Product & project management
Working with customers to move products from an idea or requirement through development and toward production. Coordinating the technical work, people, decisions, and handoffs.
Product development experienceABOUT MIKE MAIER
Bringing products to life.
Connecting the pieces.
Project management has run through almost my entire career—from customer ideas and plastic parts to development programs and production.
IDEAS. DIRECTION. FORWARD PROGRESS.ADVANCE NOW / MIKE MAIER
WHAT MATTERS TO ME NOW
Helping people create.
Sharing what I’ve learned.
I’m at a point in my career where I can put more of my attention into helping inventors and entrepreneurs.
I’m optimistic about AI. I believe it can help people become more creative, make knowledge more accessible, and open possibilities that once required much more money or a much larger team.
That is what makes AN Creation exciting to me. I want to give people a useful place to explore an idea and learn how to ask better questions, rather than leave them to figure out the whole process alone.
The largely free resource is there because I want people to succeed, including people who cannot justify hiring me. My personal consulting is a premium service for those who want my direct involvement and have the budget for it.
THE PERSON BEHIND ADVANCE NOW
An engineer’s experience.
A project manager’s perspective.
I’ve worked with people who knew exactly what they needed—and people who had an idea and needed help finding the path.
I’m Mike Maier. Much of my career has been about helping customers bring products to fruition: understanding the need, coordinating development, working through problems, and connecting the design to the people and processes that would make it.
Along the way, I’ve worked with inventors and entrepreneurs facing questions well beyond engineering. Should they form a company? What about liability or patents? Where might funding come from? How could they get the product made and sold?
I don’t claim expertise in every one of those fields. I’m familiar with how the questions connect, and I can help people see what to investigate and who they may need to talk to.
WHY THIS APPROACH
The idea behind
AN Creation.
Share useful knowledge. Help people make progress. Offer personal help when they need it.
I’ve seen people invest very large amounts of their own money trying to develop a product. That experience is part of why I’m building AN Creation as a largely free office.
Over the past two years, I’ve spent substantial time learning AI, coding with it, and building systems for project management, sales outreach, time tracking, and invoicing.
The opportunity is to combine that capability with real product-development experience: help you ask better questions, investigate the options, prepare useful work, and move forward with a clearer plan.
THE EXPERIENCE BEHIND THE QUESTIONS
From aircraft systems
to the production floor.
Manufacturing & improvement
Plant production management and leadership of engineering, maintenance, and setup groups. Mechanical engineering, Lean Six Sigma, process analysis, tooling, and automation.
Manufacturing backgroundGovernment & military products
A substantial part of my career involved military-related plastic products, packaging, tool storage, testing, and approval work.
Military product experienceTechnical foundations
U.S. Air Force service working on fighter jets, followed by a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Selected experienceTECHNICAL & LEADERSHIP FOUNDATIONS
Broad experience.
Practical discipline.
Mechanical engineering
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Experience with parts, tools, fixtures, test equipment, automation, and manufacturing systems.
Six Sigma Black Belt
Statistical analysis, structured troubleshooting, process improvement, Lean, and Toyota Production System methods applied to real operations.
Production & people leadership
Plant production management and leadership of maintenance, setup, and engineering groups. Experience implementing systems and helping teams make them work.
AI & software development
Intensive practical AI work over the past two years, including learning to code with AI and building project management, sales outreach, time tracking, and invoicing systems.
A CAREER OF CONNECTED EXPERIENCE
From technical foundations
to practical AI.
Technical service & mechanical engineering
Aircraft electrical and environmental systems work in the U.S. Air Force, followed by a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Production, maintenance & process leadership
Manufacturing and cost engineering, molding-process development, equipment evaluation, and leadership across production, maintenance, setup, and engineering.
Taking work through to production
Parts, tooling, fixtures, secondary assembly, automated equipment, testing, and the practical coordination needed to make products.
Learning AI by building with it
Intensive AI use and coding, including project management, sales outreach, time tracking, and invoicing systems. Bringing those skills back to manufacturing and engineering work.
TWO YEARS OF HANDS-ON AI WORK
Learning the tools.
Then learning to manage the work.
My AI journey has become a product-development journey.
It began with questions and deeper conversations, then moved into coding and engineering workspaces. Working across larger document collections exposed the need for clear roles, task boundaries, reliable records, and useful handoffs.
I’ve spent time developing those methods because I want AI to help people carry a real project forward. AN Creation comes out of that work.
The full AI journeyWORK WITH MIKE
If you’d like
my help, I’m here.
My personal consulting is a premium service for people and organizations that want my direct involvement. If your budget is tight, start with AN Creation. The resource is there to help you make progress without hiring me.
Talk with MikeAIRCRAFT SYSTEMS / ELECTRONICS PROJECTS
Experience across
connected systems.
My technical background includes aircraft systems as well as manufactured products.
In the Air Force, I maintained electrical and electronic systems on fighter jets. That hands-on work is part of the technical foundation I bring to product-development projects.
My later product work has included project management involving electronics, monitoring software, charger boxes, and power tools. I’m not an electrical engineer; I bring experience coordinating the work and helping the different disciplines move toward a finished product.
Electronics project management