Rob Barnts has held many job titles in his career; forge press operator, electro plating assistant, assistant manager, Shift Foreman, Maintenance Manager, Process Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer, Production Manager and Operations Manager…and now…partner/owner of Midwest Industrial Tanks.
He began his career at Ace Hardware and was promoted to assistant manager, learning the value of customer service and product knowledge. From there Rob worked for a lumber company, receiving CAD training. His next position was at the Vice Grip manufacturing facility (now the home of Midwest Industrial Tanks) and worked in production; forging presses, operating electro plating systems, Black Oxide coating, etc - hands on experience!
Rob has worked for two start-up manufacturers, Crossroads Building Products in Fairbury and Wesflex Pipe Manufacturing in Beatrice (both now closed). He was responsible for installation of equipment and layout that affected production performance and profitability. Systems he was responsible for installing included wiring, vacuum systems, water chiller systems, cooling tower systems, air supply systems and a large injector system requiring train track installed on a concrete pad.
His superior management ability is evident in his history of career promotions and performance benchmarks. He was promoted to production manager at Wesflex Pipe Manufacturing; responsible for taking production from sup-par to profitable in 4 months. At Echo Group, he was instrumental in developing sales of $2M within 2 years.
While at Echo Group he received his Electrical Contractors license and trained as a generator tech; becoming the 2nd highest trained tech in Nebraska; certified to work on power generators at hospitals up to 2 million watts parallel phase.
Rob has taken business management courses and Programmable Logic courses for machinery automation. He was raised spending time in his Grandpa's mechanics shop and learned to fix anything that was broken!
He brings a great deal of manufacturing and management experience to Midwest Industrial Tanks. His past history of success in start-up manufacturing companies will surely repeat itself.
