Eric Van Orden calls himself “just a guy”, but Greg knew he was a Manufacturing Maverick the minute he set up an in-person meeting for 4 am. It tracks with Eric’s favorite quote from Winston Churchill: “I like for things to happen. And when they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” As Eric sees it, it’s about taking ownership and making things happen. You try, you fail, you persevere and you move forward.
Eric grew up hanging out at his Dad’s machine shop and even played hooky from High School to spend more time there. He tried a different path after high school and thought about pursuing a law degree, but realized he wanted to go back to manufacturing. When he called his Dad about working at the shop, his Dad gave him a surprising answer. We’re guessing Steve Van Orden is also a Manufacturing Maverick! Luckily, it all worked out, and Eric earned his way from sanding & deburring parts to being the Swiss Lead. Listen in as Eric and Greg explore family businesses, staying on top of new technology, building up a great culture, tooling, and the importance of relationships in manufacturing.
“We all want great things to happen, but some of us just sit there and say, Oh, it didn’t happen this time, and then there’s the other group that says, It didn’t happen, but I’m going to make it happen.”
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What Eric’s Dad said when he called from college to ask him about working at the shop. It’s not what you’d expect. 5:38
- How Paramount went from no Swiss machines 8-years ago to making 1.2 million parts on just one of their 7 machines today. 11:40
- Building a shop culture that keeps today’s 70 employees highly engaged while also investing in technology that will attract the next generation (15:26)
- Why it’s important for Paramount to be part of the bigger manufacturing community (22:46)
- Moving away from cycle time to production time – and how to measure it accurately (27:56)
- Growing from skateboarding parts to inspection to save time to leveraging every square inch of floor space (32:05)
- How every employee is able to be an innovator – and it’s paying off big! (35:09)
- Having a “Pensky clean” shop and why coworkers rib him when tooling vendor’s visit (38:43)
- Two quotes that capture his philosophy for manufacturing and life (43:58)
- Advice to his younger self (51:10)
“I’ll be honest with you, sometimes I don’t know if I always clocked in to the job for the right amount of time. But you know what Datanomix knows? It knows exactly what the machine did because it only reads what the machine did.”
—Eric Van Orden, Paramount Machine Swiss Leads
Links Referenced:
- Datanomix: https://datanomix.io/
- Paramount Machine: https://www.paramount-machine.com/
- NTMA Utah: https://www.nuntma.org/
- mfgmavericks.com: https://mfgmavericks.com