Episode Details

Connect with Eric Schwarzenbach:

Email: eschwarzenbach@rollomaticusa.com

Website: www.Rollomaticusa.com

Show Transcript:

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan of the Manufacturers' Network podcast, I'm excited to introduce you to today's guest Eric Schwarzenbach. Eric is President of Rollomatic, which is a manufacturer of CNC cutting tool grinding machines. He's been there for 24 years, Eric. Welcome to the show.

Eric Schwarzenbach: Thank you, Lisa. And thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'm excited to be on your show and talk about the time we've gone through now in covid. 

Lisa Ryan: Share with us a little bit about your background. I know you've been with Rollomatic for 24 years now. But what got you to where you're at?

Eric Schwarzenbach: I was at that time I was living in Switzerland. I had the opportunity to move to the US and take over the subsidiary of Rollomatic here in Illinois in 1997. I was green in terms of what America was and then the culture here, but I was highly excited to come here. I'm originally born in Switzerland and moved to England when I was 19 years old.

My mother tongue is German, so I had to learn my English in England. And of course, coming to the US with English British was more difficult because I asked people, What their surname was. And they said, What are you talking about? But I was always in this industry of grinding tool machines since I left Switzerland. I worked in England for 14 years and then moved to Denmark to work there for five years. I traveled in Europe at the time, and then I worked in Switzerland for another company for 12 years until I was very fortunate to find Rollomatic and get the precision here in the US.

Lisa Ryan: That's great. That's so funny that you talk about American English versus British English, because, in this country, we think that we're speaking English, but I guess not so much.  

This has been an interesting past year with covid and with the pandemic. Share with us some of the things that have come up working as a result of the changes you've had to make. How have you gotten through the last year?

Eric Schwarzenbach: The covid situation opened up several opportunities for us, which were beneficial for the company. We didn't see that initially; in the pandemic, we all got scared. Businesses around those collapsed, but it also opened up opportunities. The most significant one is that we had already made plans to install a COO - chief operating officer, who would work along with me. We installed him on April 6th, a week before the country was closed down. Travel came to a grinding halt, and I worked from home for two months. He was on his own here running the company, which was very good for him to learn. 

We were able to implement certain measures in the company where we separated tasks and duties. We improved the working processes in place and put specific procedures in place that became very beneficial. I returned to work again in May back to the office. The fact that we didn't travel meant we couldn't travel with customers. We didn't have any trade shows going on, so we didn't have to prepare for them or execute them. This gave us so much time to focus on our teams and to educate and train our teams.  

Lisa Ryan: What would be an example of one of the procedures you changed that resonated with your staff there?

Eric Schwarzenbach: The organizing of the applications and service team was before we had one person doing the entire two teams. We split that, and we went back to whiteboards - on the wall with magnets and dry erasers. We went back to basics to organize and to schedule and to be able to try to follow the process of doing tests grinding for our customers. It improves your speed and the quality o