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By Jamie Swedberg
That was in 1974. He´s stayed ever since, and says his venture into the outside world helped him learn to work for others without any special treatment.
Good thing, too, because with the entire nuclear family on site, the O´Brians go out of their way to maintain a businesslike dynamic. No one seems to use the words "Mom" or "Dad," let alone a term of endearment, at the office; it´s first names for everyone. It´s all part of keeping things running smoothly, Woody says.
"Winnie and I, we´ve always put it down to trying to keep the marriage relationship separate from business," he explains. "We play out the business roles when we´re at work, and then when we leave work, we take up husband and wife roles. When you get home, you try and talk about other things."
He says family members also stake out their own territory at the office, and rarely see each other during the day. That helps, he points out, when family resemblances kick in. "It´s just that he and I are so alike in so many respects," Sean says, agreeing with his father.
"Sometimes we can work together fine, but other times, after about five or ten minutes we need to go work on different things. We´re so near alike, we just get on each other´s nerves."
Father and son share a love of design and engineering. If left to their own devices, they say, each would while away the day puttering with new prototypes for the company´s automatic tarping systems.
They´ve even created a faux truck bed—a steel frame on blocks—in the warehouse, ready to be fitted with new pieces of machinery. "We get feedback from the end user on different products," Woody says. "And so I guess that´s my small expertise. I´ll come back and visualize it and design it on paper, then do a prototype. Then we put it in our research department and test it, improve on it, redesign it, and get it ready for the market."
Sean´s the same way, and has taken the design process one step further by mapping ideas out in DataCAD, a computer-aided design software package. And right now, he says, he´s got the ultimate in hands-on jobs: One of the company´s welders is out with a bad back, so Sean has volunteered for machine-shop duty for the next few weeks.
"Of course, while you´re doing all this, you still have the day-to-day activities of running the business," sighs Woody. "You´ve got to stop whatever you´re doing and talk to the customer that wants to talk to you. Or you´ve got to talk to the two plant managers and make sure things are getting done at both locations."
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