Rob Dumayne’s Progression Story
Where did my career begin?
I started my career way back in 1992 at a well-known Tapered roller bearing manufacturer as a Manufacturing Engineering Apprentice.
After 4 years gaining solid engineering knowledge, both practical and theoretical I moved into a position within the same company as an Equipment Engineer. Here I furthered my engineering education outside of work time.
This involved managing a department of production machines and a very small team of Maintenance Engineers focusing on continuous improvement, condition monitoring and scheduling machine improvements without compromising production.
The start of my igus® journey
3 years later (1999) the call from igus® came, this was an opportunity which sounded exciting, intriguing, and completely new.
The world of Technical Sales was on the table within the dry-tech team, which is not something I would’ve ever considered. However, igus® seemed like the sort of place I could thrive, getting involved in customer engineering problems and solving them using these crazy technical polymers called iglidur®. I jumped at the chance and never looked back.
Joining in 1999 was just about the perfect time as I found myself growing with the company, its products, and the people.
A few years later we had out grown the offices in Daventry and moved to a larger premises in Northampton. When I moved in I started my position of Office Manager, this was in addition to the role of Technical sales which had seemed to evolve into a design function too. Of course, all of this suited me as I do need to be challenged otherwise (as my teachers always used to say) ‘Robert is easily distracted’.
What happened in 2013?
It had been a few years as office manager passed and another move to an even bigger premises, when the next milestone hit. In 2013 our Managing Director retired which meant the dry-tech Director Matthew Aldridge took his place, which left a large void in the dry-tech team.
I pushed to be considered for this and managed to persuade Matthew that I could potentially fill his shoes. After some heavy discussion (luckily Matthew trained me in the art of negotiation) I became the Director of our UK dry-tech operation. Unfortunately, I don’t quite get the same opportunities to be involved in as many engineering problems but I do have the amazing opportunity to manage and develop a great team of people that make up the entire dry-tech department.
22 years at igus® has flown by, luckily for me igus® is so dynamic there is never a dull moment and always the opportunity to develop something new and exciting which makes me very lucky and incredibly grateful.
What Rob Dumayne likes about igus®?
“I like the fact that we are a progressive, dynamic company with an ever increasing unique product range with enthusiastic, talented and friendly people.”
You can contact Rob Dumayne directly via our contact page today. Click here
