FuelCell Energy appointed John Dansby as Senior Vice President, Scale Up Manufacturing, as the company prepares to expand production capacity to support future growth.
Dansby will lead FuelCell Energy’s manufacturing scale-up strategy, including the expansion of its Torrington, Connecticut, operations to support 500 megawatts of annual capacity.
He will also oversee development of the manufacturing systems and capabilities needed to support growth beyond 500 megawatts.
The appointment comes as FuelCell Energy works to increase manufacturing capacity in response to growing demand for distributed power systems that can be deployed quickly.
Dansby brings more than two decades of experience leading complex, high-volume global manufacturing operations.
Most recently, he served as Global Vice President of Operations for Residential and Light Commercial at Carrier Corporation.
He previously held senior manufacturing leadership positions at Polaris and Harley-Davidson and spent more than a decade in leadership roles at General Motors.
Across those roles, Dansby has led manufacturing transformations, capacity expansions, and Lean operating systems focused on improving safety, quality, throughput, productivity, and cost.
At Polaris, he led a manufacturing turnaround that tripled site output while improving efficiency, quality, and downtime performance.
At Harley-Davidson, he served as Vice President of Global Manufacturing and directed manufacturing and advanced manufacturing engineering across seven global locations.
FuelCell Energy said Dansby’s experience will support its effort to build repeatable manufacturing processes that can scale with customer demand while maintaining quality and capital discipline.
FuelCell Energy develops fuel cell systems that generate electricity at the point of use for applications including data centers, industrial facilities, utilities, and distributed generation.
The company said its global fuel cell deployments are approaching one gigawatt.
KEY QUOTES:
“John is joining FuelCell Energy at an important point in our growth. Customers increasingly need reliable power that can be deployed quickly and accepted by communities. Converting that opportunity into growth requires manufacturing scale, speed, quality and capital discipline. Our objective is to build repeatable processes that allow us to grow responsibly. John has the experience to help us do that.”
Jason Few, President and Chief Executive Officer of FuelCell Energy
“I joined FuelCell Energy because the company has a differentiated technology and a significant opportunity to help customers meet growing power needs. My focus will be creating a manufacturing system that can scale reliably with customer demand.”
John Dansby, Senior Vice President, Scale Up Manufacturing at FuelCell Energy
