Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E23 Jordan Kapitanoff | Screw Manufacturing, LEAN Processes, and Investing for Engineers
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Jordan Kapitanoff is a mechanical engineer by training and a transformation leader by practice. A graduate of Kettering University with a BSME and an MBA from Aurora University, Jordan built his career at the intersection of engineering, operations, and culture change. Over the years, he has consistently stepped into roles where systems, teams, and processes needed elevation — and delivered measurable results.
At Bison Gear & Engineering, Jordan moved from Application Engineer to Innovator, and later to Supervisor of Quality Innovation and Sustainability Engineering Manager. There, he led initiatives grounded in A3 problem solving, DMAIC, and lean thinking — not just to fix problems, but to transform how teams approached quality and continuous improvement. He also launched a new innovation and product development consulting division inside the organization, demonstrating an entrepreneurial drive even within established companies.
His leadership continued to evolve at G&W Electric and later at tmax Group, where he served in operations excellence and operations management roles. Across these organizations, Jordan focused on production management, lean process improvement, and aligning communication across departments — recognizing that operational excellence is just as much about people as it is about process.
Today, Jordan is channeling that experience into entrepreneurship. As Co-Founder of CoForge Technologies LLC and Head Coach at Thinking Kap Personal and Career Coaching, he works at the convergence of operational performance and personal leadership development. With a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Villanova University and service as a board member of The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), Jordan continues to advocate for systems thinking, continuous improvement, and empowering professionals to take ownership of their growth.
LINKS:
Jordan Kapitanoff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-kapitanoff-5b821817/
CoForge Website: https://www.coforge.com/
Aaron Moncur, host
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So, welcome to the Being an Engineer podcast. Today we are joined by Jordan Kepitanoff, and Jordan is a mechanical engineer turned operations leader, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and now co-founder at Coforge Technologies, also head coach at Thinking Cap Personal and Career Coaching. Jordan has spent nearly two decades driving operational excellence, quality transformation, and innovation inside manufacturing organizations, and now he's helping individuals and companies level up both performance and leadership. Jordan, thank you so much for being with us on the show today.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Aaron, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here with you.
Aaron Moncur:So, just a little behind the scenes info for all of you listening right now, Jordan and I have spent literally the last hour fighting it issues on both ends, and we have finally got to a place that everything is for the most part working. So,
Jordan Kapitanoff:Jordan is workable,
Aaron Moncur:it's workable. Yeah, thank you for bearing through that with me. Gosh, what a nightmare that was. All right,
Jordan Kapitanoff:all good,
Aaron Moncur:all good. That's right. We figured it out. So we're going to start with a couple of rapid fire question and answers here to help the audience get to know you quickly. Jordan, here we go. First question: solo problem solving or team brainstorming?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Oh, for sure. Team brainstorming every day. Yeah, that's it for me.
Aaron Moncur:Intuition or data?
Jordan Kapitanoff:I wish I could be use my intuition, but I need data.
Aaron Moncur:And last one, if you could instantly master one engineering skill, what would it be?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Oh, okay. This one's a little harder, I would say GD and T.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, good one.
Jordan Kapitanoff:I mentioned in Torrance,
Aaron Moncur:yeah,
Jordan Kapitanoff:would be that's a game changer.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's a tricky one. We had, do you know Dean? He was at our PDX event last year. Dean, he's got a great YouTube channel, he's just a GD and T master, he's got some great content out there, but that's a deep subject. Yeah, and I'm not great with Gdnt either. I think my answer for that one would have been electrical engineering, because I am awful when it comes to anything electrical. I just, if you want to break it, give it to me. Yeah, electrical related, that's
Jordan Kapitanoff:great. Yeah, there's plenty of that too. There's most of engineer. It's difficult to answer because you can instantly think of all the things that you know you could be better at. So, you're overwhelmed with, oh man, I'm not very good at this one. I could be better at. Really, pick any of those and you're going to be good.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to choose from. Okay. Grace Jordan, let's start with the first formal question of our interview, which is the same one I ask everyone to get started. What made you decide to become an engineer?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, I didn't really know I wanted to be an engineer, necessarily. Certainly not in high school. I didn't really know what engineers did. You could argue I might still not know, but I knew that I was pretty good in math and pretty good in science, and I like physics, and that sort of stuff. I was always interested in cars since I was a little kid, so that kind of moved me in that direction. And then, you know, I met with, I think, most high schools have some sort of a college and career type counselor, so I met with them, and they said these are the things you can do with the things that you like to do, and said, okay, I could work on cars, I could design something like that, or make.. I didn't know what that even really meant, but it's like, okay, I guess that's what I'm going to do, I'll be an engineer, but like I said, I always like figuring things out and figuring out how stuff worked, and so when I look back on it now, it makes sense that I fell into that career path, and I always loved asking questions, and I always loved taking things apart, and building Legos, and working, having RC cars, and all that sort of stuff, but I didn't really know what an engineer was, or did, until, you know, I went to school and started working and figured it out. There
Aaron Moncur:was there a point as you began your engineering career where, when you realized, oh yeah, this I made the right choice, this is definitely the career for me.
