A native of Northern New Jersey, Mr. Sachs attended Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. A member of the class of 1963, he received a Bachelor of Engineering degree, majoring in both Mechanical and Chemical Engineering.
After ten years in a variety of manufacturing, engineering, and supervisory positions, he joined Allied Chemical (now Honeywell International). From then until the Syracuse Works closed in 1986, he was deeply involved with maintenance and mechanical reliability, first as an engineer, then as supervisor of the Reliability Engineering Department. While with Allied, he was instrumental in developing one of the first large predictive maintenance inspection programs in the nation, served on a number of corporate technical committees, and received a patent for a device that demonstrates several of the mechanisms of fastener failures.