On September 4, 1998, a PhD driving a game-changing new product for his company met with Tecomet to discuss a project involving a forged zirconium knee. Tecomet’s competition had figured out how to make a zirconium knee, but it was too expensive and the challenge offered to Tecomet was to figure out how to manufacture the knee at a lower cost than the competition. That day, the two companies agreed to move forward with an exploratory project focused on a competitively priced knee made by forging and machining a zirconium knee. Bill King attended this first meeting as the Engineering Manager even though his start date was September 8, 1998. His team’s course was set and the project was under way on his first day. The team needed to be established and the milestones set. Working with the shareholders; production, the machine shop, engineering and operators, Bill started the course forward. There were many failures and gaining experience from each failure, Tecomet produced the first viable, cost acceptable knee using a forged and machined process eighteen months later. Developing the production process involved Lean Manufacturing techniques and even though Tecomet was selling the knee for less than their competitor, they were making a very nice gross margin. The knee product line came online at just the right time. The division had gone from $12M in sales in 1997 to just below $7M in 1999 as a result of lost business caused by diminished sales from their one and only customer. By 2004 when Bill left the company, Tecomet was delivering over 80% of their customer’s zirconium knees bringing in over $5M in sales. This number grew to over $30M in sales by 2010. By 2015, Tecomet had not only gained back the amount of business they lost in 1999; they had earned enough market share to buy their competition that threatened their very existence.