Jordan Kapitanoff:So I think probably a couple years into my first job, there were some times when we started building and developing technologies, processes, different parts. Wow, this is really cool. We're actually coming up with ideas, testing things, making them, and turning them into something that somebody wants. To buy, like, somebody wants to use for whatever it was they're doing, and that was just thinking, wow, this is actually pretty cool. I was never a formal design engineer, and so I never used the use those, a lot of those things you learn in school, necessarily, like the formulas, the physics, the technology, so there were some times when I got to kind of play around in that space a little bit, and those are really fun, like just to use. Oh, I remember doing cool, and I got to use a little bit of that here and there, and then I gravitated towards other things, and I recognized there's still some of those skills and problem-solving techniques and ways of going about understanding things that are applicable regardless of whether or not you're a traditional mechanical design engineer or electrical design engineer, you can be using all sorts, but yeah, there was some time earlier on my career when we were developing and I was part of some design teams, oh man, this is like really cool. I'm a, I'm a real engineer now.
Aaron Moncur:Nice. Yeah, I remember working on a human-powered submarine or submersible project back in college, and thinking, yeah, this is cool, this is what I signed up for, and I'm actually using the CAD skills I learned, and some of the calculations I learned, and that was a fun, fun experience, all right. If you would give everyone just maybe a 62nd background, what are some of the things that you have done in your career today? What's your general background as an engineer?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, so you mentioned in the intro mechanical engineer by education into school I went to Kettering University has a program where you are, you do a co-op from when you're essentially a freshman through when you graduate, and so I was able to see how things work right out of high school, and I worked at a company that made fasteners, which is sounds incredibly boring, and I thought it was really boring when I first went there. Right, it's like I'm going to be making screws and rivets, what? But what it allowed me to do was to see where all this stuff went, right. So we had screws that went into cell phones, screws that went into rail cars, these are one in the airplanes and cars and other electronics, and you start to be exposed to all this sort of stuff, right. So that was a really interesting experience that I had as a college student, just to see the whole world of engineering. What all are the all the things that people are making, right? So I went through there and went to a company that made electric motors and gearboxes, and I did applications engineering, and then I moved, transitioned into process development, and I really got interested in new manufacturing process improvement work, and how to apply some of those skills to engineering and office related processes, so I spent some time doing that, and then I moved into some quality roles, which again I was really hesitant about. I don't want to be in quality, I don't want to work on other people's problems. I've got plenty of my own. I don't want to. I was resistant for a bunch of reasons. I was able to go and do that with some convincing, and and but I'm glad I did, it was an awesome experience, and we can talk about that at some point here later, but went through that, then moved into an engineering management role, and I started moving into more leadership roles at that point, and then into another company where I was focused more on to continuous improvement, industrial engineering leadership, and then moved on into another role in operations, direct operations. So I always worked in a company that made something and made it at that same facility. I always loved that, and I loved being a part of next to manufacturing and supporting manufacturing. Then I moved my last role before Coforts Technologies, I moved into a role where I was direct operations management, so that was a whole nother world that I moved into. Really enjoyed that, a lot of learning experiences. And then I moved to my current role today is running operating Code Force Technology.
Aaron Moncur:I want to go back to the screw manufacturing place, because I have some questions about that. I've actually wondered about this, and I've never taken the time to go and look it up, which is embarrassing. But screw manufacturing, so you guys are making what, like Phillips head and Japan head screws and machine screws, and all the different types of screws, basically.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, you got it. So the company I work for, it's called Extron Fastening Systems, and I think they since have sold or moved, I don't even know what they're called anymore, but it was in Rockford, Illinois, which, fun fact, used to be the crew manufacturing capital of the world, moved there and worked there, but this company, the designer, and have patents on the forks and forks plus crew heads, I know many people have love-hate relationships. Swift with torques, torques had screws, but yeah, they did all the design, and they did the applications engineering, and then the manufacturing. There was still even when I was there, there was still a lot of manufacturing in Rockford.
