Albin Thomas — Professional

Eleven years at Saint-Gobain, from process engineer to running the plant. Albin Thomas is Plant Manager at Saint-Gobain Corhart Refractories in Buckhannon, West Virginia.

Strengths

A rare pairing: operational manufacturing leadership with people and practical, hands-on digitalization at its center. He 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 (2024–present)

Saint-Gobain Corhart Refractories, Buckhannon, West Virginia. Full P&L of a $90M+ facility, ~140 people, ~11 years at Saint-Gobain.

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.
United Steelworkers (USW) labor relations and CBA compliance; full site reorganization and a rebuilt leadership team.

Career history

2015–2019 — Quality Manager / Process & Development Engineer, Buckhannon, WV. Quality across 20+ product lines; led the site to WCM Bronze and ISO 9001:2015; $1.2M+ in defect reduction and $750K+ in process-engineering savings.
2019–2022 — Senior Digital Champion, Americas. Led a 20+ person cross-functional organization and the Digital Champion rollout across the Ceramics business.
2022–2024 — Cost, Sustainability & Digital Champion, North America. Built North America's net-zero roadmap and hit the 2030 energy target six years early; designed and programmed BOMR for $1M+ in direct savings.
2024–present — Plant Manager, Corhart Refractories. Full P&L for a $90M+, 140-person unionized site.

Education

M.S., Mechanical Engineering — Missouri University of Science & Technology (4.0 GPA).
B.S., Mechanical Engineering — Guru Ghasidas University (4.0 GPA).