Johnstown, Ohio, United States
Skilled fabricator, entrepreneur, and business owner with well rounded military, engineering and operations management experience. GOAL: 100% complete customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the only reason to do anything in business. Without customers, it doesn't matter how good your quality is, it doesn't matter how efficient you are, it doesn't matter how good your marketing is, and it doesn't matter how great your product is. Specialties: Customer focus, business management, welding and joining methods, mechanical systems, metal fabrication, operations management
I started Apeks Fabrication 20+ years years ago primarily fabricating stainless steel botanical extraction and distillation systems for the food processing and medical industries. I developed a line of modular vacuum distillation and extraction systems, and also developed a line of supercritical CO2 fluid extraction systems. Apeks Fabrication has been continuously expanding into several other areas including design, prototyping, custom fabrications, process system integration and specialty welding. I have grown Apeks Fabrication from a startup in my garage to a full fledged business. Apeks Supercritical is a recent division of Apeks that was started to focus on the heavy demand for the supercritical and subcritical CO2 equipment we developed. By combining my military experience, engineering training and business operations background, I am able to offer customers more than just a fabrication service, rather a "fabrication partnership". Most of my customers have been smaller companies that are in need of fabrication services, but don't have the engineering design and practical systems experience that are needed to work with most "make it per your print" fabrication shops. I frequently work from napkin sketches or just verbal instructions.
While at EWI I directed laboratory operations to support welding R&D project execution and physical testing for internal and external customers. Included equipment installation/removal and preventative maintenance, effective floor space management for short and long term research needs, and personnel management. I also managed all aspects of the EWI Lab Services business unit - a $2.5M operation providing physical testing services focused on specification conformance testing for welding consumable manufacturers and end users. While in charge, EWI Lab Services revenue grew 10% YOY while maintaining positive profitability through heavy emphasis on customer delivery and quality. I utilized EWI's well known brand to grow market share under the constraints of a high overhead cost structure in a research organization.
I oversaw and managed up to 30 concurrent applied R&D projects with a total value of $3M+ for 4 different engineering technology groups. I also performed line management of up to 30 engineers in 4 different key technology areas.
I executed engineering consulting projects ranging in size from $10K to $200K with emphasis on arc welding process development and automation techniques. I received 2 patents for inventions related to these projects.