Remote workers and road warriors should take a lesson from a master of both, autodidact Michael T. McMahon. Early in his 45-year career, while working in the Indian Country of North Dakota, he was inspired by another master, Chief Crazy Horse. “Hoka Hey” was his war cry at Little Big Horn, the Lakota Indian phrase for “Let’s do it.” Michael T had a portrait of Crazy Horse over his bed, and he took inspiration from those words throughout his career, becoming an expert user of software at several plants, learning coding on the road, and developing applications at home. Although he left us unexpectantly on December 8, 2024, he also left us an unprecedented array of software, for which he will be long remembered.
Illustrative of his “can do” attitude was Michael T’s early adoption of and fluency with Microsoft’s Visual Basic (VB) language, without any prior computer programming background or formal training. In his day job as a tech rep, he identified gaps in application software, and at night he wrote VB programs to fill them. His first app, Job Summary, was an instant hit, and was quickly incorporated into the standard MiTek software release. Its title soon became an understatement, as Michael T continually enhanced it with costing, pricing, reporting, and cutting capabilities. While supporting Job Summary, he began working on an even more comprehensive application, MiTek Management, which laid the foundation for MBA. Both efforts prepared Michael T for the development of the MiTek Virtual Plant (MVP), the capstone of his career.
With almost no detailed direction, MiTek’s President of Operations asked Michael T to develop a program to control workflow on the shop floor for Boozer Lumber. Fortunately, Boozer had already engaged a renowned industrial engineer, Ed Buck, to improve their productivity, and Michael T worked diligently on site with him, driving eight hours each way from his Florida home. Then, on his own, and way ahead of the rest of the industry, he had the foresight to create Internet browser-based software. That masterstroke enabled truss plants to deploy an unlimited number of dumb terminals on the shop floor or literally anywhere, connected to a central server. That communication capacity, along with its solid industrial engineering capabilities, made MVP a blockbuster application, as acknowledged by independent management consultant Todd Drummond.
Michael T. McMahon did it on his own, inspiring the rest of us to emulate his spirit as epitomized by Crazy Horse. Some say that Crazy Horse’s battle cry meant, “It’s a good day to die,” but that certainly was not the case for his wife Rebbecca, his family, and this industry that he served so brilliantly and humbly. But his work will long live on, and our lives are the better for it.