A Family-Owned Company
Built on making every stitch count.
“At AJR Group, our companies produce quality manufactured goods through constant innovation in manufacturing and by empowering our workforce to supply products that our customers can source with confidence and trust.”
Located in the Chicago suburb of Saint Charles, Illinois, the AJR Group is a small army of trained, dedicated workers spread across 350,000 square feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing space. This is their story.
As young man in Croatia, Jakob Rukel had a dream of a better life for his family and friends. He knew that to create a future and he needed to leave what was known for the unknown…to leave a familiar rural community for distant grand opportunity. With his wife and two small boys, Jakob moved to the US with little more than a dream and a few dollars in his pocket.
With his first job on a manufacturing floor in North Carolina he earned a reputation for going the extra mile, working longer hours, exceeding expectations, and delivering more than was expected. Soon even the company’s customers knew that if they wanted speed and excellence, they needed Jakob on their job.
He was a problem solver, eager to understand, inventive and a man of his word. Moving to Chicago to join a partner in business became a pivot point that resulted in establishment of his own company. His dedication to service, efficiency and excellence elevated the small company among larger competitors.
His two young sons Angelo and John, learned the lessons of stewardship, innovation and resilience working in the company, unloading trucks and stitching fabric at night. After college both Angelo and John returned to the company as operational leaders and extended the same bedrock values and focused vision through a second generation.
Like the early days, today when customers call, fast problem-solving and responsiveness is priority one. Efficiency is designed into every job.
The newest facility, opened in 2017, was designed, not has a typical manufacturing plant, but as a carefully orchestrated manufacturing performance with each step, each task, each work station placed precisely and in sequence to eliminate wasted time and materials to maximize efficiency. This architected efficiency has resulted in the company’s stellar reputation with the industry’s best lead times, the highest on-time delivery, and nearly flawless order accuracy, all at highly competitive pricing.
Jakob, Angelo and John Rukel continue their quest to set new standards as the fastest and highest quality medical product contract manufacturer in the industry.
Speed, quality, reliability. That is the AJR difference.