Bob started Kanthal as a Product Manager, and brought his experience in using programmable calculators to perform detailed heating element calculations. In 1981, IBM brought out the desktop PC and Bob quickly converted all of his programs that had previously been on programmable calculators to the PC in Basic.
Later as VP of Operations and Engineering, he continued to expand the use of PC's. He lead the implementation of a local network to connect all of the PC's and the mini-computer that housed the business systems. He also implemented an order tracking system in Manufacturing using a Paradox relational database to resolve late order problems. Bob later used the data captured on this system to feed an Activity Based Costing (ABC) database that he also developed. This proof of concept system was later used as the framework to implement ABC on the minicomputer running the business systems.