Faces of Interface Featuring Ken Bishop

From the beginning, force measurement has been a major part of Ken Bishop’s life. Today, Ken leads our robust production and manufacturing operations as our executive Chief Operations Officer.

Growing up in Anaheim, California, his father worked for Ormond, Inc., which produced load cells, rocket thrust stands, weighing products, and scales. He got to know the people his father worked with and the cool technology they were working on. Therefore, it was no surprise that Ken would follow in his father’s footsteps shortly after graduating high school and working for Ormond himself.

Ken worked with his father at Ormond for five years. He held positions as a driver and an assembler and eventually worked his way into a technical management position. After Ormond, he took a brief break from the force measurement industry to join the expanding computing field. He worked at General Micro Systems, focusing on single-board computers. However, his true calling pulled him back, and he rejoined the force measurement industry when he was hired at Sensortronics.

Sensortronics then became the first load cell company acquired by Vishay in 2002. Vishay is a global manufacturer of semiconductors and passive electronics, and in the early 2000s, they acquired three more load cell manufacturers after Sensortronics. Ken’s job became to work as a team member to consolidate the four American companies and create Vishay’s transducer group as the Operations Manager for America. Ken oversaw this group for several years afterward.

During his working career, Ken also focused on his post-secondary education. He took night classes for quite a while to earn several degrees. He started with an Associate of Science from Fullerton College. He then received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Redlands in California.  His post-secondary education allowed Ken to excel faster in his career path.

After Vishay, Ken took a brief hiatus from the engineering world to escape it all. He picked up and moved to Montana to enjoy the wide-open spaces and outdoor lifestyle. However, it was not long before the itch to make things return. In 2006, Ken moved to Arizona and joined Interface.

Ken began his career at Interface on the sales team as an application engineer focused on the West territory. He worked with customers to deliver force measurement solutions for various test and design challenges in the aerospace, industrial, medical, metrology, and automotive sectors. He eventually worked his way up to become a senior application engineer. During his time as an application engineer and senior application engineer, Ken realized that many customer challenges could not be solved with an off-the-shelf solution. While Interface had worked on custom projects previously, there was no official department to head up the growing demand for custom solutions.

Ken was allowed to become the custom solutions director when the department was created. He jumped at the opportunity and created a solutions team that could meet the growing demands of Interface’s customers for systems and specialized products. Kenl, as COO, continues to lead the development of custom force measurement solutions designed to meet the unique challenges of an evolving technology and manufacturing ecosystem.

Ken has truly done and seen it all in the force measurement industry. His leadership provides exceptional drive and initiative in our quality, production, services and supply chain. His experience is a huge asset to Interface.