George Papcun

After completing my bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, I began my career first as a design engineer (and later as a manufacturing engineer) with a small company in the Pittsburgh area. After leaving that organization, I started working for MEDRAD (now Bayer Radiology) as a quality engineer and have held various quality roles over the last 25 years. Working in manufacturing for many years and dealing with new product launches, supplier issues, and process improvements made me appreciate just how important configuration and change management really are to achieving consistent quality. In 2019, I moved into my current role as manager of Radiology’s Configuration Management organization.

Although I was not working in CM at the time, I took my first five CM2 classes back in 2011 (when it was still known as CMII) and immediately loved the concepts and appreciated the value it could bring to our organization. It wasn’t until 2013 that I was able to finish my sixth class (online with Ray Wozny!!) and earn my CM2-C. At that time, I was still not working in CM but was eager (along with a few other colleagues who took the classes in 2011) to begin moving us in the direction of CM2. Fortunately, that all changed in 2019 when I moved into my current role and can now drive change within the organization.

In 2020 I completed my CM2-P and began leading a program to align Radiology’s core business processes with the CM2 model and deploy a new Product Lifecycle Management application across Bayer supply centers in the US, Australia, and Costa Rica. Managing this effort over the last several years has been very challenging and rewarding on both a personal and professional level. While we are now just at the beginning of our journey, I am confident that our efforts will pay off!

I am a lifelong learner and currently exploring the topics of data strategy and governance with the goal of integrating these into our daily Configuration Management activities in the future.

I have been collecting and enjoying movie soundtracks since my high school days. I’m a huge fan of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner (along with several other composers) and have about 60 scores from various movies covering multiple genres.

In my free time I enjoy reading, bicycling, travel, electronics, DIY projects, and spending time with family and friends.