thermotron

RE: thermotron
Body:

I was acquainted with Bob Wiley and Tom Bannach.

They came into the picture about the time I left, so I did not know them well.

As I recall, Bob did have a reputation for technical incompetence, although customers often spoke highly of him and ask for him back.

Nobody could figure that out, other than to assume that he had a very good “bedside manner.”

Tom was the night shift tester after I left. He never impressed me as having a lot on the ball technically, but seemed personable and willing at the time.

I assumed he was learning, and night shift testing didn’t amount to much more than running the chambers anyway.

I also expected that the day shift and Mark Briggs probably signed off on everything before anything shipped.

Ken Russell was Chuck Conrad’s brother-in-law, as I recall. Chuck started out as a refrigeration mechanic in Ludington, and then went to work for Ken in Holland.

From there he moved on to start Conrad Corporation and build environmental test chambers. They were, at the time, only hot/cold and humidity boxes.Needing to expand, Chuck sold off some stock.
Up to that point, Conrad was privately held. Chuck made the mistake of selling more than half the stock, thinking he was safe since it went to three people, evidently on a 20/20/20/40 basis, with him holding twice as many shares as anyone else.

He soon found out that the three new stockholders were in league with each other, and they quickly made things so uncomfortable for him that he sold off the rest of his shares and left.

Gulf & Western eventually took over Conrad Corp.Chuck launched Thermotron reservedly at the request of Norm Pongey, Conrad Corp’s former sales rep for the east coast technology corridor.

Chuck always claimed that he started Thermotron with a meager $1,500 investment. Once having launched, he became obsessed with the goal of killing Conrad Corp, featuring his name and photograph under the Thermotron logo on everything the company published, even its letterheads.
Conrad Corp was quickly subdued.

After struggling near the bottom for a few years, they eventually sold out to Bemco in California, and the brand disappeared.

Chuck was astute and gutsy, and went to Washington D.C. to participate as a charter member of the “Advisory Group on the Reliability of Electronic Equipment,” ultimately becoming known as the “AGREE committee.”
that happened as reliability engineering was coming into its own, with experts realizing that solid-state stuff had a rather predictable “bathtub shaped” failure rate profile.

The Pentagon then adopted a very sensible procurement system, requiring vendors to demonstrate that equipment had gotten through the inherent period of initial “infancy failures” and into the life-cycle period where long-term reliable operation could be expected.

This gave rise to a market for “AGREE chambers” (hot/cold+vibration) which was suddenly demand-intensive and very lucrative.At that point, his former friend and coworker

Don Bench bought Russell’s Refrigeration, and shortly after closing the deal, branched out into the test chamber business as a competitor to Thermotron. Chuck never forgave him.

Chuck had a tendency to demand loyalty and see anything less than complete loyalty as betrayal.

We (Warner Instruments) did a little business with Russell’s. Don always seemed niggardly.

The flip side of that was that they always paid well, because we shipped on 1.5/10, net 30 terms. Bill initially did the buying, and as I recall wasn’t the easiest to get along with.

Our relationship with Russell’s ended with their having phoned in an unusually large order, then reneging on the deal, claiming it had just been a joke. That was a lie, of course.
What actually happened, we expected, was that Don or Bill looked at the big cost, and decided on a cheaper alternative.

They always entered orders verbally and we had never required confirming purchase orders. The unusually large quantity on this order seemed unusual, but we appreciated having been given the business. It turned out that we were, indeed, “given the business.”

We got stuck with a lot of Russell-specific inventory. We never saw another order after that, and they were never willing to discuss the reason why.

The reason was probably because they had someone reverse-engineer the product and set up a basement operation.

I met Dan Okeefe during Chuck’s last tour through the plant, which I wrote about before.
I wasn’t favorably impressed with his “in your face” way of violating my personal space (always standing just within one’s comfort zone and apparently sizing them up).

Chuck claimed that he was really a nice fellow and highly competent, so I took his word for that. Others told me later on, that the word had gone out to keep me out of the plants, presumably because
I was suspected of sharing observed secrets with Thermotron competitors. They didn’t have any secrets worth sharing, at least as far as I knew. Maybe I wasn’t all that observant. Alternatively, maybe the secrets consisted of dirty laundry which Dan didn’t care to have Chuck to become aware of.

As I said, Chuck had a very high opinion of him.That’s about it. I didn’t know any of the others you mentioned. The local Thermotron rep stops by here every two or three years, purportedly just for “old time’s sake.”