Aaron Moncur:It's funny you mentioned Rob and
Jordan Kapitanoff:Rivets, I should say Rivet
Aaron Moncur:and Rivets. I've actually been to Rockford, Illinois. I have a cousin who used to live there, and as a kid we went up there a couple of times to go visit the cousins. It's a fun trip down memory lane. Okay, so manufacturing screws, you guys are pumping out like millions and millions of screws. I'm sure is such a silly question. It's probably such an obvious answer, and it's going to be embarrassing even asking this, but you're a pro in this area, so I'd be remiss if I passed up this opportunity, looking at, like, a Torx is a good example, or a Phillips head, or the hex recess in a machine screw. How do they get these recesses in the head of the screw? Is it like a punching operation?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, so it's a forging, yeah, it's a forging or upset forging operation. Yeah, so they would have called headers, header machine, and so they could have multiple passes that that create that shape, but essentially you have a steel wire that you're pulling off of a coil as you're running into this machine, and it's grabbing the part, and it grabs the part and it puts it against a die, and then it, yeah, it strikes the head of machine, and it will cut, could cut it at the same time, potentially, but or a series of dies will come in, and we'll make 123, different punches to upset the head, and then it will cut off the part, and then it'll roll down to the next operation, the upset forging or header die header machine,
Aaron Moncur:interesting. Okay, so you start with just a wire that what comes off a giant spool,
Jordan Kapitanoff:yeah, you got it.
Aaron Moncur:Even for
Jordan Kapitanoff:various, so they did have some processes where they would machine the screws, some of the larger, more complex ones, but the vast majority, yet this is wire, very staged wire, right, that would run off the machine and get pulled into the machine, and then it would do this forging operation, or upset forging operation, and then roll out the next machine, which is usually think it was most of the times like a roll threader with the next operation, so that's how they applied the threads. You can have machine threads, but most of the bolts and fasteners are using a roll threader with just two plates with your profile on there and roll the screw through that part in
Aaron Moncur:it. Okay, but machine threads are different. They use some kind of a tap or a dot.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Machine thread is what you would, yeah, exactly what you would think of when you're cutting, so that you're doing material removal, but a roll thread, you don't have material removal forming.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. All right, so even like a number 10 screw or a quarter 20 is something like that, a little bit larger diameter, even those are being pulled off of it's bigger than what most of us think of as a wire, but it's just being pulled off of a spool at that size, huh?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, you got it right. And it's the so they stretch it, and then they can make sure that's the right shape. So it goes through a little series of dies to make sure that the diameters are correct. So it's pulling or stretching, so you're doing a couple things, getting the right diameter, and you're hardening the material a little bit as you're going through and doing that operation. Oh yeah, so yeah, mostly pulled off, and then cut and roll, you know, rolling at one after another,
Aaron Moncur:and then the head, it's not like you're removing material to get down to the thread diameter, from starting from a head size diameter, you're using some kind of ram to forge that material into the head shape, including whatever recess, a hex or Philips or a flathead, or
Jordan Kapitanoff:you got
Aaron Moncur:it. Wow. Okay. Fascinating. That's so cool. Like, I've literally wondered about this for years, never taken the time to look it up, and now I know I haven't thought about that for a long time. It's been a while, so I had to really dig deep there. Terrific. Thank you for answering that. You just made my day. And hopefully, there are a bunch of other listeners right now who are like, 'Oh, cool. I've been wondering about that for a while myself. Let's get into some of the, like, the lean and demand. You were talking about that. What is lean and demand, and how do they relate to manufacturing and operations? I early bird tickets are now available for PDX 2026 but only for a few weeks. PDX is not your typical trade show. Attendees gain practical training and real-time consulting on a wide range of engineering topics, early bird tickets are $165 while regular pricing starts at $375 So, registering now saves you over$200 Also, early bird pricing is only available through May 30-first. First, after that, ticket sales close completely until August, at which point they'll only be available at the regular price. So, if you're planning to attend PDX this year, now is the time to register. To learn more and purchase your ticket, visit PD Expo dot engineer, that's PDEX PO dot engineer,
Jordan Kapitanoff:yeah. Project execution method through lean manufacturing has a door, then through Toyota, which you cannot say is through other folks that came demming that went over to Japan for the ward, helped rebuild some of those, some of those factories, but for me those are different blended to the same thing, which is how do you make a process better or solve a problem that's existing, so they can be used for things like a quality issue that you have, or a quality issue with your customer can be used for a product development process, like how do we improve this product development process, or how do we design, go through, and create a design of experiments, or create a design process to help us evaluate what's going to be the next thing to select or use on this build or this project, so if you have multiple options or ideas you want to validate those, you can use these processes, but for me, a lot of what I did was at least earlier on was I used those lean manufacturing tools to improve processes, and I started with engineering processes, so that was a little bit backwards from how a lot of people do it, but that's what I saw, and I had an interest in, which was, as an applications engineer starting out, I recognize, man, there's a lot of things we do, it just don't make sense, at least they didn't to me, so like, why would we record all this information from our customer on a piece of paper, file that away, and then we'd have to write the same information electronic file and store that in our electronic file folder, and it was just that was the first thing that kind of sparked my curiosity. Why are we doing this? This doesn't make sense to do this twice, and then it snowballed from there. Where else do we have things that just don't seem right? And I didn't really know what lean meant at that point. I just knew this doesn't - this was a waste of my time, that's what I knew. And what you discovered through learning about lean manufacturing and lean methodologies is really what you're looking for is worth wasting time. There's different ways to quantify that and classify that. There's different ways to look for it and observe it, but essentially just trying to find the things that nobody really values or cares about and get those out and just do the things that people really care about and people want. And so that's where that's where it started. My applications engineering work.
