FORT GRATIOT, MI, July 30, 2026 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Eric Cecava spent his early professional years managing production systems and supply chain operations for manufacturing facilities in Ohio and Michigan. He then built a record in hospital and health system leadership, first in South Central Ohio and then in Port Huron, Michigan. The arc of that career, from lean production specialist to hospital CEO, is not a common one, and Cecava has come to see the connection between the two phases as more deliberate than it might appear from the outside.

Cecava grew up in North Platte and Ogallala, Nebraska, and studied industrial engineering at Purdue University before earning a Master of Business Administration from The Ohio State University. His first professional roles were at Delphi Automotive, where he worked as a lean implementation specialist, and at Honeywell International, where he managed plant operations and supply chain functions for consumer products facilities across the Midwest. Both roles required a specific kind of analytical discipline: define what the process is supposed to produce, measure what it is actually producing, find the gap, and close it.

The methodology Cecava applied in those environments is sometimes described as a technical toolkit, as though lean production and process improvement were simply a collection of tools that could be picked up and put down. In practice, the tools and the discipline are inseparable. Root cause analysis, standardized work, value stream mapping, and statistical process control are useful only when the person applying them has the patience to define the problem correctly before proposing a solution. Cecava found that problem definition was consistently harder than the analysis that followed.

"The skills that hold a manufacturing line together turn out to be exactly what holds a hospital together," Cecava said. "The problems look different on the surface, but the underlying discipline is the same."

That background shaped how Cecava approached the transition into healthcare, which began in 2010 when he joined Adena Health System in South Central Ohio. His first healthcare role was System Director of Business Intelligence and Process Excellence, where he led the deployment of Lean Six Sigma across the organization. The work required adapting process improvement tools developed in manufacturing environments to clinical and administrative workflows that are more complex and, in some ways, more resistant to standardization than production lines.

Healthcare presented problems that manufacturing did not. Clinical workflows involve regulatory constraints, patient safety considerations, and professional dynamics that have no direct equivalent in a factory setting. The methodology was the same, but the application required learning the specific language and culture of healthcare operations before the tools could be applied effectively. Cecava spent those early years in healthcare doing exactly that kind of translation work.

"I came to healthcare from a world where every process had a measurable output and every problem had a traceable root cause," Cecava said. "That discipline did not leave me when I changed industries."

At Adena, Cecava progressed from leading process excellence and business intelligence programs to broader operational responsibilities. He served as VP of Regional Operations and System Quality before being named Chief Operating Officer, in which he directed operations across three hospitals and an integrated medical group serving 400,000 patients across 12 counties in South Central Ohio. That scope of responsibility required applying process discipline not at the department or program level but across an entire health system with multiple facilities, service lines, and distinct market conditions.

The skills Cecava had developed in manufacturing environments proved applicable in healthcare in ways that were not always predictable. Business intelligence tools he had used to track production performance were repurposed to monitor clinical quality metrics and operational outcomes. Lean Six Sigma programs he had led in plant environments became the framework for systemwide process improvement at Adena. The vocabulary changed. The analytical approach did not.

"What Lean Six Sigma does in a factory is eliminate the steps that do not add to the outcome," Cecava said. "In a hospital, the same approach can reduce variation in clinical workflows and improve patient results. The tools are the same."

In 2018, Cecava joined McLaren Port Huron in Michigan as Chief Operating Officer and was named President and CEO in 2020, a position he held through 2026. In that role, he oversaw McLaren Port Huron Hospital, a skilled nursing facility, and an integrated medical group serving 235,000 patients across three counties in Michigan. His responsibilities included physician recruitment and contracting, clinical program development, facilities expansion, electronic health record implementation, employee engagement, and quality outcomes.

Managing a hospital, a skilled nursing facility, and an integrated medical group as a single operational system presents a specific kind of challenge. The three entities have different workflows, different regulatory environments, different staffing models, and different performance metrics. Holding them together as a functioning system requires a consistent framework for understanding where each one is performing, what the gaps are, and how to address them without losing the characteristics that make each entity distinct.

That is the kind of problem that process discipline is built for. The same approach Cecava applied in manufacturing environments, defining the process, measuring performance, identifying variation, tracing root causes, and building improvements that hold, was applicable across the entities at McLaren Port Huron. The specific content was different in every case. The framework for working through it was not.

Healthcare has historically drawn most of its administrative leaders from within the industry, producing a leadership pipeline with deep clinical and regulatory knowledge and less exposure to operational management disciplines developed in other fields. The skills that make a manufacturing operation run efficiently, process measurement, root cause analysis, standardized work, and consistent performance monitoring, are the same skills that health system operations require. Cecava's career path suggests the gap between those two worlds is smaller than the hiring patterns of both industries might indicate.

Cecava holds a Certified Project Manager credential from Xavier University in addition to his graduate and undergraduate degrees. He is a proud father to his son Mason and is active in community service in St. Clair County, including the YMCA and local economic development organizations. He has lived in Fort Gratiot and Saginaw in Michigan and in Troy and Grove City in Ohio across his career.

About Eric Cecava

Eric Cecava is a healthcare executive with a background in hospital operations, physician relations, and health system leadership. He served as President and CEO of McLaren Port Huron from 2020 to 2026, overseeing a hospital, skilled nursing facility, and integrated medical group serving 235,000 patients across three counties in Michigan. Before that, he served as Chief Operating Officer at McLaren Port Huron and at Adena Health System in South Central Ohio, where he directed operations across three hospitals serving 400,000 patients. His earlier career was in manufacturing and supply chain operations at Delphi Automotive and Honeywell International. Eric Cecava holds an MBA from The Ohio State University and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.

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