Executive Search Success Story: Placing a Fractional Chief AI Officer to Build the AI Roadmap for a Sarasota Precision Manufacturer

How JRG Partners placed a fractional Chief AI Officer that gave a $180M Sarasota precision manufacturer senior AI leadership two days a week, delivering an enterprise AI roadmap, first production deployments, and measurable operating results without the cost of a full-time C-suite hire.

The Challenge

A privately held precision manufacturer in Sarasota supplying aerospace and medical device customers was under growing pressure from those customers to demonstrate AI-enabled quality and delivery performance. Ownership understood the opportunity but could not justify a full-time Chief AI Officer at a $180M revenue scale, and previous consulting engagements had produced slide decks rather than results. Executive leadership identified several critical hurdles:

• Customer scorecards increasingly weighting predictive quality and on-time delivery analytics
• Scrap and rework costs eroding margins on high-precision aerospace components
• No internal expertise to evaluate AI vendors or prioritize use cases
• A full-time Chief AI Officer compensation package well outside the company’s executive budget
• Prior consulting engagements delivering strategy documents with no implementation accountability
• An ownership group seeking a senior executive with accountability for results, not advice

Recognizing that the company needed executive-level AI leadership at a sustainable cost, ownership engaged JRG Partners to place a fractional Chief AI Officer with a twelve-month mandate to build the AI roadmap, lead vendor selection, deliver the first production deployments, and build an internal team to sustain them. The company required a search partner with access to senior AI executives who had delivered results in industrial environments and were open to fractional engagements.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

Fractional Executive Placement Expertise

JRG Partners structures fractional Chief AI Officer engagements with defined scope, time commitment, deliverables, and accountability, giving mid-market companies access to C-suite AI leadership on terms that fit their scale.

Manufacturing and Industrial Search Experience

With deep experience recruiting manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain leadership, JRG Partners identified fractional candidates who understood shop-floor realities, quality systems, and industrial customer expectations.

Florida Gulf Coast Network

Our firm’s established networks across Florida allowed us to source senior AI executives within practical travel distance of Sarasota, enabling meaningful on-site presence rather than remote-only advisory.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Engagement Design

Our consultants partnered directly with ownership, the President, and the VP of Operations to define the fractional engagement: two days per week on site, a twelve-month term, an AI roadmap due at day 60, and at least one production deployment with measured results by month six.

Phase 2 — Fractional Candidate Identification

Our team evaluated over 75 fractional and advisory AI executives, prioritizing former Chief AI Officers, VPs of AI, and heads of manufacturing analytics with documented results in quality, scrap reduction, and production planning. Only candidates with implementation track records advanced.

Phase 3 — Selection & Onboarding

Finalists presented an initial diagnostic of the company’s AI opportunity to ownership. The selected executive was engaged within 21 days, with a shop-floor immersion and stakeholder interview program completed in the first two weeks.

Phase 4 — Team Build & Sustainment

Under the fractional executive’s direction, JRG Partners recruited a full-time Manager of Data & Analytics to own day-to-day delivery, ensuring the AI program would continue after the fractional engagement concluded.

Key Outcomes

• Fractional Chief AI Officer engaged within 21 days on a defined two-day-per-week, twelve-month structure.
• 75+ fractional and advisory AI executives evaluated for industrial implementation experience.
• Reduced scrap and rework costs by 18% on the pilot line through predictive quality analytics.
• Raised on-time delivery to key aerospace customers above 97%.
• Delivered C-suite AI leadership at roughly one-third the cost of a full-time Chief AI Officer.
• Built a permanent internal analytics team to sustain results beyond the fractional engagement.