Industrial Automation and Motion Control Blog | The Knotts Company

We often focus our blogs on new shiny products and their applications, but we want to highlight our team members who make it come together smoothly -- from planning to customer support to the vast experience they lend to solving our clients' challenges. It seemed right to begin with Fred Heimall, who is our longest-serving employee! We recently asked him a few questions....

Department: Value Add Team
Title: Technical Services Manager
Years at Knotts: 49

Tell us about your journey with us through the (many) years:
I literally started from the ground up while going to School. I worked in shipping/receiving and when things were slow, pulled weeds  from the garden beds around the building. 

I moved for a time to Inside Sales , and then to a newly created Outside Sales territory.  A few years later, Knotts began to represent  a small compressor & vacuum pump line, and I became a Product Specialist. This product line expanded and we took on other vendors to round out our product offering. 

Knotts became a solutions provider, being able to offer the correct component for a given problem. I continue to support the pump & compressor group while adding technical support to our Pneumatics Products and Value Add assembly group.

And a memorable recent challenge you solved?
Wearing my compressor specialist hat, I found one of our clients was having reliability issues with their current compressor supplier. They were purchasing 2 compressor models with different voltages and pumps were wearing out prematurely. Working closely with our vendor, we were able to find a single unit covering multiple voltages which had a very high reliability record. This unit helped customer reduce his inventory keeping costs in check and improving his quality.

What do you love most about Knotts?
First, is it has been like family. You spend a large part of your lifetime working, and it's nice to have worked with great people over the years. 

Second, although industry has changed dramatically over the last 49 years, I find that it is still fun to look at existing plant operations, and find new or better ways to help make improvements with the changes in technology. This especially applies to our advancement into robotic technologies.