Steve Jones has worked at Monadnock for over 15 years now. For the most part his role has been technical services manager where quality, laboratory testing, process engineering and product development fall under his purview. It’s a big job at Monadnock Paper Mills – a technical/specialty paper mill with over 150 commercialized products and numerous products in development at any given time.

Steve starts his day preparing a good breakfast for all the family pets, a long walk with the dog and then grabbing a bite to eat before heading into the office. Aside from a few routine tasks, no two days are alike. First emails – manufacturing reports to ascertain how things ran the night before. He keeps an informal running to-do list to keep on track.  Occasionally he’ll get a midnight call to disposition paper or trouble shoot an issue on the machines – a function he rotates with his compadre Rich Beahm.SJLab

Steve has worked at several other paper mills – though he seems way too young to fathom that. He thinks Monadnock is unique as a “single-mill” environment where it all happens in one location along the Contoocook River in Bennington, New Hampshire. All the players are on site, all the resources are in one place. That makes decision making very streamlined and timely. He appreciates interacting with all levels of management and production – all the way to the CEO.

Steve is an extremely disciplined engineer. He never peaks past the current day in his Dilbert calendar. He is always there for our R&D, Sales and Quality teams, as well as our customers to ensure things are running smoothly. He clearly enjoys his job and prefers the technical aspects of papermaking. He get most satisfaction watching a product move from concept to fruition, seeing that paper come off the machine that he helped develop.

Steve is also a front man for Monadnock. He gets lots of face time with customers – interacting with people from very different companies. Since Monadnock’s products are sold into a broad range of markets and applications, Steve interacts with a variety of operations, from printing, converting, and packaging. He is fascinated by all the different types of equipment that are used down-stream to convert his paper into something useful like medical packaging or sandpaper.

At the end of the day, Steve checks the status on the floor, prepares for what may come tomorrow, takes a final look at that check list and then heads home to his family. In his spare time he enjoys golf, snowshoeing, hiking and reading.

All I know is…Steve is one “go-to-guy” you can depend on at Monadnock.