About Rise Industries
Rise Industries is a precision CNC machine shop founded in 2022 in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, by Christian Schutte. Christian is a manufacturing professional with 18 years of experience at a large scale (+$40M) medical device company. That company was acquired for $140 million by a Publicly traded, global leading CDMO, Chris saw his opening to become an entrepreneur.
He started Rise Industries with two machines, a small team of colleagues who had all worked alongside him at their former employer but moved on to other places. He had a mission to build a shop from the ground up — the right way. In just a few years, the shop has grown to eight people, a fleet of 5-axis mills, Swiss CNC lathes, and turning centers, serving customers in the medical device, aerospace, and commercial markets.
Today, Rise Industries holds three industry certifications — ISO 9001:2015, AS9100D, and ISO 13485. That is a rare achievement for a shop of any size, let alone one just a few years old. Their work includes Precision components and assemblies for orthopedic and spinal implants, Major aerospace and defense OEM’s, and Industry leading commercial automotive manufacturers.
The Challenge: Running Out of Runway on Spreadsheets
When Chris launched Rise Industries, he did what most founders in his position do: he built what he knew. Years of manufacturing experience had taught him to be resourceful, and for a one-man shop with two machines, an elaborate system of Excel spreadsheets seemed like a reasonable starting point. It was familiar, flexible, and free.
But Rise Industries was never built to stay small. As Chris added machines, employees, and customers, the spreadsheet infrastructure started to buckle. Managing job tracking, scheduling, inventory, and quality documentation across disconnected files became increasingly unsustainable. It also made it extremely difficult to simultaneously pursue aggressive compliance certifications.
Chris had used Visual Infor for ERP at his previous employer and evaluated JobBoss for Rise Industries. Neither felt like the right fit for a modern shop built with precision and compliance at its core. He needed a system that could grow with him, not one he’d have to outgrow again in two years.
“I had made Excel spreadsheets out the walls, you know? That’s what we did. It was working for a time, but as we were growing, I absolutely needed to find an ERP system that could grow with us.”
— CHRISTIAN SCHUTTE, CEO & OWNER, RISE INDUSTRIES
Seeking larger contracts in the aerospace and medical manufacturing sectors, Rise Industries also needed an ERP that could prove rigid compliance protocols that met industry standards. The shop had earned its first certification, ISO 9001, using their Excel-driven workflows. But those larger aerospace contracts required an AS9100D certification, and the medical device market required an ISO 13485 certification. Compliance at those levels became impossible to manage on a spreadsheet.
The Solution: All In from Day One
The path to ProShop started, as so many do, through a peer connection. A colleague of Chris’s brother — a programmer from a shop who’s already a ProShop customer — stopped by Rise Industries for a shop tour. When he saw the spreadsheet systems Chris was running, he mentioned ProShop almost casually. At the time, Chris had never heard of it.
What followed was a familiar pattern for new ProShop clients. Chris spent several evenings digesting as much ProShop content as he could in the form of shop tour videos, customer stories, and product walkthroughs. About a month into his self-education journey, Chris had made up his mind.
“I discovered all your videos and went down the rabbit hole, and about a month later I just was like — I’m doing this. This is what we need.”
— CHRISTIAN SCHUTTE, CEO & OWNER, RISE INDUSTRIES
The implementation timeline required some patience. Rise Industries was approaching a scheduled recertification audit, and Chris didn’t want to be managing two systems during that process. So he waited, and the moment the audit was complete, he went all in. He onboarded his team onto the tooling module, the QMS, shop floor management, purchasing caliber — everything ProShop had to offer.
It took roughly four months to get fully up and running. Chris found challenges throughout the transition, not surprising given the intense change management layered on top of all Rise Industries was navigating. But it was a deliberate and necessary transition, since Chris had seen enough fragmented systems to know that half-measures only delayed solving underlying problems.
Chris found ProShop’s QMS module especially valuable. As Rise Industries prepared for a rapid-fire certification campaign, the built-in QMS would help define the shop’s competitive identity.
