lifefitness.com: How did this healthy career begin for you?

Bob Quast: I studied sports medicine as a student athletic trainer in high school and college. During my undergraduate years, I was an intern for both the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks. Throughout both of these internships, I worked for the head athletic trainers. After I received my degree from DePauw University, I went to graduate school at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) to study international management and marketing.

Once I graduated, I became product manager for an electronic component manufacturer in Chicago. One of the company’s engineers happened to be a former Olympic speed skater, who was constantly getting injured lifting weights. Because of my sports medicine background, he was always seeking my advice about his various injuries. He also happened to work out at a local gym with the employment recruiter for Bally [Total Fitness®], which at this time owned Life Fitness. My colleague heard there was a new position in product management at Life Fitness. With my sports medicine background, international experience at Thunderbird, and my product management experience, I was hired in 1991 and the rest is history. I am proud to work for the leader in the fitness industry and contribute to the success of our company. The future for Life Fitness is very bright and I look forward to being a part of it.

lifefitness.com: How much of these suggestions come to fruition? Do you have a recent example?

Quast: Many ideas submitted by our engineering teams make it to full production. From outside inventors, we only review and consider patent pending submissions. Unfortunately, submitting patents for ideas is a very long process that can take more than 2 years to complete. At times, this can hinder the speed in which the new idea or product is introduced to the marketplace. But we always make sure we protect our intellectual properties. The most recent product developed after years of hard work from many employees is our new integrated LCD screens built into our cardio products. These innovative products have been extremely well received by our customers and sales teams around the world.

lifefitness.com: Talk a little bit about the consistency of the Life Fitness manufacturing and assembly process.

Quast: We manufacture and assemble our commercial and high-end consumer cardio products a few miles outside of Chicago in Franklin Park, Illinois. Decades ago, prior to Life Fitness making products at this facility, Bally manufactured Pac-Man® video game machines here. Many of the engineers and manufacturing employees that worked for Bally still work for Life Fitness in the Franklin Park facility. Their knowledge and expertise on our products, assembly procedures, and quality standards ensure that our products are consistently produced to meet the demands and requirements of our customers around the world.

For our consumer products, we manufacture our products near Minneapolis in our Ramsey, Minnesota facility. Ramsey is a vertically integrated facility. This means we bend, weld, and paint many of our commercial and consumer product frames in the facility. In turn we assemble our consumer X-Series cross-trainers and T-Series treadmills in Ramsey as well. Many of the engineering and manufacturing team members that originally designed the X-Series and T-Series continue to work in Ramsey. This helps us maintain our manufacturing and assembly processes for the products and meet the quality levels that our customers and users demand.

lifefitness.com: Life Fitness has its own lab that uses custom-designed robots to test our products. Specifically, what does this lab test? And how often is this lab in operation?

Quast: Our Quality Team, through reliability testing, uses robots to simulate the extreme use our products undergo in high-use environments. The robots over-stress the products and their various components. This testing allows our engineers to develop fitness equipment that will withstand the constant operation of our products in commercial settings and homes around the world. The testing robots in the lab operate 24 hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year. If you ever visit the lab, make sure you bring earplugs! These many, hard-working robots are very noisy.

lifefitness.com: What other places are Life Fitness products tested?

Quast: In addition to our internal reliability and testing operation, we also test our products in health clubs and multi-use facilities such as Bally Total Fitness, YMCAs and various Chicago-area Park District recreation centers. We also test our products in outside laboratories including the sound testing lab at our parent company’s [Brunswick Corporation] boat division, Mercury Marine.

Whether our equipment is used in the commercial or home environment, we ensure that Life Fitness products are tested under rigorous conditions and solicit user feedback to guarantee when the product arrives to our customers, it holds up to their toughest standards of excellence.

lifefitness.com: Is there one testing procedure Life Fitness products endure that’s most important?

Quast: I believe the accelerated life testing of our products using our custom-designed robots is the most important aspect of the testing. It enables our engineers to effectively design and specify the proper parts and components. When our customers visit this area of our Quality department, they are very impressed with the sophistication of the area and the amount of resources we invest into testing our products.

lifefitness.com: Talk about the Life Fitness ISO 9001-2000 Certification. Why does it mean so much to Life Fitness customers and product users?