Aaron Moncur:Do you think of a specific example, a story that you could share that illustrates that principle of looking for waste, basically the stuff, the part of operations that nobody really wants or cares about, and weeding those out? Is there like a specific example that you can share to help illustrate that point?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, I can think of one from an engineering process, and then, as I'm gone, if I think of one from operations, I'll share that too. But one of the things that we found when we were going through and trying to improve our engineering prototype development process was that whenever we would, whenever we would send off on a request to another engineer. Hey, can you do this part of the job for me? There was always a lag and a wait, and sometimes it was an hour. Most of the time it was not right. Most time was longer than that. Usually it ended up being about a day, which doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Hey, I made my request, and they're going to get on it the next day, but when you do that 10 times or 20 times, you have 20 days of nothing. That's just a request sitting out there, and so that's something that's probably, if most people were to look at their processes, office-related processes, you're going to find that anytime you've asked, you request something from someone else, you've added one day, and we found that in this process. So the application engineer, me, would make a request to a design engineer to either make this, is when I worked at a motor manufacturer, make a new motor design, or make a gearbox design. Usually, those would not be in parallel, those would be sequential. And so, there would be one day request to make the motor, and then they would make their motor, and then another day request to make the gearbox, and then there would make the gearbox, and then there'd be another request to make. The to do the testing in the lab, right? So you'd have you add all these things up, and we found, then we're actually not that bad at what we do when we get on the work, we're pretty good, and we know what we're doing, and we're making good stuff. It's just all this waiting time in between, so that's one of the one of the eight wastes that you learn, like those lean manufacturing is waiting, so the waste of waiting. Nobody's paying for that. You don't, you're not asking me to do this, and then wait. So, just by changing around the processing, how we make requests, or moving people physically closer together, so that they can just work on the next thing, we eliminated a bunch of weight, and we didn't have to change anything about what we're doing in the design, we just had to stop waiting and stop making those sequential requests, and we saw a big improvement in that process. I guess the same thing, we saw the same thing also with some of our manufacturing properties. The last company I worked at before, before Code Forge, we were doing a lot of stall build, and we build something up and complete here, and then it would fit in that way to go to the next stage or the next phase of the build. So, instead, what we said was, well, and we can move these processes closer together, we can divide up the work amongst few different people, but now the work will move soon as it's done. Here goes here, and everyone can see where it has moved to. You don't have to search and look for these parts or on these carts in various places tucked away. We know now it's going to go from here to here, and we've eliminated that wait at wait time, and they're they're relatively easy to fix once you find them,
Aaron Moncur:is there a process for doing this? Obviously, there is the answer, but I remember as a young engineer hearing about operations and manufacturing and eliminating waste, and just imagining to myself, how does that work? There's this guy or girl whose job it is to go around and find waste and get rid of it. How does that actually work? Is that a person literally walking around the factory floor, just looking at what's happening, and then making notes, and then deciding, okay, here's an area that I think we can eliminate waste. Did you find that there was a high-level, like, procedure that you could follow that was codified and could be passed on to others,
Jordan Kapitanoff:so at most of the places that I worked at, really none of those things existed. So I was fortunate enough to be part of the creation of those practices. Now there are like gold star examples of companies that do this stuff exceptionally well, and I'm not saying that I was that, but I'm, I was able to build some of those things in where I went. So initially the answer is no. There's nobody looking at these things, and that's why they're usually hidden and hard to find, but it starts with usually some sort of observation of these things are taking, there's a pain, so it could be our customers are saying it's taking too long to get these prototypes, or customers are saying why our lead times are too long in manufacturing, and so there's some sort of pain, is where it's usually derived from, and then you start having some folks look at it. How do we solve? Is this taking wrong when nobody knows, because nobody's tracking this or looking at it, or even knows to look in a lot of the cases. Again, where I.. and so it starts with getting some folks to understand. Oh, there's some things like the tools you can use, like a gimbal walk to understand what's actually happening in your production store, there are classes and training you can do to look for waste identification, so where can I work, what am I supposed to be looking for, and what does it mean, and how to identify it, but oftentimes it would start with just a high level need, and then we drill down, and okay, who can actually start looking at this? Jordan can look at, and so what I've done is, yeah, I've started with making those observations self and just looking on the floor, but more importantly, and what I think is important for especially young and aspiring engineers to know, is that what you're not going to have all of the answer, you shouldn't yourself have those answers. You're usually working with the team, and if we're working with people in manufacturing floor, you're working with