“There are three dimensions to my job: provide feedback and guidance to my team and stakeholders, understand the motivations of each member, and be accountable for results.”
Francisco Santana is a reliability leader and board-level advisor who has spent 25 years elevating asset-intensive organizations across the Americas. From Dominican Republic hospitals to complex mining operations and multinational manufacturing sites, he builds systems that make organizations safer, leaner, and more profitable. His career has been defined by a simple promise to his clients and teams: translate engineering rigor and human motivation into measurable business outcomes. Today, as Director of Reliability and Maintenance Operations at IME Industry Maintenance Engineering and CEO/board contributor across multiple ventures, he mentors executives and plant leaders to turn maintenance into a competitive advantage.
Born into the practical world of maintenance coordination, Francisco learned early that uptime is not just a technical metric—it is the heartbeat of service quality and customer trust. In his first major leadership assignment, he coordinated nationwide maintenance for 40 Dominican hospitals, shaping preventive programs, training more than 120 technicians, and delivering near-total on-time completion in a high-stakes environment. Those formative years taught him how to design systems that work under pressure, how to lead with clarity, and how to deliver results when budgets are fixed and expectations are not. The lesson stayed with him: reliability is a leadership discipline as much as an engineering one.
He advanced through roles with Tejada Izquierdo Ingeniería, where he ran divisions that blended electrical engineering, automation, and custom electronics. Managing a 56-member team, Francisco introduced fast-response maintenance services, strengthened compliance, and built a culture of accountability. He paired technical excellence with commercial savvy—designing bids, winning new business, and standardizing execution from concept to commissioning. Those years broadened his lens from project-level success to portfolio-scale performance.
At Nyrstar in Honduras, Francisco’s mandate was sweeping: lead reliability and maintainability while launching a World Class Maintenance program. With a $15M budget and more than 300 personnel, he built frameworks anchored in 5S, Six Sigma, RCM, FMEA, RCA, and CBM. He standardized KPIs, implemented a CMMS, and delivered double-digit cost savings alongside significant reliability improvements. The culture he fostered—one that eliminated defects, hunted losses, and learned from failure—became a template he would later replicate across industries.
His tenure as Engineering & Reliability Manager at CAM Sociedad Eléctrica further demonstrated his ability to scale expertise. He led subject matter experts across geographies, staffing complex programs while nurturing a pipeline of talent through mentoring, training, and knowledge transfer. Francisco’s management philosophy is both demanding and deeply human: set a clear strategy, equip people to execute, and then coach relentlessly to ensure results. The outcome is a distinctive throughline in his career—organizations that perform better long after his engagement ends.
Francisco’s impact deepened with IME and GE Digital, where he served as an Asset Performance Management (APM) Reliability SME. He guided clients through ISO 55000 and ISO 14224 principles, implemented GE Digital’s APM software, and demystified digital twins, predictive analytics, and risk modeling for senior leaders. In doing so, he bridged the gap between boardroom strategy and plant-floor reality. His programs reduced downtime, optimized lifecycle costs, and gave executives the dashboards—and the confidence—to make faster, smarter decisions.
As a senior consultant and now as a director at IME, Francisco leads reliability and maintenance operations across customer sites in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada. He designs asset strategies grounded in criticality, executes full-spectrum training in RCM, FMEA, RCA, CBM, and CA, and establishes the governance required to sustain gains. He is equally comfortable advising the executive board of an import business in the Dominican Republic or standing shoulder-to-shoulder with maintenance teams during a turnaround. Wherever there is manufacturing or maintenance complexity, he brings order, predictability, and measurable ROI.
Beyond operations, Francisco is an educator and advocate for professional rigor. He has led training ranging from maintenance planning and scheduling to world-class maintenance management, and has presented at the Craft Brewers Conference on business process improvement—sharing how reliability thinking applies even in fast-growing craft industries. His curiosity extends beyond the classroom: he is a beer sommelier and international beer judge, passions that reveal his blend of precision, sensory intelligence, and respect for craft. The same attention to detail he brings to an RCM workshop, he brings to assessing a well-made brew.
Internationally, Francisco’s work spans the Dominican Republic, Latin America, and Canada, with proficiency in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. That linguistic range gives him a nuanced understanding of culture on global projects, allowing him to connect with technicians, managers, and executives alike. He has led implementations where the language of reliability—failure modes, risk, consequence—had to harmonize with the language of people—motivation, trust, pride in work. His ability to do both is a hallmark of his leadership.
Francisco’s credentials mirror the breadth of his experience: an MBA in International Business and Trade Management, a Master’s in International Business Management, and a Master in Reliability Engineering, Maintainability, and Risk. He is a Certified Reliability Leader and a lifelong learner who complements academic foundations with hands-on mastery of CMMS deployments, KPI architecture, and program governance. The throughline is discipline: he designs systems that endure and cultures that embrace them.
As a board member and CEO across multiple organizations, and with prior service on an electrical contractor board, Francisco focuses on strategic oversight and operational monetization of reliability. He aligns capital decisions with asset risk, translates maintenance into EBITDA language, and helps leadership teams navigate the energy transition and the rise of digital operations. For manufacturing, energy, import/export, and online education ventures, he is a powerful ally—a strategist who can turn complexity into clarity and ambition into execution.
Open to travel and energized by transformation, Francisco seeks roles where he can improve the bottom line by harmonizing people, process, and technology. He is particularly drawn to organizations with 1,000+ employees, where the scale of change amplifies the impact of disciplined reliability programs. Whether advising on renewable energy assets, optimizing a packaging line, or standing up an online learning platform for maintenance excellence, he helps leaders move from intention to implementation—faster and with less risk.
Character:
Francisco’s character is grounded in accountability; he owns results and expects the same from the teams he leads. He consistently models integrity, treating safety, compliance, and ethical decision-making as non-negotiable pillars of performance. He balances humility with resolve, listening first and then acting decisively to remove obstacles and deliver value.
Knowledge:
He brings a deep, standards-based understanding of asset management, drawing on ISO 55000 and ISO 14224 to anchor practical decisions. His knowledge spans digital APM, CMMS, reliability methods, and organizational change, allowing him to translate theory into day-to-day practices. He is a multilingual educator who turns complex concepts into clear, actionable playbooks.
Strategic:
Francisco connects reliability to strategy, aligning maintenance investments with risk, cash flow, and growth. He designs governance systems and KPIs that ensure improvements are visible, repeatable, and defensible. He thinks in horizons—stabilize today, optimize next, and innovate for tomorrow—so organizations compound gains over time.
Communication:
He communicates across levels with ease, from boardrooms to shop floors, tailoring messages to the audience while preserving analytical rigor. He uses data to persuade and stories to motivate, making the case for change both rational and human. His multilingual fluency and cross-cultural experience foster trust, clarity, and momentum.
