NES December Employee Spotlight
Employee Spotlight
Craig Cobb
Craig Cobb didn’t think he was here to interview.
He thought he was here merely to check out what his friend Ralph Brooks, a fellow small-town Pennsylvanian, did for a living.
Brooks walked his buddy through the Napoleon Engineering Services shop, took him to lunch and even told him a bit of a fib: “He said, Yeah, I think our tightest tolerance is maybe ‘a thou’ (one-thousandth of an inch), but that’s very rare,” Cobb recalled with a smile. “(In reality), we’re running 2/10ths (of a thousandth) all day long out here. Everything he touches is 2/10ths or less, so he lied to me.”
By the end of the visit, NES president Chris Napoleon offered Cobb a job. And after a week-long trial run, the Coudersport native, who still wasn’t entirely (remotely?) sure what he was doing, reluctantly accepted.
Cobb’s first 4-5 months on the job were “a trainwreck” – “I would have fired myself 30 times over,” he laughed. But he – and NES – are glad he ultimately took the position. Because just over 18 years later, Cobb has essentially become synonymous with Napoleon Engineering.
In fact, “I’m the mayor at NES,” he proudly, and only half-jokingly, proclaimed.
SHORTLY AFTER starting, Cobb, ready or not, was thrust into NES’ fledgling complete bearing manufacturing (CBM) department. This was during the company’s adolescence, when that sector consisted of him and maybe one or two others.
For several years, Cobb ran machines non-stop; and he actually remembers his first modification job: It was an NJ 317 cylindrical roller bearing, for which he ran outside diameters on a little brown grinder at NES’ previous location on Adams Street.
In the nearly two decades since, however, things have changed drastically, and for the better – for both him and the company. NES now employs an entire team within the CBM department, which has become the focal point of the business. And Cobb is now one of its most central figures, serving as grind line supervisor and overseeing just about everything that’s produced on the shop floor.
Cobb still runs machines, often stepping in just to help NES meet its jam-packed production schedule. But in his current role, he also facilitates job routers, sets run schedules, helps to develop manufacturing processes and trains others to do the tasks that he once performed.
He, like so many others at NES, has proven to be invaluable.
And it’s his incalculable value that earned Cobb the November employee spotlight.
“I hope I can be confident enough to say that I’ve had my hand in that pot and helped develop (NES’ CBM capabilities) from the ground floor up,” he said, before adding: “It’s just kind of interesting to see that we have 12 people doing the job that I used to do … but we’re also running way more product.
“It’s a great place to be knowing that I can trust the people that are doing the job now. It took a long time to let go of some of those reins, because it’s not like we’re working on car parts (rather, NES is manufacturing bearings for rocket engines).
“But none of it’s possible without the talent we have around us.”
COBB, IN MANY ways, has been at NES since its humble beginnings.
He remembers well the penny-pinching days, when they watered down the soap in the bathroom to make it last longer; when they saved pop cans because they helped pay the electric bill, and when they never, under any circumstances, threw away a blue towel.
Cobb loved those days, when NES was a company of just 15 employees and the chemistry was just a little bit different. He’s proud of what that group managed to accomplish under the circumstances. But he’s even prouder of everything that Napoleon Engineering, now a company of 65 co-workers, has become since.
“To see that growth, it’s been interesting,” he said. “I can pretty much tell you every time we bought a new machine and when it came in. …
“Our first real production job was for R&D Dynamics, and it was a three-part job. I remember when we got our first 20 parts done. It took us like a month-and-a-half to get 20 parts done, and we celebrated like it was a big deal. Here we are 18 years later and we’re barely getting enough rollers to satisfy our customer shipment.”
From the first bearing he personally made – an R102 roller, which was both fun AND a nightmare due to the unknowns – Cobb has played a prominent role in NES’ manufacturing efforts. Just this year, he’s overseen NES’ development of an in-house roller production line, its next new venture, including the production of rollers for a national defense bearing project.
His direct involvement in an order of this magnitude is just one of many aspects of his job that Cobb finds rewarding.
“I raised my family on this job, and that’s a reward,” said Cobb, who, in his free time helps run the Cobb Boys auto racing team, is heavily involved in the local auto racing scene and enjoys sports, snowmobiling, spending time with friends and family and working on various personal projects in his garage. “Now I get to see my own kid (Preston) start his own path here, and that’s rewarding to see.
“I’ve been blessed and privileged enough to part of something that’s growing instead of declining. And it’s rewarding knowing that I had my hand in the reason why this has grown.”
CHRIS TRUMAN, NES’ vice president of business operations, met Cobb in late 2007 while the latter “was out there hustling second-rate submarine sandwiches to support his kids’ sports teams. Even then, it was clear that Cobb had the kind of drive most people only pretend to have.
Truman added: “Craig works hard, muscles through every problem we throw at him, and then heads home to the true love of his life: his pet goat. Honestly, if dedication had a mascot, it would be Craig’s goat proudly wearing a tiny NES hat.
“It’s hard not to have a ton of respect for a guy who lives over an hour away and is still here early before most, stays late and never once complains about it. That level of commitment is something you simply can’t teach.”