Ben Mergen
Staffing Project Manager
As a Mechanical Engineer with 20+ years of experience at Sigma Design I have experienced a wide variety of clients and projects that have taken me around the world. I've worked on pest control to printers, lasers to lithography machines and a lot in between. This has provided me extensive experience in all phases of product development, custom automation and assembly line tooling, pneumatic controls systems and capital equipment manufacturing for the semiconductor industry to name a few. My innate curiosity and wide skillset allow me to be immediately effective when asked to help where problems are poorly defined and poorly understood. I mesh well with teams of all sizes and characters, which is invaluable when building customer relations leading to long term engagements that are enjoyable and rewarding for everyone involved.
Questions & Answers
How do you make people laugh?
Not taking yourself too seriously is a great place to start. I've become quite good at fixing my mistakes due to an excessive amount of practice. This leads to many stories I'm happy to tell others if they need a laugh and remind them that we all make mistakes.
If you were a tool or piece of equipment, what would you be and why?
Easy - Leatherman Wave multitool, no question. Life and engineering challenges often come in 2 types - those with obvious solutions and those without. We've all been faced with a challenge that needs to be solved quickly with whatever is immediately available. Sure, if you need pliers, knife or screwdriver, that's easy. I've used my Wave as a hammer, pick, drift pin, lever, plumb bob, heaving line weight and probably a dozen other things it?s not technically designed for but it?s what I had at the time. Try finding all that elsewhere for under $100!
What's your favorite productivity hack or time-saving trick?
Turn off automatic ping notifications for all email, chat and IM platforms. Constant distractions aren't helpful for anyone.