Employee Spotlight: Mark Place, Vice President of Business Development

Thursday, September 15, 2016

 

 

What is your current position at Air-Way? How long have you held this position? What are your responsibilities?

I’ve recently been named the Vice President of Business Development. My responsibilities include managing the company’s business development initiatives by expanding accounts, leads and opportunity management. I accomplish this through marketing engineering tactics.

Have you held previous positions at Air-Way? If so, what were they?

For the past 16 years I’ve served as the Vice President of Quality. However, there was a need for restructuring and reorganization of roles in order to strengthen Air-Way’s to relationships with customers, and help the business continue to grow.  Because of this need, I am now the Vice President of Business Development.

How long have you been employed at Air-Way?

I’ve been with Air-Way for 35 years! It’s allowed me to understand all of our manufacturing processes, systems, applications and our customer needs.

In your opinion, what does Air-Way do differently than its competitors? How does Air-Way differentiate itself from competitors?

Air-Way has full manufacturing capability, domestically. Our ability to provide one-on-one engineering support during product development—which includes rapid response for proto-type builds—is crucial. Our capability to manufacture all of our products domestically gives us the ability to react quickly, and provide solutions in critical situations, when other companies just can’t.

Are there any career highlights that stick to you to this day?

The highlight of my career was being appointed to the Chair of the C1 (SAE Standards FCCTC C1 Hydraulic Systems) committee. In total, this was a 20-year endeavor. Along the way, I met a lot of interesting people and worked interesting industry related projects.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

The most rewarding part of my job is working with Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEM’s) during the product development stages. Throughout this process I assist OEM’s by bringing their products and hydraulic applications from conception to actualization. I also enjoy developing special joint projects that are aimed at improving products internally, and at their point of use.