# From Military Leadership to Revolutionizing Job Shop Manufacturing with Jason Ray

- Show: [Manufacturing Happy Hour](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour)
- Published: 2020-09-15
- Length: 52m
- Page: https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra
- Listen: http://manufacturinghappyhour.com/26

## Summary

Jason Ray, CEO of Paperless Parts, explains how his military logistics background and a failed attempt to buy a job shop led him to co-found a cloud-based quoting software for manufacturers. He details the company's pivot from a business acquisition model to a SaaS solution that helps job shops reduce quoting time by up to 20x and standardize pricing using 3D geometry. Ray discusses the critical role of rapid response in winning work during supply chain disruptions and the importance of customer success in driving adoption of modern software in a process-oriented industry.

## Chapters

- [0:00](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=0) Introduction and Mission
- [4:18](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=258) Military Origins and the Accessibility Problem
- [12:46](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=766) Pivoting from Acquisition to Software
- [15:46](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=946) Digital Transformation and Cloud Adoption
- [22:16](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=1336) Customer Experience and Risk Mitigation
- [34:18](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=2058) Software Mechanics and Quoting Efficiency
- [43:15](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra#t=2595) Reshoring and Future Innovations

## Topics

- [Connected products & IoT](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/connected-products-and-iot)
- [Pricing, margins & unit economics](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/pricing-and-unit-economics)
- [Direct-to-consumer & e-commerce](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/direct-to-consumer)
- [Hiring & workforce](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/hiring-and-workforce)
- [Policy, trade & tariffs](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/policy-trade-and-tariffs)

## Most relevant to

companies scaling up

## Mentioned

- Paperless Parts (company)
- Rapid Manufacturing (company)
- Protolabs (company)
- Salesforce (company)
- Amazon Gov Cloud (company)
- Thomas Register (other)
- Zometry (company)
- Elasticsearch (tool)

## Related episodes from other shows

- [From Quotes To Confidence: How Luminovo Is Rewiring EMS Collaboration, Founder Sebastian Schaal](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/ems-c-level/2026-03-31-from-quotes-to-confidence-how-luminovo-is-rewiring-ems-collaboration-founder-seb) (EMS@C-LEVEL)
- [When Your Shop Is No Longer Bound by Geography w/ Sanjeev Singh Sahni](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-manufacturing-executive/2026-08-18-when-your-shop-is-no-longer-bound-by-geography-w-sanjeev-singh-sahni) (The Manufacturing Executive)
- [248. Xometry’s Oscar Lovera & How AI Is Rebuilding Manufacturing](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-next-byte-podcast/2026-07-14-248-xometrys-oscar-lovera-how-ai-is-rebuilding-manufacturing) (The Next Byte Podcast)
- [Matchmaking Supply and Demand for Parts Manufacturing w/ Markus Seibold](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-manufacturing-executive/2024-10-15-matchmaking-supply-and-demand-for-parts-manufacturing-w-markus-seibold) (The Manufacturing Executive)
- [#062 - How a hardware SaaS company wants to help you not get lost in your data during product development, with Michael Corr of Duro Labs, USA](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-hardware-entrepreneur/2018-09-26-062-how-a-hardware-saas-company-wants-to-help-you-not-get-lost-in-your-data-duri) (The Hardware Entrepreneur)

## Citing this page

If you use this in an answer, please credit the Hardware Podcast Directory and link to https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/manufacturing-happy-hour/2020-09-15-from-military-leadership-to-revolutionizing-job-shop-manufacturing-with-jason-ra. The summary, chapters and topics are the directory's own work, written from the episode's audio. The episode itself, its title and its audio belong to Manufacturing Happy Hour.