those folks as well. They already know what the problems are, they might not know how to share it, or express it, or how to articulate it yet, and that's your job, is more to find the way to get them to share those problems, whether it's your fellow engineers or other counterparts, or for me, a lot of times it was team members working on the production floor. I would go on the floor, I would make some observations, but then my work was really to engage with the people doing that work and figuring. Out how to extract the knowledge from them, so a lot of times folks will say this is just how we do it, or this is the way I've always done it, this is the way so and so showed me how to do it, so they don't necessarily think that there's anything wrong with it, because they're doing exactly what they're told to do, and they're executing it the way they should be, and that's great, but once you start engaging with them and coaching and giving them a few lessons here and there. Hey, what does it mean to have a waste? What does it mean to have a value-added operation? What does it mean to look for waiting or motion or downtime? Then you can start really, that's how you really accelerate those improvements to answer your question. Yes, it starts maybe with one person, but it shouldn't just stay there, and you really need to get the folks that are doing the actual work to to give you the answer. It
Aaron Moncur:was really interesting how you, you said that one of the big jobs of a lean practitioner is to get to know the people actually doing the work on the factory floor and figure out how to extract the information from them. Are there any examples that you can share of like tools or strategies, tactics that you used to develop those relationships and earn the trust of these workers enough so that they were comfortable saying,"Oh, Jordan, actually, yeah, there is this one area where I think here's what's going on, and maybe this is something you can look at.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, good question.
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Jordan Kapitanoff:So for me, I'm also genuinely interested in people and getting to know people, and I have a lot of respect for people at all all walks of life. That was always something I'm just, I just enjoy is meeting people and getting to know them, but at some point, and I was able to, again, working in a co-op. I was the youngest, I was still in college, so there's all these people around, I know what they're doing, and so it started with, man, I just should just shut up and listen, because I don't know what I'm talking about, and these people do, and I've been able to keep that mentality even when I've learned more and gained more, to remember that there's still a lot of people out there that know a lot more than I do in certain areas, and I just need to shut up and listen, and I think people can respect that if you give them the opportunity to talk and you're not talking over them, you're not waiting for them to finish, you're actually engaging in a real conversation, that's anyone will respect that. Asking for somebody else's input, asking for their ideas, and then listening to that, and following up one of the people that this job I worked at, a guy that was the lead laser operator, fiber laser operator, so we cut a bunch of steel plates, and do all this stuff, and he was an older gentleman, gruff and grumpy, and like very intimidating type of person. He just looked like he wanted to be left to himself, and he didn't want to talk to anyone. And I was in charge of leading a project to implement to bring in a new laser, breathe this whole new floor layout process, and I knew, and I need to get his input when I'm doing this, and so I made it a point. I'm going to make this guy my friend, because I need to know what he knows I'm going to make this successful. Not only that, but ultimately what I'm doing is going to be used by him, and so, in a way, he is my customer. That's another maybe way to think about it, too. Is a lot of the work that you're doing, yes, you have your end user, your customer, but your internal customer is going to be somebody else that's using what you've done, whether the design that you made that somebody has to put together, or the machine that you purchase that somebody has to use, or a process you develop that somebody has to live with and work in, and so if you can recognize and understand those internal customers as well that you need to make sure are satisfied, it's going to help, but back to this person, I just made it a point to go out and talk to him, even though at first it was uncomfortable and maybe intimidating, I just made it. Point to say, hey, how you doing today? What's going on, and you little by little kind of engage, and then hey, I'm building this thing, but what, what's going on with this machine that we're trying to replace? What don't you like about it? It opens up, and you learn what all these people are doing, you learn, at least from him, I don't like that this machine does that. I said, oh, okay, I can add that to my list of questions when I'm going out to talk to these machine manufacturers. What do you do here? What can you do here? And then I can feed that back. And now there's this relationship. Hey, I learned that these machines do this. What do you think about these aspects of the equipment? Yeah, I think I can work on that. And then you can bring him in on the training, and then you say, "Okay, I'm going to do training for this, but I need you now as part of this development. I'm going to bring you in on this training now. You're part of the team now. I'm also expecting something, some contribution from you, so you're going to be part of this team, but now you are my lead trainer for all the other folks that are going to use this equipment, you're going to have to help me create this training plan. What do they need to know? And now you've got something that's really engaged and it has some skin in the game to really help bring this thing to the next level. So I've done that several one is engage with people and really understand them and become with them, and then teach them, coach them, encourage them, but then make them part of the team that's solving the problem.
