THE INTERVIEW
I still keep in touch with the foreign exchange student Anja in Germany, she actually emailed me for my birthday a couple weeks ago, and I owe her a big newsy letter back. But we do keep in touch with pictures, and we have kids that are a similar age, so it's a lot of fun. Her dad is retired now.
OCH: Tell us about your success stories MW: I'm really proud of my work with CMAA. I led the Mechanical Engineering Sub-Committee for about five years. The way it works is that there are five-year cycles between specification revisions and so I led the Mechanical Engineering Sub-Committee through a whole cycle of the mechanical section. It takes a lot of discussion because obviously the members are competitors, but we all have a passion for the industry and a passion for safety and making sure the designs are right and promoting the CMAA brand.
In the cycle where I was chairperson, we managed
to update four or five sections and put in an entire new drum design section. So, we achieved some big things and the fact that we even got them passed and managed to come together and agree on these sections, is one of the things I am most proud of. In terms of Ace, one of my most interesting
projects was helping to design a pair of 10t wall walking jib cranes. There were many challenges about the project including how to build it in the shop in multiple sub-assemblies so that when it was installed it would hang at a 90° angle. Designing the installation was a big part of that project.
OCH: Tell us about your failures and how you overcame any challenges MW: The project that I grew the most on was on a job that was going to Canada and had a lot of electrical design in the specification. When you have to take an ice road to deliver your cranes, there are some special requirements. It was early on in my career and I'm a mechanical engineer not an electrical engineer, so you kind of gloss over some of the electrical stuff when you read the spec. But in this case, I learned about mechanical and electrical limitations when a crane is going into sub-zero temperatures. In this case, after we built it, we had to redesign and build all the electrical components a second
n Ace Industries locations. ©Mapbox
time and then all the panels went from being one size to a bigger size. It was probably the first time where I learned that not everything is as straight forward as it seems and if you don’t know what something is in a specification then ask. I’m involved in a lot of rebuilding and redesigning
things to appreciate that. Things that you thought would be approved but then had to go back into the approval process again and having to track that design failure. But when you find that something doesn't work, it
teaches you to ask more questions up front, whether it's the customer or to yourself, as you're looking at the drawing package. It teaches you to trust your instincts.
I'm known for asking the same question in slightly
different ways. I can't always put my finger on what's wrong, but there's something, and eventually, you find the answer. Sometimes it’s an ‘aha’ moment when we solve a problem. It's pretty much taught me to trust my gut a little bit more when talking to people.
OCH: What do you like about this business? MW: I thoroughly enjoy the speed and pace of it.
OCH: What do you dislike about this business?
Molly Wood has worked for Ace Industries for 18 years, and is currently VP at CMAA, where she is next in line to take over as President of CMAA in 2025 from Daniel Beilfuss, GM, Columbus McKinnon Corporation’s (CMCO) Automation Division.
Her passion outside of Ace is her family. She has three children; two
13-year-old twins and an 11-year-old; two sons and a daughter. She is also heavily involved in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), where she is a chairperson on the Scouts committee, handling all the logistics behind the scenes.
She is married to Ashley Wood, who she met when she was 18-years- old and they started dating romantically seven years later. They will be celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary this year.
f Daniel Beilfuss: Wood will take over his CMAA role.
MW: Right now, delivery time. That's always the same answer, right? All industries are dealing with this, where you have problems getting deliveries across in the expected timeframe. But I like manufacturing. If I had to be a consulting engineer where all you did was some calculations and write a report that's not me. I enjoy the project management side of things, knowing how things are going to flow and making sure the project's actually moving and you have considered everything. You follow the whole process from the design, to manufacturing and delivery and you're there as well to help with any support.
OCH: What makes your company unique? MW: Ace Industries has a passion for people. We are a distributor, service provider and manufacturer. Manufacturing is actually a small part of what Ace Industries is about. Service is the largest aspect, and they have a passion for people and getting the job done right and taking care of the customer. They are passionate in a way that they have a ‘servant heart’ and will go out of their way to
When I worked at the shipyard in Newport News, everything I designed was going to be built three years after I left. But with cranes it’s six to eight weeks or, post-pandemic, 12–14 weeks and you're turning over product. I like working on multiple jobs at the same time
and there is customer interaction and I enjoy the fact we get to talk to every branch across the sector. Ace Industries has over 30 branches and they're mostly service branches, but in the engineering department we get to talk to everyone – we get to have those personal connections with every branch and that's a lot of fun, especially when we come together for our annual meeting. We get to interact with a lot of different people.
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