THIRTY UNDER THIRTY PROFILES
Justin Gordon Age: 31* Fairlane Products/Fixtureworks Fraser, MI
UNDER THIRTY T
here’s a lot of tradition in Justin Gordon’s life, traditions that begin and end with his family and the family businesses, Fairlane Products, a designer and manufacturer of workholding and positioning components for automation, and Fix- tureworks, a distributor of workholding technologies. At the age of 26, fate thrust him into the role of running both companies, as General Manager and co-owner with his sister, Kelsey, after the untimely deaths of both his father, Mark Gordon, and his grandfather, Richard, within four months of one another. Justin grew up in the family business. “My entire family was involved in manufacturing—in our own shop, in an industrial real estate side of the business which leased commercial space to other manufactur- ers, and in our own Fairlane Tool contract manufactur- ing business. I was always around shop floors, whether ours or somebody else’s. Weekends, and after school,
“I was always around shop floors, whether ours or somebody else’s. Weekends, and after school, I was put to work on manual machines, probably to encourage me to get an education.”
I was put to work on manual machines, probably to encourage me to get an education. What really hap- pened was that I could see beyond the monotonous side of the work to being able to see how smaller processes fit into the bigger picture.” Justin graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in supply chain management, a disci- pline that is especially well-suited to the family busi- ness. “When I graduated, one of the first things that I did was get involved in bringing a new ERP system in. I wasn’t the person implementing the system. I was the one gathering information to populate the system. A lot of the information was kept in Excel files, in sepa- rate binders, or simply in the legacy knowledge of the
*Nominees were required to be 30 years of age or younger by March 2, 2015, the deadline for nomination. July 2015 |
AdvancedManufacturing.org 101
people on the shop floor. My job was to go around and gather that information from everybody and put it into a consistent format that could be entered into the system. By the end of the project, I had learned a lot about our operations, and we had an accurate costing system, an ability to track all of our jobs and work in process, and a sophisticated way to control our inven- tory and warehouse.” In Justin’s capacity, he is responsible for all opera- tions including new product development, manu- facturing, sales, customer service and marketing as well as for more than 30 employees of the two companies. He works closely with the principals of the companies and the leading brands that Fix- tureworks represents. “I’m very comfortable talking to our customers about how our products work in their applications and how they should and should not be used.” And that’s saying something as Fixtureworks
provides more than 20,000 clamping, workholding, fixturing and material handling components all de- signed to promote higher productivity through faster speeds and feeds. “Fairlane Products has always been more niched in
products like serrated grippers and other replaceable contact points in one line, our rollers and bumpers and our quick release pins. For the future, I want to focus on workholding and positioning products that mirror manufacturing trends and innovative technologies.” Family tradition will come full circle when Justin and his fiancée Nicole are married on the top of a mountain in Utah in the future. Every year, Justin’s family spent a week skiing in Utah at their favorite chalet.
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