Manufacturing Innovation with Erik and Joseph - Mondays With Milt

- Welcome to another episode of Mondays With Milt. Now, I'm back out on the production floor today and I'm with our innovation team. So I've got the innovation manager here, Erik Johnson. Erik, why don't you tell 'em a little bit about what you do as the innovation manager here.

- Well, I focus on products, both existing products and the creation of new products. Trying to improve existing products and maybe create new solutions for our customers and I work with our outside community partners like the University of Louisville.

- And mentioning the University of Louisville, we've got a summer intern, Joseph, and Joseph you've got a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Louisville.

- Yes sir.

- And you're going on to get your masters,

- Yes.

- So how did you get involved with WireCrafters?

- So for my senior project, I had the pleasure of working with Erik on our universal door project and I was fortunate enough to be hired on here as a summer intern.

- And we're trying to keep you around for this coming fall semester.

- Yes sir.

- Well all right. So when we're looking at new products, we're looking to improve existing products, that something that Erik's taking a look at. He works with a team on a regular basis and recently you did some testing of some panels, you wanna give a little info on that?

- Sure, recently we did some pendulum testing of a new physical barrier product to evaluate its ability to absorb a certain amount of energy. There's a standard for that, an ISO standard for guarding and so that is what the testing was for.

- Along with that, we did some GuardRail testing.

- Yes, same thing, we tested our protective rail. I actually got on a 10,000 pound Toyota forklift traveling at about five and a half miles per hour and ran into our protective rail and we measured both the permanent and dynamic deflections and our product held up great.

- Yeah, so that's what we got this week. Joseph, thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- Erik, appreciate your time. We'll see ya next week on another episode of Mondays With Milt.