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Our Greatest Resource is Our Team Members

Labor Day is important to Interface. It is our time to celebrate our most valuable resource, our talented team members. We appreciate every single person that has been part of our 51-year-old history. They are what makes us thrive, each and every day.

Our talent is diverse in skills and experience. It takes a wide range of resources to design and build the best precision force solutions in the market place.

At Interface, we are proud of the work we do and the products we provide our clients. Our force measurement tools and technology are recognized as the Gold Standard for accuracy and reliability, because of the hundreds of top-notch engineers, production team members, sales and application engineers, administrators, partners, reps, and distributors, who pour their heart and soul into their work.

On any given day, you can find our experts keenly soldering strain gages, calibrating every load cell, shipping crates of our LowProfile load cells, meeting with clients to design new OEM solutions, engineering new products and supporting our internal and external customers from our headquarter office. It takes a vast group of committed team members to do what we do, and do it well. And that is worth celebrating this Labor Day!

Our employees have been able to achieve success at such a high level because of our focus on the core values we use to define ourselves: ownership, integrity, imagination, and accountability. It’s ingrained in our culture and what we strive to represent throughout the organization.

These values dictate the way our teams interact with clients and one another, and it guides the success of our product development and R&D efforts. There are a shared vision and a common goal which makes collaboration and innovation easier, which helps us to promote a great place to work.

As a premium supplier to the critical infrastructure projects, the aerospace and defense markets, we are also happy to avowal that Interface products are “Made in America.” We take pride in leveraging American labor and contributing our economic success to the U.S. GDP. The National Association of Manufacturing (NAM) presented the following facts on the state of U.S. manufacturing, and Interface is an integral contributor to these milestones:

NAM Facts (Source):

  • Manufacturers contributed $2.38 trillion to the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter of 2018
  • Over the past 28 years, U.S.-manufactured goods exported have quadrupled
  • Manufacturers in the U.S. export nearly half of U.S. manufacturing output
  • Taken alone, manufacturing in the U.S. would be the eighth-largest economy in the world

America’s manufacturing labor force turned America into a powerhouse in the mid-1800s. They started the industrial revolution and became the backbone to American success throughout the next 150 years. It’s critical to our country’s future to celebrate and support manufacturing and labor.

We invite you to check back in every month and read our Faces of Interface blog where we celebrate the individual leaders helping us to achieve our innovation goals. The special series tells the stories and background of some of our most brilliant people. Check out the latest edition here.

Happy Labor Day, and remember to rest and relax. We appreciate all you do Interface Team!

 

 

 

Faces of Interface Featuring Michael Cobb

Michael Cobb has always been a technologist and engineer at heart from his earliest memories. He was exposed to electronics technology at a young age through his father, who worked as an Electrician and owned a small television repair business. Michael was always around while his father tinkered with TV components, which sparked his interest in discovering how things worked.

At age 9, Michael was fortunate to have access to a computer system located at the medical facility where his mother was a nurse. To keep him out of trouble, Michael’s mother would give him technology magazines to read, some of which contained code for computer programs and challenge games that he could enter. Soon Michael began creating his own programs, and at age 11 produced a small program that the office staff began to use for some of their recordkeeping.  As payment, the medical office staff bought Michael a computer kit from one of the magazines. It was the first, but not last computer he built.

Michael attended high school in the 80s where he continued working with computer programming and technology. At a time when experience with computers was hard to find, Michael founded a small lawnmower and computer repair business while still in high school. These interests led Michael to the Devry Institute of Technology, where he would go on to receive an Associates Degree in electronics.

Michael’s first job allowed him to apply his background in technology while working for a small office products company where he became the lead computer technician and began working heavily with computer networking. During this time, Michael joined a group of individuals who were developing some of the very first speech recognition software for use in a digital office dictation system. This technology and the speech recognition algorithms helped to lay the groundwork for the advanced speech-recognition services we have today like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.

