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What starts with stock and finishes as a testament to precision? Andrew Bogart’s CNC machining — and dirt track racing.

Andrew, a CNC machinist at Micron, has been racing since 2015, starting with go-karts and working his way up to stock cars. This season, he’s making the jump from Street Stock to Pro Stock — a new division, and a new car he built to compete in it.

Last Saturday was his first race at this level. He finished first in his heat, drew P10 — position 10 — for the start of the feature race, and finished P2 — second place. On a dirt track, where cars run inches apart (often making contact) and the surface changes every lap, passing eight cars on opening night is a strong start.

“There’s no way you’re going to win every race, but if you’re consistently in the top five you have a pretty good chance to win the season on points,” says Andrew, happy with the outcome.

What Is Dirt Track Stock Car Racing?

Despite the name, stock cars share little with their factory model counterparts. They’re purpose-built machines — custom chassis, suspension, engine, and body panels — with fronts styled to resemble production sedans. Andrew’s wears a Camaro nose. Inside, a bucket seat and roll cage speak to the forces involved.

The household name in stock car racing is NASCAR, the sanctioning body behind the Daytona 500 and other paved-oval races. Andrew races on dirt tracks — packed clay, specifically — and the skill set is its own discipline entirely. The suspension sits higher and carries more attitude in the corners. Weight transfers dramatically. The rear swings wide. And the track evolves throughout the night as each race lays down rubber, moves clay, and changes the grip.

“There are so many different possible track conditions, and the course changes as the other races happen,” Andrew explains. “You often have to make mechanical adjustments before your race without testing them on the track, so there’s a little bit of strategy in that.”

On Saturday, for example, “I knew my car was over-gripping in the heat race,” he says. “But as the other races took place the track was becoming more slippery, so I decided not to make any adjustments this time and let the track conditions change to meet me.”

The results speak for themselves.

Between the Races

Opening night’s results were good. But this race gave Andrew a clear picture of what to dial in before the next one.

He plans to lengthen the wheelbase slightly on the right and shorten it on the left — a geometry change for tighter cornering. He’s also fitting a gear that lets the engine rev higher on the straightaway of the D-shaped track.

“Your cornering speed is key,” he says. “The faster you exit the corner, the more advantage you have in the straightaway.”

For someone who spends his weeks holding tight tolerances on precision CNC equipment, the instinct to build something exactly right doesn’t clock out when the shift ends.

Number 54

The racing season runs every weekend through the summer. Crystal Motor Speedway — Andrew’s Saturday track — draws drivers from across Michigan, and is one of the most well-attended dirt ovals in the state. In the off-season, those weekends shift to the garage: building, tuning, and readying the car for the following year.

Andrew races under number 54. His stepfather, Chaney Newland, carried it before him. His grandfather carried it first, starting in 1966. That number has meant something in this family for six decades — and once again it’s in Pro Stock.

The costs are real. Tires wear fast, requiring a fresh set nearly every other week, and fuel, parts, and repairs add up quickly. It’s a commitment that makes sense if you love the sport. Andrew clearly does.

Micron is proud to sponsor Andrew’s 2026 campaign. Follow his season or learn about sponsorship opportunities at his racing page, and catch him live at Crystal Motor Speedway.

Does your supplier risk profile account for what happens when a company’s leadership changes?

Most supply chain teams already have the most immediate indicators dialed in — financial stability, production capacity, quality certifications. And rightly so. But leadership continuity is a dimension that belongs in that same conversation, especially in the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) dominated landscape of CNC machining job shops.

As a third-generation, family-owned manufacturer, we think about this a lot. Our 70+ years of operation are the result of an intentional focus on continuity, and the result is something we’re proud of.

For supply chain professionals who are always looking to build a more complete picture of supplier health, succession planning status is a natural next addition to the framework you already have.

Six Succession Questions Worth Asking

These aren’t interrogation points, but conversation starters that help you understand the maturity of your supplier’s planning process. When approached from a framework of mutual growth, they demonstrate a customer who’s interested in their supplier’s long-term success:

1. Do you have a formal, documented succession plan in place for ownership and key leadership roles?
2. What specific processes are in place to develop and prepare identified successors?
3. Does a board or strategic planning group provide independent oversight to ensure alignment between current executives and the succession pipeline?
4. How is the financial transition — such as a buy-out or ownership transfer — structured to ensure stability during and after the handover?
5. What contingency plans exist for unexpected events, like the sudden departure or incapacitation of a key leader?
6. How frequently is the succession plan reviewed and updated to stay relevant to your business goals and market conditions?

