
and quality increased by 5%.
• Completed GM Manufacturing Supervisor Assessment successfully, culminating in a job offer as a
Production Supervisor at the Bowling Green, KY Corvette Assembly Plant.
Various Systems Engineer positions as part of EDS’ Engineering Systems Development
Program (1991 - 1996)

EDUCATION
Bachelor of Science – Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, WI

COMPUTER SKILLS
PC Environment - DOS, Windows, Pascal, Simulation (PC-Model, GPSS), Administrative
(Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Outlook, Lotus Notes), CAD (AutoCAD),
Requirements (Quality Center, RequsitePro, Caliber RM), Testing (Quality Center), SharePoint,
Aldea
Workstation Environment – UNIX, C, UIL/X-Motif, CAD (Unigraphics, Unigraphics – GRIP), Object
Oriented / Artificial Intelligence (Kappa), Publishing (FrameMaker)
Mainframe Environment - PL/1, OfficeVision, GMTKS, IMS (ALBS)

LANGUAGES
English: native German: proficient, written and verbal

CERTIFICATIONS, PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS, & AWARDS

Project Management Professional (PMP) Certified since May 2004 [PMP No.: 190252]
ITIL Foundations Certified in September 2003
Member of American Business Women’s Association (ABWA)
Member of Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)
Received 1995 YWCA Corporate Women of Achievement Award