John Barnes

About John Barnes

I started in the Tool and Die trade in 1992 at Burgess Machine and Tool in St Clair, MI. Burgess was a satellite facility of Active Burgess in Wallaceburg, Ontario. It was the ideal starting place for me to begin my career in Tool and Die. I consider myself fortunate to have experienced the good economic landscape that the early to mid 90\'s provided for the toolmaking industry. The team at Burgess was seasoned, professional and the model of efficiency. The skills and work ethic that I learned there have undoubtedly laid the successful foundation for my career. In my 20\'s I became a toolmaker with an emphasis on CNC machining and programming. In my 30\'s, I migrated to the CAD room, designing molds and all the engineering tasks that go along with building them. My love affair with Cimatron software eventually led me to working directly for Cimatron. I started in technical support, graduated to senior applications engineer over several years and eventually went into sales. Isn\'t that often the trend? While I was quite successful in all of my roles at Cimatron, doing sales fulltime, I had lost touch with my first love, which was using the software, making chips and being immersed in all aspects of manufacturing. When you love what you do, you never have to really work. I was blessed with an amazing career and achieved more than I had ever dreamed of as a child. I love to travel, meeting new people and helping to solve bottle necks between, quoting, design and manufacturing. Times have certainly changed since I started in the trade. Competing in our global environment requires taking advantage of every technical tool available to level the economic wage gap. So many variables play a role in a toolshop\'s success. It requires great talent, software, cutters, machines and constant training. A weak link in any of these will no doubt cause a company to struggle. When visiting companies and prospects, I always tried to step back and look at the whole picture. Most salesmen or sales engineers come into a shop usually micro-focused on the wares they have to sell. I try to offer looking at the entire process to insure there are not unknown or missed areas that affect efficiencey as data travels through the shop from the front door to the back door. This approach led to my success, eventually managing the Western and Southern USA for Cimatron software. I am starting a new role in 2025 as a cutting tool application/design engineer and am super excited to write the next chapter!

Experience

1. Engineering Manager

   Omni Mold & Die

   Aug 2025 — Present · US

   Streamlining the CAD & CAM engineering processes by implementing Cimatron from Quoting to Delivery. Setting up advanced manufacturing, automation and AI to be competitive globally.