About Greg Hadley

President and Principal Consultant, BFA LLC

Beginning as an engineering co-op student, advancing to an Engineering Executive level and then a successful consultant, Mr. Hadley has blended his background into a deep set of advisory capability resources to draw from when assisting your organization. He focuses on helping clients sharpen product planning, engineering capability improvement and project execution. He is recognized as an outstanding leader, communicator, coach and teacher.

Mr. Hadley began his long Transmission Engineering career with the Allison Transmission Div of General Motors, Indianapolis, IN as an engineer for Off-Highway Products. Over the succeeding twenty-two years at Allison, he broadened his product engineering background with assignments in Military Transmission Products and then On-Highway Commercial Transmission Products. His leadership roles steadily progressed from Project Engineer through supervisory positions and ultimately Chief Engineer Executive for Commercial Products.

Key activities at Allison included:

Development and production release of full-power forward-reverse shifting in Allison Off-Highway cycling transmission products
Development of major sub-systems such as hydrostatic steering and final drives for the Allison X1100-3B cross drive for the U.S. Army M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, including support to start of production and subsequent continuous improvement.
Transition to Advanced Military Transmission product leadership leading multiple projects on behalf of the U.S. Army Tank Research and Development Command. These included the CVX-650 hydromechanical CVT project as well as unique transmission designs for the Cummins diesel and the GE gas turbine designs for the TARDEC Advanced Integrated Propulsion Systems – total propulsion modules for next generation combat vehicles.
Engineering leadership for engineering development and production validation for the heavy and medium variants of the Allison WT on-highway 6/7 speed electronically controlled transmissions – models eventually designated as the 4000 and 3000 series. Focal areas included reliability growth development as well as unit cost target management leading to production launch.
Advancement to Chief Engineer for Allison Commercial Transmission Products, leading engineering for all On-Highway and Off-Highway products. Growth of 3000 and 4000 series production and applications, continued support of legacy hydraulically-controlled products and product improvements to On-Highway hauling/oil field products were major activities. Likewise, architecture and concept selection for the Allison 1000/2000 series transmission was accomplished during this assignment.

Greg was subsequently transferred to the General Motors Powertrain (GMPT) Transmission Engineering leadership team in the greater Detroit MI area. Here Greg served in various executive engineering director positions within the GMPT engineering organization. These engineering leadership assignments included Hydramatic transmission design and analysis, manual transmission engineering for GM passenger cars and trucks, passenger vehicle all-wheel drive development and release and technical consolidation of best practices and tools for automatic transmission component engineering and system integration through training and procedure documentation.

Notable experiences from the GMPT positions include:

Acceleration of the use of 3D CAD for transmission products and integration with analysis via Knowledge Based Engineering. Moving to an “Analysis Leads Design” theme, coupling generation of simulation and analysis with generation of geometry – capabilities utilized to shorten the new product development cycles for the Hydramatic series of 6-speed electronically-controlled transmissions for front-drive and rear-drive GM vehicles.

Experiences from the GMPT positions — continued:

Specification, development, validation and production implementation of manual transmissions, clutches and shifting/clutch control mechanisms for GM North America products. Elevating technical management of supplier performance and quality, especially for products such as the Corvette C5 and GM pick-up trucks.
Engineering leadership for GM All-Wheel Drive drivetrain content for cars and trucks. Components included Power Transfer Units, Transfer Cases, and associated transmission and vehicle modifications. Associated with GM’s alliance with Subaru, Greg led integration of Subaru AWD expertise from Japan with GM passenger car AWD programs in both GM North America and GM Europe engineering centers.
Led GMPT transmission engineering efforts to improve new product throughput, first time quality and enabling improved up-front use of Analysis in Design and Validation, via organizing capture of best practices, required engineering tools, and detailed design review procedures for transmission components. Formed basis for engineer training and identification of improvement opportunities for math tools, and relationship to physical testing.

Following his retirement from General Motors, Greg transitioned into independent consulting, providing clients planning, organizational development and execution support through leveraging of his long career at GM.

Beginning in late 2008, this senior consulting service was supplied on a dedicated basis to Ricardo plc, a global strategic engineering consultancy headquartered in the U.K., specializing in the transportation and energy sectors. Working out of the Ricardo, Inc. Detroit Technical Campus, Greg directed transmission and powertrain engineering activities for North America. Greg oversaw engineering capability expansion in the Detroit office through training and project execution leadership. Successful projects included transmission new product development via increased transmission automation as well as multiple transmission/drivetrain electrification programs. Greg also provided significant subject matter expertise on passenger vehicle, commercial and defense automatic transmission new product development for Ricardo global projects in Asia. His full-time arrangement with Ricardo concluded in early 2017.

Following re-location to the Atlanta, GA area in 2018, Greg continues to offer consulting services to the transmission and drivetrain industry sector, blending his deep experience with the wide variety of exposure to various technologies, project scopes, vocational applications and global participants at all levels of the customer / OEM / supplier pyramid.

Mr. Hadley is a US Person (natural born US citizen), familiar with ITAR and EAR protocols. He has held multiple levels of DoD classification throughout his career.

Mr. Hadley holds a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering from General Motors Institute (now Kettering U.), a Masters of Science Engineering degree from University of Michigan, and a Masters of Business Administration from Indiana University.

He is a registered Professional Engineer in Michigan and Indiana.