Meet Dakota, the inspiration for the company name. She was our first of many Rescue dogs that we now have. We rescued her from a life of abuse but in the end she rescued all of us with her love. So when I think of helping others her name always comes to mind.

I grew up in Cleveland and have lived here most of my life. I went to the University of Toledo where I got my BSME degree. From there I worked at multiple companies local to this area. My first local job was at Ciba Corning Diagnostics located in Oberlin Ohio. I started as a Manufacturing Engineer. During this job I got my MBA at Baldwin Wallace College to pursue the business side of engineering. Eventually Ciba Corning Diagnostics became Bayer Diagnostics and they moved the company from Oberlin, Ohio to Dublin, Ireland. This plant closing took over 250 jobs from the Cleveland area.

This was my first opportunity to make a difference. From this life changing event a small group of us ex-employees formed a new company called Astro Instrumentation where Bayer Diagnostics was our number one customer. We re-hired many of the work force from the old company and started a new company. This was my biggest challenge as we started with nothing and grew the company to where it was eventually sold to Spartronics and became Sparton Medical. This is still the most rewarding accomplishment in my 38 yrs, giving over 100 people their jobs back after being let go.

At this point I was looking for a new challenge, and a former colleague and boss of mine at Bayer Diagnostics ended up at another local company, Vitamix. He asked me to come over and help establish their engineering group, and the rest is history. I help grow the engineering group from 14 people when I started, to over 70 people in the department. I implemented a Change Management system, a Product Lifecycle Management system, a New Product Development process, and a Quality Management System. I also expanded the engineering functional areas by adding Manufacturing Engineering, Systems Engineering, Test, Test Engineering, Program Management, and Configuration Management.

Now I would like to take my experiences and help you and your company reach it’s full potential!