Donald J. Dreher,
Founding Principal

Mr. Dreher possesses twenty-three years of Operations and General Management experience. For the past fifteen years, eleven with Danaher Corporation (NYSE:DHR), he has established himself as an exceptional leader of lean enterprises and a top practitioner of Danaher Business System implementations, consistently delivering outstanding results. Prior to his current involvement with NEXT LEVEL Partners, LLC, Mr. Dreher served as Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Gilbarco Veeder-Root, a $700+mm Danaher Company providing goods and services to the retail and commercial petroleum market. In the first year following Danaher’s acquisition of Gilbarco, he played a key role leading the integration of Gilbarco and Veeder-Root delivering twenty-five percent improvements in quality/warranty, lead-time and unit cost, and a 2x improvement in working capital turns and operating profit at Gilbarco’s flagship North American operation. Mr. Dreher joined Danaher in 1992 and held progressively responsible positions in Danaher’s Hand Tool Group before assuming the position of President, Joslyn Electronic Systems in 1998. He assumed additional responsibility as President of Pacific Scientific Electro-Kinetics Division in 1999. In 2001, Mr. Dreher was appointed Vice President of Operations for Danaher Power Solutions where he led the consolidation of, and DBS implementation for, five independent power quality companies serving the Web Hosting and Telecom markets.

Before joining Danaher, Mr. Dreher spent eleven years in the aerospace industry holding progressively responsible positions in manufacturing operations management for New England Airfoil Products division of Howmet Corporation, and International Nickel. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology & Manufacturing Management from Central Connecticut State University in 1982.