Later, Michael was hired by Circuit City Services division as the company’s very first computer technician.  Michael’s technical knowledge and experience allowed him to quickly become a leader within the company where, as National Technical Advisor, he was able to participate in the creation of service and repair programs that were implemented nationwide. After leaving Circuit City and traveling the country for a time with his wife, Michael enrolled at Ohio State University to study Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. During his time, Michael went to work at a small load cell and pressure transducer manufacturing company called SensorWerks. Over the course of several years, Michael learned a great deal about sensor technology, machining, robotics, welding and many other skills involved in the manufacture and calibration of force measurement devices.

In 2016, Michael joined Interface as an Application Engineer, and eventually found his way into the Services Department.  Michael was later promoted to Director of Services, the position he holds today, to oversee Interface’s outstanding Services Calibration Team. In this role, Michael has introduced a number of innovative methods involving process improvement, increased visibility of the calibration process, and a software application that he created himself to allow better communication, customer asset management, and proves visibility. His streamlined methods have significantly sped up Interface’s Calibration and Repair Services, retaining Interface’s signature accuracy and quality, while also putting the recalibrated products back into the hands of customers faster.

In 2019, Michael Cobb created Interface’s Tiered Calibration Services Program to expedite services and provide customer-centric solutions that match the exact requirements of our valued clients.

Michael has been able to accomplish improved efficiency in calibration services because of his leadership style. He leads by example and is always willing to work directly on the factory floor with his team. He sets the example for teamwork.  Michael also insists on an environment of mutual respect and equality among his employees in order to create a culture of openness and humility, with a “Find a Way to Say Yes” approach to customer requests and new services opportunities. This approach has allowed Cobb to bring out the best in those he leads, as well as gain their respect while adding value to the Interface brand.

This hands-on approach to work and leadership persists in Cobb’s free time. He loves to work on various machines, cars and anything else with wires and components he can tinker with and improve. He is also passing along the same traits he learned from his father to his 11-year old daughter, who is now getting into programming like her dad. The family tree is strong in the area of technical brilliance!

 

Exceptional Leadership Begins in Your Community

We love our community. We have established a meaningful history in Scottsdale, Arizona, and we enjoy giving back where our Interface family began and thrives today. Because of our sentimental connection to our community, we strive to be exceptional stewards in our neighborhood.

Throughout the year, we team up several times as a company to participate in community events and volunteering opportunities to do good. It is central to our culture and an example of our core leadership principles. Our employees demonstrate impeccable pride in their service to others because they see the difference they make for their neighbors. They gravitate toward helping others.

Interface’s development of various community initiatives has seen team members show exceptional passion for serving younger generations.  As a result, most of our social impact initiatives at Interface focus on helping children and teens.

“At Interface, social impact is more than a day of service, it’s ingrained in our company culture.” Lilian Gaithe, CHRO at Interface

Each year, we collect backpacks and school supplies for foster children in Arizona. Employees donate essential goods like pens, paper, notebooks and glue for different age groups. After the donations are collected, the team chooses a day to fill the backpacks.

Interface also organizes an annual Christmas Angels program where employees donate gifts for children of all ages. Participation never fails to exceed expectations, and our employees always go above and beyond for children in the program. Because of the success of our backpack and Christmas Angel programs, we plan to initiate a new community program this year to provide pajamas to kids in need.

In addition to our giving initiatives, Interface is partnering with local schools to make STEM education more accessible. Since we are an organization with expertise in technology and engineering, we are going to volunteer time to teach grade school children the basics of robotics. Our goal is to guide students into competing in state-wide robotics competitions, in the hopes they will want to continue their STEM education throughout their high school years and beyond. Perhaps they will even join our Interface team in our 2nd 50, as we just started our 51st year in business as the leaders in force measurement solutions.

Our community service initiatives provide us with the indelible opportunity to see the human side of our employees.  We couldn’t be more thankful to serve our community as a team. By focusing our efforts on children, we’ve fostered an internal community at Interface with an unwavering passion to make a difference.