You don’t need to work through all six in a single sitting or structure a separate meeting around them. They should fit naturally into your existing supplier review process.

What Good Answers Look Like

Suppliers with mature succession planning will answer these questions specifically and confidently. You might hear about identified successors who are already active in the business, written transition plans, or an advisory board that provides continuity of strategic direction independent of any one leader. These are genuinely positive indicators of organizational health.

If answers are vague or the topic hasn’t been formally addressed yet, that’s useful information too — worth noting in your supplier records and worth revisiting down the road. Many excellent suppliers are simply earlier in their planning process.

Tracking this doesn’t necessarily require a complicated scoring system — even a simple note on where a supplier appears to be in the process gives you meaningful context over time.

Why We Wrote This

Fielding critical questions like these from a customer is a challenge, but also an opportunity. As a supplier who’s taken succession planning seriously, we want to be asked.

We’ve put together a more comprehensive look at this topic — what the risks look like, how to evaluate where a supplier stands, and what a mature plan involves.

Read the full white paper here: Does Your Key CNC Machining Supplier Have a Succession Plan?

Or, browse our white paper library for more industry insights.

Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

— Proverbs 27:17

Last Friday, Micron welcomed 25 professionals from 13 Lean manufacturing companies to tour our shop floor.

This Lean User Group strives to share and learn from its members’ successes in implementing Lean principles — an approach focused on maximizing customer value by continuously improving processes and eliminating waste. This month it was our privilege to host.

Two Systems We Shared

We shared two systems we developed in the spirit of Lean:

1. Our Management Review System:

We built this system to solve a familiar problem: critical management topics were falling through the cracks. What started as a way to meet ISO review requirements evolved into a sophisticated tool that now runs on Lean principles — essentially a just‑in‑time system for management attention.

The system is built around a visual board that lists every key management topic and its required review frequency. Some topics are reviewed weekly; others quarterly. A color‑coded status shows whether each item was completed on time or needed to be rescheduled.

The result was tighter, more purposeful meetings. Knowing every critical topic is addressed when it should be prevents drift. This brought the weekly meeting times from 3-4 hours to 90 minutes or less.

2. Employee Profiles:

If the Management Review System is about tightening focus, this next system is about widening it by getting to know the people we work beside every day.

We started with the Acumax Index, an assessment we’ve used for years as a pre‑employment tool. It gives us a detailed look at a candidate’s needs, decision‑making style, and communication preferences. But we realized its real value came after hiring: helping teams understand how to work better together.

So we asked ourselves: what if we took that insight and made it personal?

We created one‑page employee profiles that combine key Acumax characteristics with details the employee chooses to share — where they’ve lived and worked and outside hobbies.

Paired alongside the Acumax personality profile chart, these profiles serve as both an icebreaker and a communication bridge.

The early results have been encouraging. Conversations that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise are starting to surface.

The feedback and questions from this group showed us that no one can understand you quite like a peer. From laser-focused inquiries about management review throughput to curiosity about the Acumax, the level of insight underpinning the post-presentation questions humbled us.

From Quote Board to Shipping Dock

After presenting, we walked the group through our full value stream — from quoting through engineering, receiving, production, secondary processes, and final logistics. Nothing was roped off or shut down for the sake of the tour. Our visitors saw our day-to-day: the visual management boards, work‑in‑progress levels, routing and identification systems, 5S tool boards, and inventory management systems.

Sharpened by Curiosity

Continuous improvement requires some humility: a willingness to admit, no matter what stage you occupy, that something could be better. That’s true whether you’re a 38‑employee shop like ours or a much larger operation.

The professionals who visited us last Friday embodied that spirit. They came to see what a small manufacturer could teach them — and in doing so, they challenged us to dig deeper into our own systems. There’s something clarifying about explaining your work to peers who truly understand it. When someone asks a pointed question about why you chose a particular approach, you don’t just answer; you re‑examine.

That’s the value of a group like this. We didn’t open our doors to show off. We opened them to learn — and to be sharpened.

We’re grateful to every person who spent their day with us, and we’re already looking forward to the next site visit, where we can see another Lean expert’s systems in action.