Leon Rode

Being the Western Regional Sales Manager for Sentry required that I had to be Forward-thinking and a results-driven sales leader. My 9 years of experience of creating and designing without much support was a benefit to final getting partnership development. In many ways Sentry at the time Is joined them was a major step down from my position at Simplimatic Engineering.

At Simplimatic Engineering I had developed two (2) patents in the electronics industry. The first was handling printed circuit boards carefully and not allowing anything to impact the circuits, capacitors, transistors etc and conveyed the boards simply by supports the outer edges of the board. This was with numerous companies such as Apple and IBM.

The second patent was for Hard Disc drives for companies like Conner Peripherals was founded by Seagate Technology in 1985 and financed by Compaq with San Jose State alumni Finis Conner and Terry Johnson in San Jose, CA.

Compaq was developing new small hard disc drive that put the capacity of a 5.25" drive into the now common 3.5" format. The drives were assembled in a Class 10 cleanroom. So I had to develop a conveyor system that conveyed the drives that did not create any particulate.

Each drive after completion had to pass a 48 hour diagnostic test before being shipped out to customers. Conner also had facilities around the world and I designed the systems for the facilities in San Jose, CA and Tempe,Arizona.

The Hard disc drives lines were expensive typically in the 5-8 Million dollar range. I received a commison on each system that was at 1% of the system cost on top of my base pay. So my compensation as a Project Engineer was great at that time, but the reional mangers were getting 3%. I wanted to be promoted to Sales Manager for the Electronics Group but I was turned down, becasue of the impact on exisitng SECO Regional Managers.

The market for the 3.5" drive exploded, and Finis started working on put facilites into other countries to improve distibution and take advantage of lower labor rates. So I ended putting multiple systems into Puerto Rico, Singapore and Columbia. So startup were fine in all areas with the exception of but Colombia which was a little rough.

At this time my career was getting unstable as Crown Simplimatic Engineering had been purchased by Carnaud Metal Box and English company.

The new owners represented by SECO president Jerry East demanded I relocate to Lynchburg, VA. I was offered a tremendous deal including a house as Jerry East wife was a realtor, but my wife at that time refused as our children were very toddlers and we had a third child on the way.

The new Carnaud Metal Box President was a financial wizard and saw the the Simplimatic Florida facility was not profitable, so he was going to shut it down. When he heard I declined the offer to relocate to Lynchburg, VA.

To put leverage on me to relocate to Virginia, he decided to shut down the Livingston, CA facility, where I worked. I refused. There were 70 employee at the Livingston facility that I was deeply connect to.

This created an enormus amount of stress and I explained to my co-workers I could not go becasue I had thrid child on the way, so they supported me. For closign the facilty down my co-workers were offered a generous compensation check, but I was not. I also had refused to sign the second patent application.

So after several weeks of tough negotiations with new CEO of Simplimatic, he aggreed to let me leave the company if I agreed to sign the patent application. I also had him come to an agreement that he would include me with the compensation checks that all of the other employees were getting.

He agreed and I was allowed to leave Simplimatic Engineering.

Starting at Sentry Equipment as a Regional Sales manager did not have its own diffculties but I was free of Simplimatic. Adam Vinoskey the owner of Sentry had aslo been the former president of Simplimatic Engineering.

To set up his Sales department Adam had hired former SECO and Stand Knapp Regional Managers and given them territories. So to work with Sentry I had to be employed West Coast Sales Manager John Klosterman whom had his own company called Shore Automation.

I knew John well as he had also been the West Coast Regional Manager for Simplimatic Engineering. Johnhad signed an exclusive contract with Sentry and Adam Vinoskey, so John Klosterman was eager to higher me, his company name was Shore Automation.

So I immediately went to work for Shore Automation and base salary stayed the same but my commission grew from .05% to 3% on every project I sold. But Adam could not build the equipment I signed the patent on, due to the patent infingment protection penalties. Shore Autoamtion also represented several Italian companies such as Sacmi, Sig and others.

Within 9 months I had the highest Sales for Sentry primarily because in my agrrement I had asked Sentry owner to open my sales access to anywhere in the United States, as I had contact all over the nation. Adam agreed to this, but when going into another regional manger territory we had to split commisions with the Regional Manger of each territroy that entred.

I also expalined to Adam that I would hlep build his business in equipemnt by generatign sales in Bulk Depalletizer, Case Palletizers, Side-grip Units, etc. Adam and all Sentry Regional Manager agreed.

So one of my first calls was to the a Regional Manager at Welch Foods in upper New York, I new John from my days at Seco and immeadiately sold a bottle line at the Kennewick, WA facility.

The existing bottle line had a glass bottle uncaser, and they wanted to get into bulk glass for the lower glass pricing. In regard to case packing they eatnterd to get into bulk glass. . In regard to case packing they were looking at a new case former, partion inserter, drop packer and case sealer.

So I developed a layout that included a new Bulk Glass Depalletier, a side grip Lowerator, and a Sacmi Packer with automation partion insertion that could do tray / film, and all the inerfaceing table-top and case conveyor and lectrical controls.

The project went off with any problems and soon I as doing problems at all the Welch Foods locations in the United States. Welches had an annual Engineering meetign with all the proejct engineers at all ther facilties around the nation met and discussed there operations.

Shortly after that I was in a meeting with John Klosterman and his customer a VP at Coca-Cola, San Diego, CA-I believe it may have been the Downey feacilty. Dan was talking about the problems of th plastic shell they were using, I suggested they go with a pad for the 2 litre that would be film wrapped.

Dan did not believe it could be done, so I set up a visit to go to a Coca-Cola plant in Coca-Cola, Tijuana, Mexico to see a Sacmi 60 cycle machine running in production. Dan had three (3) black SUV take our team over to the Coca-Cola Facilty in Tijuana.

We spent a half a day viewing the machine and the plant and Dan was convinced. So several Sacmi were purchased at differnet Coa-Cola facilities, and then i was asked to travel to Coca-Cola , Atlanta to put on a sales presentation which I did with several Sacmi Engineers.

I was asked to attend the meeting and give a presentation on system design and I did, it was a full day of discussions and went very well, I met with approx thirty of there plant manager , project manger, and various operation personel. I was there for 3 days talking with three engineering teams.

I also had a great relationship with and engineer at the Nestle Project Engineer group in Irvine, CA, his name is Balys Platukis. Balys and I did numerous project at there Pet food facilites in Wisconsin and other states with Starkist Tuna and I designed an autoamtic retort loading system for them using Stock retorts.

During thsi time Amcan was building a co-packing facilty in American Canyon, I was good freinds with Dan Hancock the Plant Manager. He asked me to design a High speed can and bottle line for hot fill with high levels of automation for a new producut Arizona Ice Tea, they aslo ran prodcut that has to go thru retorts thermal heating and cooling over a time frame with the product in retort baskets.

After a successful start-up I received a call from Don Vultaggion the owner or Arizona Ice Tea and he wanted to meet me and flew me out to New York. I went out and he explained how he started his busineess but basically wanted me to design more lines for him which I did.

I had also built a very good relationship with John Gallo whom was in charge of the Glass Plant in Modesto, CA. I designed eight (8) lines for John and we flew back twice to the Sentry Manufacturing facility in Forest, VA. John really wanted turk-key responibility and sentry could no develop a glas bulk Palletizer. so then John transitioned to Emmetti I believe.

I believe I am Forward-thinking Regional Manager with deep understanding of market conditions and regional preferences. Decisive and hardworking leader skilled in making proactive, insightful updates to system design and automation procedures. Prepared to leverage my 44 years of progressive Beverage and Food experience to positively impact business operations.