Aaron Moncur:Gold, right there, Jordan, that was a masterclass in building trust with people. I don't know about that, but thank you. That was really great. Yeah, thank you. Not, I genuinely think there are a lot of people listening to this, who are going to be able to take what you just explained and start applying that right away, because he gave some great detail there. It was a very relatable experience. Thank you.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Awesome. Yeah, I always thought, as I moved through my engineering career, I also recognized that maybe I wasn't the best traditional engineer, I'm sitting around all these really smart guys, man. You can make that, you know how to do these things. So I have to find something else that I can be good at and solve problems too. And I've joked with my wife that, man, maybe I should have been like a psychiatrist psychologist or something like that, that would have helped me with kind of the career choices I made.
Aaron Moncur:That's a really interesting comment, so at some point you, you started to believe that maybe there are other aspects or avenues of engineering where I could add more value than where I am right now. How did that realization come about, and what did you do following that realization?
Jordan Kapitanoff:I talked a little bit about where what I did when I moved from the applications engineering role in my first company I worked for to working on lean process improvement stuff, and that I thought was really exciting, because you could take, could take this thing that doesn't really exist, right? This is theoretical thing of that we do to make product on the that comes out of it and make that better, so we can either make better products because we've improved how we design with the processes that we use, how we evaluate or design, or just allow us to make more of them by shortening that time we're working on that, and then seeing how people interacted with that process. Oh, they don't at first, that they don't want to do it, because I'm telling other degreed engineers that have a lot of experience when I'm one or two years out of college that they need to be doing something different. So, back to maybe some of that psychology of how do you convince people and engage with people and have them try to do something different, but seeing that work, seeing us make a process better, also helped me recognize men, I can make a process better, but I can also make people better in how they do their work through different ways of encouraging them to take different training or to behave in a different way or to try something new or to work with somebody in a different way or to get them more education or whatever it is, get them exposure to different parts of the business. I can make people better engineers or better operators or whatever it is as well, and that all that really interested, just how do you make processes and people better, and I think that's really cool when you see somebody that was maybe not your enemy necessarily, but maybe an adversary when going into something, and then hearing them a year or two later telling other people why they need to do the process that they didn't want to do initially. It's such a cool thing to experience, and to see people develop and grow like that, and that has.. that's really interesting to me.
Aaron Moncur:Speaking of developing and growing, you, you put together an organization or a program. I'm not sure what to call it, to help engineers learn about and grow in the skill of investing, is that right?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, so it's brand new, it's called the Engineering Capital Collective, so ECC. So myself and my business partners at Coforge have also been talking about maybe at a higher level, more existential level. How do we help people, specifically engineers, be the best versions of themselves? And one of the ways we thought was through financial freedom. So, when you are financially free, you have the ability and the freedom to do work that may be more interesting or meaningful or progressive than maybe you would if that was still part of maybe your everyday concern. I'm keeping this job because my insurance is really good and I need a job right now, even though I don't really like it, or I want to do this for a couple more years until I get enough saved up, and then I can go out on my own. Okay, and those are great things, and I've had to do those too, but maybe there's a way too that we can help folks with that financial side, so that they can do some work that they're really passionate about or interested in, so one of the things that we are trying to offer is classes in tips and on investing, another is on real estate management, another is building your own business, another is having some professional coaching services, or being able to partner with other like-minded people to develop or create your company, so we're trying to create a community where we offer some of these things and offer the opportunity to connect with other like-minded people to help help folks achieve whatever that next step is for them,
Aaron Moncur:that's awesome. You have, you've got your fingers in all sorts of pies, don't you?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, I think my wife would tell you that maybe a FOMO kind of guy, where I like, I just.. there's all these cool things that are happening, and I want to be involved in it. You would bite off more than I could do, but I think there's some cool things going on that in Forge Technologies just starting up. Yeah, it's really exciting, and I'm at a point, and my partner's at a point where we want to add some more value and bring, put some stuff back into this community.
Aaron Moncur:I want to get to Co Forge and talk about that before we do. Let me ask maybe one more question about ECC, about your investing program. What is. let's see, I'm trying to think of a question that can give a high impact answer without taking too much more time on this on this topic, but what's your.. maybe what's your favorite thing about this.. this program, or the impact that you've seen it have in an engineer's life, or even in your own life, but just thinking about the investment program in general, is there one if you were to put something on a billboard that millions of people were going to see about investing, whether it's real estate or whatever, what would that be?
