A 3rd-generation manufacturer sitting between 2 huge tailwinds
Oak Ridge Tool-Engineering has spent more than 60 years building high-precision tooling, components, and mechanical equipment for aerospace, defense, nuclear, energy, and other critical industries. Its work has supported programs ranging from the International Space Station and Apache TADS to the Spallation Neutron Source, High Flux Isotope Reactor, and gas centrifuge systems. ORT-E has also supported Lockheed Martin across aerospace and defense programs.
That puts ORT-E in a unique position. Aerospace and defense demand is growing at the same time the U.S. is investing heavily in nuclear infrastructure and domestic enrichment capacity. Both require the same thing ORT-E has always been known for: extremely precise, high-consequence manufacturing.
And both require people.
ORT-E needed machinists, toolmakers, technicians, engineering technicians, engineers, and other skilled people who could step into complex work and actually own it. Their operation includes everything from 4-axis CNC milling and CNC turning to wire EDM, large-scale boring and grinding, fabrication, welding, CMM inspection, and machining components measured in feet rather than inches.
Craftsmen, not button pushers
That is how ORT-E describes the difference, and it shaped how we built the partnership.
Our team spent time understanding the work at the level ORT-E understands it. What machines does the person actually know? Can they set up their own work? Build tooling? Troubleshoot? Read the part and process instead of waiting for someone else to tell them what to do? Can they operate in an environment where precision and delivery both matter?
We turned that knowledge into structured data inside Laborup.
Then our agents worked against it. Sourcing agents identified people across our manufacturing workforce network whose backgrounds lined up with the work. Voice and text agents engaged them, learned more about their actual experience, and qualified the details that rarely show up on a resume. Scheduling agents kept strong workers moving into interviews quickly. Our team stayed close to ORT-E throughout, using feedback from the floor to sharpen who the platform brought forward next.
The result was not more volume. It was a much higher bar on who made it through.
ORT-E’s team went from spending hours sorting through people who could not do the work to knowing that when Laborup put someone in front of them, there was a reason.
Laborup became the partner ORT-E calls first
Over time, the relationship has become much deeper than filling roles. We know the team, we know the shop, the operation and we understand the kind of people ORT-E wants to build the company with. We have become part of the family.
Laborup is now embedded infrastructure for how ORT-E thinks about workforce. When they look at a new program or a major contract, they can think about the work first instead of wondering whether they will be able to find the people.
That matters when the opportunities in front of you can be worth $20 million, $50 million, or $100 million. ORT-E can go after bigger programs knowing there is a team, a product, and a network behind them that can help build the workforce to deliver.
That is ultimately the partnership. ORT-E wins the work. We help make sure they have the people to get it done.
