Albin Thomas — Manufacturing Operations Leader & Industry 4.0 Builder
Albin Thomas is an operational leader with people and digital at the core. Plant Manager at
Saint-Gobain Corhart Refractories in Buckhannon, West Virginia, with full P&L
responsibility for a $90M+, 140-employee unionized site, and eleven years at Saint-Gobain.
Always enjoying the journey of life.
Strengths
A rare pairing: operational manufacturing leadership with people and practical, hands-on
digitalization at its center. Albin builds real production tools that run in live industrial
environments — on the floor, at the machine, in front of the people using them.
Current role
Plant Manager, Saint-Gobain Corhart Refractories — Buckhannon, West Virginia (2024–present).
- Record EBITA in the first full year — structural cost down 8%, 100% of CAPEX executed.
- On-time delivery at 98.7%, 9.4/10 customer NPS.
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United Steelworkers (USW) labor relations and CBA compliance; full site reorganization and a
rebuilt leadership team.
Career history
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2015–2019 — Quality Manager / Process & Development Engineer, Buckhannon,
WV. Directed quality across 20+ product lines; led the site to WCM Bronze and ISO 9001:2015;
delivered $1.2M+ in defect reduction and $750K+ in process-engineering savings.
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2019–2022 — Senior Digital Champion, Americas. Led a 20+ person
cross-functional organization and the Digital Champion rollout across the Ceramics business;
rebuilt a problem Blanchard grinder into a smart machine through 78 kaizens — 100% uptime for
two years, zero defects for four, $200K+ saved per machine.
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2022–2024 — Cost, Sustainability & Digital Champion, North America. Built
North America's net-zero roadmap and hit the 2030 energy target six years early via the Smart
Kiln project (~2,400 tonnes of CO₂ eliminated annually); designed and programmed BOMR,
writing engineering routing and costing into SAP for $1M+ in direct savings.
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2024–present — Plant Manager, Corhart Refractories. Full P&L for a $90M+,
140-person unionized site.
Industry 4.0 — what Albin has built
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BOMR (.NET, SQL, SAP) — engineering routing and costing written straight into
SAP via REST APIs; $1M+ in direct savings.
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JayFlex (RAG, local-first, AI) — a local-first diagnostic decision engine that
keeps hard-won plant knowledge from walking out the door; fully offline.
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Smart Blanchard — a problem grinder rebuilt into a smart machine through 78
kaizens: 100% uptime for two years, zero defects for four, $200K+ saved per machine.
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Smart Furnace — the Smart Kiln project; hit the 2030 energy target six years
early and cut roughly 2,400 tonnes of CO₂ a year.
Education
- M.S., Mechanical Engineering — Missouri University of Science & Technology (4.0 GPA).
- B.S., Mechanical Engineering — Guru Ghasidas University (4.0 GPA).
The person behind the résumé
Originally from India. Both social and silent depending on the room; sees life like a long film
and tries to live it fully. Nine countries travelled so far — India, France, Italy, Croatia,
Hungary, England, Norway, Canada and the USA. Music runs from festival EDM to Mark Eliyahu to
Malayalam classics. Weekends start at 7 AM — a hike, prayer, a project with friends, a movie,
something new learned, and the gym. Sundays are for church.
Contact