Jordan Kapitanoff:Good question. The group right now, ECC is in its kind of alpha test group, so we're putting some things out there, and we've got some folks that are providing some feedback and saying we like this or we don't like that, so it's still very young, and we're looking for the next group of folks to come on board here pretty soon. It's like our beta test group, if you will, to start working on it, but one of the things I like is we just put some really basic stuff out there. Hey, we're investing, so and so is investing in it, or don't purchase options in this, and it's just a little things like, okay, now, why did you do that, and so it can build from there, or if you don't really want to think about that, and you just want to look at some of those options, you can say, okay, maybe I have a little bit of disposable income, and I'll just try that, I'll experiment,
Aaron Moncur:so it's really easy, we put some stuff out there just to say, here's what so and so is investing in. You want to try it, you're welcome to try it, but and we'll explain. Here's why we see these things that we think are attractive for making this purchase or making this sale, so not only the stock or the option, but here's some things why I think it's really neat, and it's a really low barrier. You can look, you can agree with, you can purchase off of that, or not. You just say,'Okay, it's interesting, and move on to that. It's an interesting idea, right? Because it's - it sounds like intro to investing, but from an engineer's standpoint, which I think a lot of us would appreciate, right? We all think the same way, very linear, logical approach to life and engineering, and everything, including investing. So, let's get to..
Jordan Kapitanoff:I think, really quick, just.. I think one thing that engineers can be is we can be risk averse, a risk-averse group, not necessarily that we are tucked away in our closet, we're afraid to go outside, but we like to know. All the things that are happening, all the different variables, and all the different ways this could go wrong. I think oftentimes that we can worry about that so far, where it gets to the point where we have, we don't take action, and so I think this is also a community where we can help encourage some of that, whether investing, whether it's real estate, or whether starting your own business or finding people to help start that business that you're interested in, because we need some of those folks in our community to help with that and encourage with that. So I'm really excited about that, about ECC, and where that could go.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, let's jump into Coforge. What is Coforge? Why did you start it? And what are some of the things that you're doing there?
Jordan Kapitanoff:One of the things I enjoyed with the first call that you and I had was we had a shared experience where we started something somewhat out of necessity because we didn't have a job. I had been wanting to do my own thing for a long time. I never knew what to do, necessarily, or how to start it. And so, at one point, my partners, my now partners, approached me and said, 'We've got something that... and I've worked with them in the past, so we knew them from prior prior jobs and lives. Hey, we've got this thing that we're looking to buy, and we want an operator that sounds really interesting. I could run and operate that. I've been doing some operations work now for a couple years, and so we were looking for that, and that deal ended up falling through. And we said, okay, this is still interesting. How do we continue this idea when we say, okay, why don't we look at purchasing some other sort of small manufacturer product manufacturer, so we went through several of these, and nothing worked for whatever reason. The deals didn't work out, whether it's our price or we found something we didn't like, but them not working out during that time. I ended up losing my job, so I had no other job, and I started looking for regular work, just to get another regular job again, and it was this point where this realization I had was Jordan. I think this might be your now or never talking about that risk-averse thing. I think having that regular income, the regular paycheck, it's safe, and I don't know if I'm going to really, if I'm being honest with myself, if I'm going to pull the trigger at any other time, knowing I wanted to do this, is that perfect opportunity. Okay, you have to do it. My partners and I worked up a plan on how to run this business. We looked at what are the things that we can offer, what is the value we can provide to the community out there. No, we all have worked in some form of engineering, have worked in operations, we've all worked had some process improvement lead background, we have manufacturing background, so we pooled together our collective resources and abilities and created Pro Forge technology, and so Coforge is a assembly and engineering services company, but really we can help the entire value stream from a company, whether that's working on your designs for manufacturability stuff, process layout, procuring parts, manufacturing assembly, aftermarket support, customer support, prepare fulfillment, things like that, but we focused on that assembly and engineering element, but we're really interested in partnering with our customers to help make them better.
