People of Grayhill: Ralph Kuprewicz, Operations Leader for La Grange Manufacturing

Grayhill was founded with pillars that remain true today: people, performance, and progress. People are at the center of everything we do. Through their work, the people of Grayhill improve the human experience down to the smallest detail.

One of these people is Ralph Kuprewicz, Operations Leader for our La Grange manufacturing facility. Beyond that, he is a role model and mentor within our organization. In a recent discussion, Ralph graciously shared insights into his character and stories from his life.

What brought you to Grayhill?
I was looking for an opportunity where I could help a company transform itself. I toured Grayhill’s facilities and saw how well it had operated for 75 years. Grayhill was a very successful company that needed to reinvent itself for a new era. I came on board with the job of implementing change in a positive way. I’m what you call a “fixer.” In my prior life at several different companies, I would go in and do an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a company. I looked at manufacturing, efficiencies, labor, and how we do things. I looked at the manufacturing operation and said, “Okay, we need to introduce that manufacturing floor to automation.”

What was the first moment you realized you were interested in engineering?
I was probably 5 or 6 years old. My father showed me the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. I saw him step on the moon and I said, “THAT’S cool.” I wanted to be a rocket scientist and a whole bunch of other things from that day forward. You look at why you are put on this earth and ask yourself what do you enjoy. I enjoy being an engineer. I enjoy problem-solving. I enjoy building products. To me, this is fun. And then you ask yourself, if you spent half your career in engineering, what gets you excited or into the manufacturing side of things?

I was fresh out of college, and I thought, like most young engineers, that I knew everything. I knew absolutely nothing. I got a job out of college for Parker Hannifin Corporation in Des Plaines, Illinois. We were making hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders. Some of them were going on flight simulators that were being built for the space shuttle. I came up with a design for a new hydraulic cylinder. That’s when I had my first visit with a toolmaker. He was a man I loved. He had been at Parker Hannifin for over 40 years. He is Polish, and I’m Polish.

He swore at me in Polish and basically said, “I can’t build this. This is the first design I’ve ever had that I can’t build. And if I can’t build it, that means we can’t manufacture it.” He asked me, “Who did you talk to about this design?”

I said, “Nobody. I knew what I needed to do, and I designed it myself.”

He said, “There’s your biggest flaw right there.”

The lesson learned from that day forward was I needed to learn how to design for manufacturability. The key to designing something for manufacturability is to sit down with each person who is going to touch the product in any way — the machinists, the electrical engineers, the manufacturing engineers, the people that are going to build it on the line. You do a concept, and you get feedback from everyone so when you have the actual product completed, it’s not you throwing it over the wall and saying, “Here, now you deal with it.” It’s already done. It’s bulletproof.

So, from that day forward, every time I designed something, I made sure it was designed for manufacturability.

What’s a fun fact about yourself? 
I wanted to be a professional hockey player. I made a deal with my dad in high school. I graduated high school in three years and had a year off before going to college. My father was a Chicago public school teacher, so he was pretty straight-laced about going to college.

I said, “Okay, that’s if I don’t succeed at playing hockey.”

The coolest thing my dad ever said to me was, “I’m letting you do this, to go play hockey for one year because you graduated early. You kept up your grades, and I don’t want you to wake up when you’re 40 and say you should have.”

So, I got to play for Windsor, Ontario, for a whole year. I realized I probably wasn’t even good enough to be the worst guy on the team. I was the only American on the team. I kept at it and played for one year. When I came home and got off the Greyhound bus, I realized it wasn’t for me.

My dad looked at me and asked, “Okay, what’s the next step in life?”

I said, “I’m going to college. I have no regrets.”

What do you find exciting about the industry at large right now? 
We live in an era where anything is possible. All new technology is at our fingertips. I have more technology in my cell phone now than I did with the computers I was using years ago. To see how that kind of power is applied to manufacturing and automation is exciting.

It’s about changing the mindset of looking at what we did in the past and saying, “Great, congratulations, but let’s close the door on that now and turn the page and ask yourself, what's our future? How do we get there? Speed is of the essence. And, have fun!”