Sudenga Staff Feature – Dale Winter
Our featured staff member for the month of December is Dale Winter – a Feed Processing Systems Product Manager for Sudenga Industries.
A Brief Q&A with Dale Winter, a Feed Processing Systems Product Manager for Sudenga Industries.
Q. Dale, how long have you worked for Sudenga Industries?
A. I have worked for Sudenga for 43 years.
Q. Where did you attend school?
A. I went to Northwest Iowa Technical College in Sheldon, Iowa, and graduated with an Associate of Arts Degree in Mechanical Technology.
Q. What are your favorite things to do when you aren’t working?
A. My hobby is crop farming. It’s especially fun at harvest time. My wife Betty and I also enjoy spending time with my five grandkids: Tyler, Lucas, Emery, Krew, & Greyson.
Q. What is a “fun fact” about you that not many people might know?
A. In November of 2001, the city of Boyden (where I currently live) held an election to fill a vacant seat on the city council…except nobody was running for the position. I was one of several people who were written in, but none of the candidates received enough votes to win the seat. This forced a run-off election in December of 2001, which ended in a tie vote. Consequently, the county supervisor was forced to select the city council member by picking one of the two names out of a hat. My name was picked, which led to me serving for twenty years on Boyden’s city council. (Side note: because of my travels, I was not around to vote in either election.)
Q. What are your favorite memories from your time working at Sudenga?
A. My oversea travels. I took two trips to the Soviet Union (for a total of seven weeks), two trips to Poland, two trips to the Dominican Republic, and many trips to Canada. Most trips were a lot of work with long hours, but I got to meet a lot of great people.
Q. Is there anything more you’d like to share about these trips?
A. Before the collapse of the old Soviet, I was involved the sales and installation of three computerized batching systems in the former Soviet Union. The first one was installed the summer of 1990, about an hour drive southeast of Kiev, Ukraine. The other two were installed the fall of 1991. One was located in Crimea Peninsula, and the other unit is located about 600 miles east of Moscow. During the 1991 trip, I was gone for 30 days and returned one month before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Q. Anything else you’d like to share?
A. In June of 1987, I was moved over to the feed processing equipment department to help turn the product line around. By January of 1989 we were able to introduce a new line of equipment, along with a redesigned batch controller with state-of-the-art components & a completely new operating software. This was the start of making Sudenga very competitive with many well-established competitors. Sales in 1989 were ten times larger than the sales of 1987 and have been growing ever since.