Phil Rusch (Harley-Davidson Motor Company; The Charlestown Agency)
Phil has 34 years of experience designing, developing and testing OE products of the automotive and recreational vehicle industries for the Harley-Davison Motor Company and before that Chrysler. He is a Staff Engineer Design that has achieved a Six Sigma Black Belt certification and a Professional Engineer license for the state of Wisconsin. For the past eighteen years, as the OE Exhaust Technical Expert, he has managed the development of the dozens of new OE exhaust systems and products that launched on Harley-Davidson vehicles over that timeframe. Phil holds several patents related to innovative exhaust, intake and motorcycle designs (US D517,957S [2006]; US D520,925S [2006]; US D706,687S [2014]; and US D708,987S [2014]) and has published several technical engineering papers (Numerical and Experimental Investigation of the Acoustic and Flow Performance of Intake and Exhaust Systems, Transactions of ASME, Vol. 124, July, 2002; Automotive Noise and Vibration Control Treatments, Sound and Vibration Magazine, April, 1999; and Analytical and Experimental Investigation of the Acoustic and Flow Performance of Intake Systems with an Optimization of a Simple System, Thesis Requirement for MSME at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, May 1999). His responsibilities have him acting as the fundamental technical liaison to several large international companies such as Tenneco, Faurecia, Continental, and BASF, as well as many smaller international and U.S. companies like Kaiping Gada Motorcycle Fitting Product Co, Lincoln Industries, Metal Textiles Corporation, Norma Group, Principal Manufacturing Corporation, Performance Industries, and GSK Technologies Inc. Phil holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from the University of Wisconsin – Platteville, a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MSME) from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Oakland University. For fun, he has mentored students of the Cardinal Stritch University Associate, Bachelor and MBA programs by teaching them Statistics, Analytical Forecasting, and Business Math.