Aaron Moncur:Where did the focus on assembly come from? Because that's not something you hear super often,
Jordan Kapitanoff:so good question. We've one of our first customers as a small company that doesn't do their own assembly work. There, they contract that out, and us having a kind of a bootstrap startup, that okay, we can certainly do that too. We don't have a lot of initially manufacturing capabilities, so I can't - I don't have a CNC lathe, or I don't have a laser or press brake, but I can - I know where to get this stuff. I can procure all the stuff. We have a lot of really good partners that we use and work with that makes an amazing product, and we can utilize those resources, and then assemble and put those things together using my experience in lean manufacturing process development, product testing, and deliver that to the customer. So, there's a lot of folks out there that don't have manufacturing capabilities at all, or they have capabilities, but they're over their capacity, so it's either something they don't want to do, or they don't have time to do, and so we want to be the partner to help them absorb that. Extra capacity, so we can ramp up quickly. We can be turned on and off if it's a peak demand thing, and they don't necessarily want to staff for those peak seasons. We can be there for peak demand, and we just think it's a really interesting space to be in, especially in certain areas that are growing in energy or medical that are growing really rapidly, we can be there to support those.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, sometimes you just go where the market leads you. I remember in the not earlier days of pipeline, we started doing product design and product development, that's what we did the very first day, right when pipeline started, it was all designing a cell phone case, or maybe a medical device, or something like that, lots of design for plastic injection molding and CNC machining. And then one of our customers asked us to design a test fixture, and I said, "Can you do that? Can you design test fixtures? And we said, "What's a test fixture, yeah, we can do that, and so we did, and they loved it, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we need more than this kind of thing. So we ended up just doing tons and tons of test fixtures for mostly this one large medical device company, and that led to some motion control, and then that led to full automation, and these days most, the vast majority of everything we do is machine design and automation and test fixtures and things like that, and that was all driven by the market. We never had any. There was no intentionality really behind that. No grand master plan from the beginning. Our customers just started asking us to do it, and it naturally progressed, and we followed that, that, that direction that was more or less dictated by the market.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Think we're following that same thread, where we see, especially in energy and power trans, there's a lot going on there, and once you start, maybe with one that your vision expands, who else can we help, or maybe there's one another partner of theirs that could use, utilize the same services that we're offering, and so that's been really interesting. Is our approach to finding and winning customers has changed, and for me, as an engineer, now transitioning into more of the sales role has been really interesting. Tending to be a sales guy and doing all that work has been another career change that's been fun and scary, but yeah, now going down the path of, okay, we've got this one figured out, who else plays in the space, and you just drilling down into that subcategory of energy or power transmission or medical or whatever it is, and finding out what else is going on in those industries. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:all right. Jordan, let me ask you one more question, and then we'll wrap things up here. And this question is for you. I hope it benefits you more than anyone else. I've been doing this at the end of interviews on the podcast. I would love for you to share what is one thing that you're looking for, something that you could use help with, whether it's looking for a particular vendor or more information on a technology, maybe you're trying to find, locate a subject matter expert in some particular area or another, but all of the listeners who are listening to this right now, which at this point I promise is more than just my mom and sister. What is one thing that they can help you with?
Jordan Kapitanoff:That's really cool, I think, as we're growing. Certainly, the opportunity to interact with kinds of customers would love that, right? So, if there's anyone else that needs interested in our services, I'd love to be able to talk to him. We're at the point where we're starting to look for some folks that you know may be able to help with some of that. I'll call it technical operations work, so understand how to read drawings, how to interpret information from the customer and how to move that into the assembly, so how do I take this information? So we're starting the process of looking for some folks that might be interested in that sort of work. As far as industries go, the we have some really smart folks that help us, and we work with or are part of our team in energy power transmission, and we're also looking for some folks that are in the medical industry or are very familiar with that in terms of regulation and testing and approval or being an approved supplier in that industry. So I'd be interested to know more about working in that field.
Aaron Moncur:Just to make sure it's clear for those listening, the technical operations support that you mentioned before. Are you referring to someone who can do process development, like they can receive a technical data package from a customer, understand what's trying to be assembled, make. You factored and then figure out the process for someone factory floor work or some someone like that to do that job,
Jordan Kapitanoff:so that would be that's actually for for Coforge, so somebody that would be able to take that information and help set up our employees at Coforge to run that work,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, yeah, so the engineer in between receiving the data package from your customer, and then actually putting together the process for your co forge employees to execute that process.
Jordan Kapitanoff:That's right.
Aaron Moncur:Got it. Okay. Great. All right. For all of you out there, if that's something you think you can help Jordan with, by all means reach out to him. We will have a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes, that's Jordan Kapitanoff. And Jordan, what outside of LinkedIn are there other ways that people should reach out and get in touch with you?
Jordan Kapitanoff:LinkedIn is a great one for both, before just or ECC, or want to get in touch, that's a good one. You have to email me at at Cofor Jordan.Kapitanoff@Coforge-tech.com So happy to engage with folks there as well.
Aaron Moncur:Perfect. And Kapitanoff, that's K A P I T A N O F F.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yes,
Aaron Moncur:all right. Jordan, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was super fun talking with you, and finally learning how screws were made, among other things.
Jordan Kapitanoff:Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design and Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines, and custom fixtures complemented with product design and R&D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us to join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit The Wave dot engineer. Thank you for listening. Being an engineer has more than 300 episodes, and you don't have to listen to them in order. If you're dealing with a specific challenge right now, there's a good chance we've already interviewed an engineer who's been through it. You can jump around, search by topic, and listen to what's most relevant to you. See you on the next episode.
