Technical Writer Joerge Schmelzer Receives Employee-Owner of the Quarter Award

Please join us in congratulating Joerge Schmelzer on receiving the Employee-Owner of the Quarter (EOQ) award! The EOQ award recognizes and shows appreciation to an employee-owner who demonstrated exceptional performance over the previous quarter.

Joerge joined ONEIL in April of 2023, bringing valuable mechanical aptitude, computer skills, and an incredible work ethic to the ONEIL team. Joerge has consistently proven themself, showing growth and exceeding expectations.

“Joerge is more than deserving to receive the EOQ as we should all strive to be as dedicated/driven/humble as Joerge. Jason Ferguson | Program Manager, ONEIL”

Joerge goes the extra mile, literally and physically. Recently challenged with extremely tight deadlines with revising and delivering Technical Manuals (TMs) for a customer and having authored the originals from October 2023 to March 2024, Joerge was the natural choice for the update due to the tight deadline, complex equipment, and their in-depth knowledge.

The project demanded significant effort in a short timeframe. Despite minimal information and support from vendors, Joerge went above and beyond to ensure successful delivery. They undertook two separate week-long trips to Michigan, managed internal teams, and kept customers informed of project progress through meetings and emails.

We at ONEIL are incredibly proud of Joerge’s accomplishments and their nomination for EOQ is well-deserved!

Briefly share your career trajectory and what originally brought you to ONEIL.
After dropping out of college twice, I entered retail sales with a regional chain in mid-2015. From there I transitioned to a role with a Fixed Base Operator (FBO) at Dane County Regional Airport in the summer of 2018 where I started as an airline refueller and ended my tenure doing everything from charter services to fuel quality, ground maintenance, and almost everything in between. In mid-2020 I joined Oshkosh Defense as a mechanic and worked on Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs) in the Aftermarket department, and it was through that job that I ended up joining ONEIL. I desired a new challenge, a change of pace, and more personal development and skills development; while I didn’t initially think it’d be a good career change given my blue-collar history and upbringing, I found I adapted and grew quickly into my new role.

What do you enjoy most about your work at ONEIL?
I enjoy a lot about my job at ONEIL: the technical challenges that studying blueprints and writing work instructions entails, getting to observe and learn about the next best thing in national defense that ONEIL gets to assist in developing, the challenges and new things I learn on new projects, and the travel especially.

What motivates you to go above and beyond in your role?
There’s a lot that motivates me, but one memory and one phrase have always stuck with me:

“Perfection is the goal. Excellence will be tolerated.”

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, my high school (Owen-Withee High) was less 300 total people from grade 8 through grade 12. Our concert band director, Mr. Jim Scheuer, had that saying permanently attached to the blackboard in his classroom. Every year the concert band, comprised of approximately 30 or 40 people, performed Class A music during Conference Band Festival.

Class A was the same class that a lot of much larger schools like Eau Claire North or Green Bay East performed in in their respective conferences and was primarily collegiate-level music, a sure challenge for 14- to 18-year-old students. Even still that band of ours, performing music that was as difficult as could be with less people than most large schools had in a single instrument section, had achieved first marks every year but one for nearly three decades. As we progressed from freshmen to seniors we kept that statement in mind, and when I graduated in 2011 that record remained alive.

“Hockey mentality”

As a fan of the sport, there’s a certain understanding of the culture around the sport that informs my role here at ONEIL.

In hockey culture, as a player, you’ve got to set the tone—it’s a physical sport and the only way to find space on the ice for the team to score is to set the tone early and often. Setting the tone isn’t just for the opponent you play; you’ve also got to set the tone for yourself and others by striving to be the best you can be. You’ve got to know your role and perform above and beyond it—just because you’re on the second or third line doesn’t mean you don’t contribute. You’ve got to be a good teammate, willing to go to the box for a teammate, to pick them up when you’re down, and celebrate them when they win. And most important of all: wins are team, losses are self. Watch any interview after a game where they win and to a soul it’s always about what the team did to succeed; likewise, watch after a loss and they’ll tell you they need to perform better.

In my professional career, “hockey mentality” to me means demanding the most of myself and learning whenever and whatever I can, filling in and helping out where the load is heaviest, and celebrating when we deliver a project on time. It’s about the team when we win, and with that said I’d like to shout out Curtis Dixon for encouraging me to apply to ONEIL, Eric Luedtke and Jason Keizer in Troubleshooting, Lynn Mitchell and Debbie Gross in Production, Trisha Kriegel and Jon Gilleland in Art, Olivia Kroner and Sam Elder as Writers, and Jason Fergeson, Tiffany Kunde, and Jessica Schwartzmiller for helping me be the best I can be in this role and for achieving this award. Without their skills and effort, I’m just a writer.