Randy Heffner

Randy R. Heffner was the Vice President of Manufacturing at NeXT.

Education
Heffner received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a M.B.A. from Boise State University.

Career
Heffner joined Hewlett-Packard at their Boise facility in August 1974 and was transferred to their site in Greeley, Colorado in January 1985. He moved to HP's manufacturing facility in Cupertino, California in November 1986.

NeXT
In 1987, Heffner was recruited by NeXT CEO Steve Jobs to become their head of manufacturing. Heffner oversaw the construction of Jobs' dream: a 40,000-square-foot automated manufacturing plant in Fremont, California that was robotically capable of producing 10,000 computers per month with a low defect rate. However, due to slow sales, it was only producing 400 (later 100) units per month. Heffner left NeXT in 1991 as the company began to wind down its hardware manufacturing.

After NeXT
Heffner was the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing Operations at 3Com from 1992 to 2000. He applied many of the automated processes developed at NeXT to 3Com's manufacturing facilities. He presently operates the Heffner family farm in his home state of Idaho.

Articles

 * One future of Apple’s US manufacturing, as suggested by the fantasy assembly line Steve Jobs built at NeXT in the 1980s by Christopher Mims at Quartz (2012-12-07)