The Outcome: Three Certifications and a Game-Changing Order
With ProShop in place, plus a VP of sales and marketing whose background spanned document control, engineering, and medical device sales, Rise Industries launched an aggressive certification push.
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ISO 9001 → AS9100D, BACK TO BACK. A prime aerospace contract was the catalyst. The customer signaled that AS9100D would be required to continue the relationship long-term. Rise Industries hit the AS9100D certification first to secure the contract. The day after they received the certification, Chris told his team: keep going.
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ISO 13485: UNLOCKING THE MEDICAL DEVICE MARKET. With AS9100D secured, Rise Industries immediately pursued ISO 13485 — the certification required to supply medical implant manufacturers. The team’s background in medical device manufacturing made the domain familiar, but it was ProShop that gave them the infrastructure to make it official.
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AN $800K WEEK. The week after Rise Industries received its ISO 13485 certification, they were awarded over $800,000 in purchase orders for orthopedic and spinal implant devices. For context, these orders equaled the company’s entire prior year in revenue.
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REAL-TIME DATA, EVERYWHERE. ProShop’s mobile-accessible platform transformed how Chris manages the business day to day. Whether on the floor, visiting a customer, or working remotely, everything is a tap away. He can oversee job statuses, inspection records, scheduling, open orders, and everything he needs to make strategic business decisions.
“There’s no way we would have been able to do this with the spreadsheets and everything that I was using. To have that accessibility everywhere is amazing.”
— CHRISTIAN SCHUTTE, CEO & OWNER, RISE INDUSTRIES
The Advocacy: Auditors Who Became Advocates
The clearest measure of how thoroughly ProShop transformed Rise Industries’ operations came during the AS9100D and ISO 13485 certification audits. Both were scheduled to last for two and a half days, but neither came close to running that long.
“Both auditors were like, ‘I don’t know why anybody in a machine shop doesn’t use this.’ Half an hour in, they’re like — this is going to take, like, not even a day. Everything’s just right there in front of you.”
— CHRISTIAN SCHUTTE, CEO & OWNER, RISE INDUSTRIES
The AS9100D auditor was so impressed that she immediately offered to recommend ProShop to the previous shop she’d visited — a shop that was still searching for an ERP solution. The ISO 13485 auditor echoed what Chris had heard from ProShop’s founders. If you run the system correctly, you’re simply always audit-ready. There’s no scrambling, no backfilling, and no week of prep before the auditors arrive.
For Chris, the proof shows up in the simplest moments. If a customer asks how a part was inspected, he pulls up his phone, opens ProShop, and within two seconds has the full inspection record. Customers can see the specific equipment used, the measurements taken, and how every dimension was documented. It’s become part of the trust-building story Rise Industries tells in every new customer relationship.
The Future: Building the Automated Shop of Tomorrow
If Chris’ first few years with ProShop reveal anything about his approach, it’s that he’s never satisfied with good enough. Even as Rise Industries is still absorbing the impact of its certification sprint and the medical device work it unlocked, Chris is already building the next layer of operational intelligence — and ProShop is at the center of it.
Chris can pull live data from ProShop to view machine statuses, shift assignments, job completion notifications, and per-machine productivity metrics across the shop floor. Every operator on every shift knows exactly where they stand against the week’s targets — in real time, without asking anyone.
“I love just having the links in ProShop everywhere: the schedule for that machine, the shift tie-in, the log-in and log-out screens. It all connects.”
— CHRISTIAN SCHUTTE, CEO & OWNER, RISE INDUSTRIES
On the equipment side, Rise Industries is actively expanding its 5-axis milling capacity to support the growing orthopedic and spinal implant demand. They’re also evaluating automation options to extend lights-out production. The medical device market is their primary growth target, setting a strategic goal of facilitating 70–80% of their growing business as certifications and customer relationships continue to compound.
ITAR, CMMC, and the defense market remain on the roadmap as well. For now, the priority is executing on the momentum that three certifications and their new digitized workflows have made possible. Rise Industries is building the systems that will let them scale without losing the precision and accountability that define the shop’s identity.
It’s a sharp successful trajectory for a company that started with two machines and a wall of spreadsheets.