HOF 05 Groomed for Success -- Thomas Engdahl

The opportunity to move into the world of commercial printing came in 1984, when Brown Printing was looking for a pressroom manager. Engdahl was fortunate to have a contact at Brown, Dan Nitz, who had worked with him at P&G and called Engdahl when the Brown position opened. Engdahl got the post.

"There's a lot of similarity between managing a paper mill and managing a printing plant," Engdahl notes. "You have very expensive equipment that has to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are a lot of rollers and bearings. All of the technical and people issues are similar."