Quast: We are committed to continuously improving the products and services we offer our customers and users. Our quality management system meets the most recent ISO 9001-2000 international standards. This standard approves of the design, production, installation, and service of our products around the world. This process is an integral part of the growth of our business and is incorporated into our daily operations. At Life Fitness, quality is measured by our ability to meet or exceed the expectations of our customers and users through product feature offerings, service, quality, and reliability.

lifefitness.com: As part of this certification, Life Fitness products are randomly audited after assembly and packaging. Describe what goes into this auditing process.

Quast: Our products are audited every day by our audit team. These full-time Life Fitness auditors randomly pull products from the end of the production line after they are boxed and ready for shipment. At this point, our auditors act as if they were customers who received the products. They take the products out of their boxes, assemble them to double-check that all the parts are included, and make sure the products function properly and efficiently. This process ensures that when products leave our facility, they meet the quality standards already established by Life Fitness.

lifefitness.com: Because of all the wear and tear they receive over a long period of time, Life Fitness products eventually require service checks. How is this done easily and accurately?

Quast: We have a trained force of service providers around the world. In the U.S., Life Fitness has direct field service representatives and independent service organizations that service our products for our customers. We also help our large health club customers and specialty fitness dealers train their own service team members on how to maintain and service our products. Additionally, our service call center team continuously provides updates to ensure our customers have the latest information needed to maintain their Life Fitness products. As our product offering grows, training and education for our service teams and providers will continue to be our key to success.

When it comes to servicing specific Life Fitness, our commercial treadmills have a unique feature. The entire service history of the product is recorded on a printable circuit board powered by a lithium battery with a life span of more than 10 years. So anytime a component is checked, replaced, or serviced, the date, time, and even the temperature of the motor compartment is automatically recorded.

lifefitness.com: What inspires you and your team to continue making the best products the fitness industry has to offer?

Quast: The cardiovascular product management team is committed to delivering the best products to our customers and sales teams around the world. We have the best sales team in the industry and have built a reputation for providing quality products. The challenge and inspiration for our team will be to continue to provide industry leading products and programs and maintain our leadership position, even as the global marketplace becomes more competitive and faster to market with products. We will continue to integrate the voice of our internal employees and external customers into the entire product development process.

Our team has been successful because we have a very diverse group of individuals that work well as a group and contribute to the company as a whole. We have very talented individuals that have worked for Nike, Brunswick Corporation, a well-known industrial design firm in Chicago, Life Fitness Germany, our Ramsey facility, two fitness competitors, and even the Chicago Cubs. The key for our team’s success is to continue to bring these experiences to our Life Fitness product management and development efforts so we can provide the best possible products and features to our customers worldwide.

lifefitness.com: If you could have one Life Fitness cardio machine, what would it be?

Quast: Being a former treadmill product manager, I still have the first consumer treadmill produced by Life Fitness in my home – the TR5500HR. One of the first products I ever used was the Lifecycle, so I also prefer our commercial 95Ci Lifecycle bike. However, if I had one choice, I would pick the 95Xe, our commercial cross-trainer model with integrated LCD screen technology. I enjoy the total-body workout, the new LCD screen graphics, and the latest convenience of watching television while exercising. It is an excellent product that provides a motivating and entertaining workout experience.

lifefitness.com: Where does the future of Life Fitness equipment go from here?

Quast: As we continue to grow, we will need to provide a variety of exercise options for different types of users and customers. One customer will always be the athletes who demand products with the most sophisticated programs and challenge them at their peak training levels. We also need to continue providing fitness products for fit, health club members that desire a great workout with a variety of programs. 

However, as the world’s population ages and obesity continues to be a increasing issue, our products and programs will cater to people that are deconditioned or first-time exercisers. These include first-time parents, people told by their doctors that they need to stay fit through exercise, those with physical disabilities, or people that simply want to slow the aging process by exercising. Our team is eager to produce products and programs that are easy for anyone to use and understand, as well as provide them with the most positive exercise experience.

lifefitness.com: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to share your insights.

Quast: Thank you for the opportunity.