Dennis Grumm

“A well-respected education in engineering and the unique location made Michigan Tech an easy choice. The UP has always been a place I considered special.”

In his Dynamic Controls class, Dennis Grumm ’05 was given the opportunity for extra credit by solving a calculus problem based on the origins of Bode plots. “I learned a lot about problem solving with that assignment; somewhere in the middle of a couple pages of math I had used degrees rather than radians. I ended up solving the problem slightly differently three different ways. Needless to say, Dr. Passerello pushed me to learn a lot about Bode plots.”

Outside of class, Grumm has a fond memory of he and his house mates building a mechanical bull in the main room on the second floor of our house. “Can't say I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that before. Nobody was ever seriously hurt, which is also memorable.”

After graduating, Grumm went to work as a design engineer for Campbell Grinder Company. In the 10 years he worked there, he became the head of their research and development department, having developed a modular system of extremely high precision CNC grinding machines.

“I left MTU prepared well enough to begin my career. I not only learned the fundamentals of "how to engineer," I also learned a lot about "how to learn."

Grumm is a founder and CEO of Oktober Can Seamers, a start-up company where he designed a table-top can seamer for the craft beverage industry.

“In one case, I designed a "corrugated roll grinder" that was a large improvement over our competition, a Swiss company. That first machine we built went to a German customer. The highlight was hearing the customer mention how initially they had considered it funny that an American company would try to compete with Swiss precision.”

"Within the last year, it has probably been the absolute highlight of my engineering career that after over 600 seamers shipped, we have had no major service issues, and incredibly positive feedback from our customers.”

Grumm’s advice to students is: “Learn how to learn. The tools engineers use will come and go, so make an effort to really understand the fundamentals behind why things are the way they are. Be objective, and forge a path.”