To Whom it may Concern –

Regarding Mark Rodriguez.

Mark joined us in October 2014 and for the last 5 months has done a fantastic job programming CNC mill products and solving technical issues resulting in discrepancies and machining problems.

Mark demonstrated excellent leadership and management skills, improving the competency of the milling group and reducing scrap and setup delays, as well as making major improvements in the reliability of programs and setups.

Mark has been specifically helpful with higher challenge parts that required clever and innovative work holding and successfully designed programs and fixtures that produced conforming parts the first time out, a very important key strength in a production job shop.

Mark’s command of tooling, materials, work holding and program structures have been invaluable to us in preventing wasted time with inadequate techniques and approaches to machining challenges.

Prior to Mark’s leadership, we had developed a strong reputation among our customers for successful completion of high challenge products and Mark’s contributions improved that significantly and allowed us to continue to win confidence with our customers through successfully completing complex and high challenge products to close tolerances and demanding standards.

Tolerances of .0002-.0005 inches are normal for our customers’ requirements and working with a wide range of materials from aluminum to heat treated stainless steels and exotics. Our products often require carefully calculating in-process dimensions and tolerances to ensure proper dimensions are held after plating or many other processes such as chrome plating and grinding, or honing, hard anodize and additional hone or grind. Mark successfully navigated these technical issues and led the team to successful part completion.

Mark works very well with other groups such as quality and production planning, seeking to achieve the best outcome for the company, adapting to the varying schedule requirements of demanding and critical customers and collaborating closely with quality assurance and inspection to achieve conforming finished products. He is also able to work well with other department leads who carried a healthy skepticism of the capabilities of “The New Guy” and win them over with careful considered explanations and proven outcomes.

Finally Mark demonstrated an outstanding degree of experience through a wide range of insights into root causes of problems that often stumped other machinists and proved to be correct time after time.

Mark will be severely missed but we wish him and his wife well in whatever activities they pursue.

Sincerely,

Skip MacLean, President, SML Engineering, Inc.