Twenty years ago Bill Ressler started his career at Cannondale sweeping floors. Today he's a supervisor in the bicycle assembly department making sure the work flows so that 500 to 700 Cannondale bicycles can be assembled and ready to be shipped everyday. In his 20 years at Cannondale Bill has worked in many departments, learning the ropes on the job and through company-sponsored training. He spent time in maintenance, shipping, returns and assembly - working his way up from lead assembly to supervisor in 1992.

Bill and a fellow supervisor oversee about 70 people in their department. "We try to make sure everything is in place - that the people are scheduled where they're needed and that we have the parts they need." Those parts vary among the dozens of styles of bicycles produced by the company. "It's fun seeing the different products - colors, parts, seeing how they go together," he says. "The welders come up from time to time to see their finished work - everyone's proud of the bikes we make here."

One of the challenges he faces is that the assembly process changes constantly. "Cannondale is known in the industry as being an innovator and we need to be quick to change. As a department we need to be flexible. That makes a team-oriented approach critical." He says Cannondale fosters that teamwork by treating everyone fairly and giving employees like himself the opportunity to move up in the company. "When I came here I never imagined I'd be here 20 years later, but I gave 100 percent and apparently my supervisors saw something in me that they liked," Bill says.

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