Corner Office to Corner Cafe—Josh Hopp

1. How did you get into the business?

Growing up, I never wanted to take over the company because I was going into advertising. I was informed by an advertising Penn State alum that the industry is cutthroat, so I decided to go into marketing. I worked for two Fortune 500 companies, but I did not enjoy working at these companies as I felt that they were very impersonal. When I was in between jobs, I asked my dad, “Hey, can I work here while I look for a new job?” (Not a great way to ask for a job.) My dad said, “Sure, you’re going to be working in the back.”

While working in an assembly cell I started to get frustrated with the process; there was a lot of wasted time. I went to my dad and said, “Can I change this around?” So, I did, and I sped up the process. Then my dad put me in another area. He asked, “Well, what can you improve?” I was too naive to see what he was doing at the time. I started improving various areas of the company and that started having an impact. About 6 mo. into working at HK Metalcraft I still hadn’t found a new job. Bob Osborn, who was my dad’s number two, asked, “Hey, are you gonna stay?” I said, “You know what? I think I want to stay.” They came up with a game plan for me to work in every department. We called it “The Anti-BS tour” because it was important as I grew in the company that I was knowledgeable enough that no one could BS me. 

2. You promote your engineering expertise with design for manufacturability. How important is that?

Our greatest area of growth is custom parts. In terms of design for manufacturing, we like to get in as early as possible.

My grandfather was an engineer, and my dad was an engineer.  I am not; but I surround myself with people smarter than me and we have very smart engineers on our staff. They start asking the customer, “On this print, is this the perfect part?” And then, “What if?” Often, we discover that some critical dimensions are not even functioning dimensions. We start helping them design a part that can be stamped much less expensively. Also, we like to take a part that might not be a traditional stamping and turn it into a stamped part. A stamped part is going to be significantly less expensive and have a much higher production rate than a machined part.