He claims to have known me at Thermotron, but I have no memory of him there. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t there at the time. He’s a tall, friendly, well-dressed and good-looking guy.

Very presentable; a good person to have fronting for you, from that point of view. I’m surprised to not have his card on file. He always leaves literature; I guess I always stick it in the round file, since I can’t seem to find any of it.

For what it’s worth, I suspect the compromising of truth and business ethics began with the John Sexton/Harlan Sprick regime.

They replaced the “Executive Committee” I’ve already spoken of. The EC continued for a while, but with John presiding, and Harlan (who was the Corporate Controller at the time) sitting at the opposite end of the long boardroom table.

Their two votes trumped all the others put together, they clearly followed a “the ends justify the means” philosophy, and obviously always came to the meetings with their minds already made up about whatever was at issue. After a while, I just quit wasting my time on EC meetings.

That suited John fine, since he and I had gotten off to a bad start at day one.I might have already mentioned that before John was hired as Executive Vice President and given the unfettered reigns of the company, Chuck asked me for my opinion of him, and Bart Tillit, and a second candidate for the same position, who came to us from Bendix.

My opinion was that Bart seemed to understand our corporate culture, such as it was, and that his professional management skills would probably prove an invaluable asset.

All I could say for John was that I thought he was a phony, condescending sonofabitch. As soon as he took over, John began to engineer my demise, doing what he could to defame me.

Most of it got back to me; John hadn’t yet destroyed our family-style camaraderie yet at that point. He used ploys like pretending to befriend my second in command, Jim Diekema, feeding him lines like ‘Warner may be a big deal here, but in the real world this so-called “boy genius” wouldn’t qualify even as a technician’s helper or lab sweeper.’

We laughed all that stuff off, but it did hurt and anger me.In the end, John and Harlan were soon were fired after the Wehr people took over.

John started his own company under his own name, initially building all sorts and sizes of chamber fronts to take pictures of for a catalog, although Sexton Enterprises (or was it Sexton Industries?) had never built its first workable unit.

That’s what the gossip was, at any rate. He eventually decided to thought he could outsmart the Tabai people (Thermotron’s former Japanese partner) and became Sexton/Espec for a while, but that was another one of his many mistakes.

Soon it was called “Tabai/Espec,” then just ESPEC.After all is said and done, Warner Instruments continues to exist, such as it is; Sexton is history.

I understand he wound up as someone’s sales rep. So nice guys do not always finish last.For what it’s worth - I see your rants about Thermotron are not limited to messages for me.

Thermotron is now a part of Venturedyne, a well-heeled holding company well-versed in the art of litigation. Without doubt, they have on retainer first class downtown legal talent with plenty of interns sitting around looking for something to do.
truth is an absolute defense in deformation suits, so I hope you are able to back up all of the allegations and accusations you are making with credible evidence. Otherwise, I would advise that you present your diatribes as personal opinions, rather than stated facts.

Perhaps it would be sufficient to explain that you had very unpleasant experiences working with the company, citing the bad things that happened to you personally, and dropping the unrelated he said/she said stuff about others.Alternatively, you might even consider just dropping the whole thing and moving on. Continuing to harbor such strong feelings - evidently hateful and vindictive feelings – are sure to hurt you much more than it will Thermotron or any of the others involved.

I’m sure you know that people are all fallible; all a mixed bag, there being much good and some not so good in every individual – including you and me.During my life, I’ve noticed that sayings such as “what goes around, comes around” almost always proves to have a lot of merit. I don’t hold myself up as a paragon of virtue by any means.

But I am able to say that although during my thirty years in business I have not created an empire or made a fortune, there is nobody I can’t look in the eye and great with a smile. And I don’t think there are many, if any, who would be willing to assert that they were treated unfairly or dishonestly.

Therefore I can be comfortable wherever I go, I sleep easily at night, and will go to my grave without a lot of regrets.The best hope for the less scrupulous is to die young.
As one gets beyond retirement age and has time to reflect upon what was achieved, and at what cost, I can tell you that conscience begins to exact a price, even from the most hardened. You may have heard about the familiar democracy-autocracy-philanthropy pattern.

Many try to compensate for their misdeeds and buy back hurts they cause others by giving away fortunes. But that almost never works.

They go to their rest as bitter and unhappy old men.-=glw=-