Although they make up 48 percent of the working population in Canada, women only comprise 28 percent of the manufacturing workforce, a statistic that has remained relatively constant for more than 30 years. In an industry that continues to grow and thrive, women have missed out on its numerous benefits such as stable employment with valuable and technologically advanced positions that pay well.

The stats are similar in the United States, as well, where women make up around 30 percent of the 15.8 million individuals in manufacturing industries, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, but account for nearly 47 percent of the entire workforce, and only one out of every four manufacturing executives is a woman.

The demand for competent and talented professionals in the industrial business continues to be of paramount importance. According to recent Gallup research, more than two million skilled employees are needed in manufacturing industries such as aerospace and military, automotive, processing, and industrial products, while six out of ten roles are unfilled due to a skills deficit, according to the Women in Manufacturing 2017 survey by Deloitte, the Manufacturing Institute, and APICS.

What is the best way to rectify the situation?

Inspiring and motivating young women to enter this work space requires having more female role models, providing access to contemporary production facilities to help influence industry perceptions, encouraging initiatives for young women to seek STEM and/or skilled trades educations, creating more inclusive workplaces, and fostering innovative solutions to help achieve a healthier work-life balance.

The ongoing underrepresentation of women in manufacturing, coupled with the potential intimidation factor found in a traditionally male-dominated industry, poses a challenging barrier for women looking for a career in the field, along with those hoping to advance up the corporate ladder. Starting at the top and leading by example seems to be the most proactive way to generate change, while prioritizing diversity and inclusion (D&I) and embedding that practice in an organization’s mission can also help inspire long-term transformation.

Employers, too, face unique problems in attracting and hiring women to manufacturing jobs. But while traditional gender bias persists, diverse firms have proven tactics for bringing women to the workforce, particularly for those vital leadership positions. Having female executives as internal role models and visible on company websites during the recruitment process is an excellent place to start. Equal compensation for equal labour, coupled with flexible work schedules and mental wellness programs show employees their needs are important, while building female support networks foster stronger relationships and a sense of belonging. According to Gartner research published in August 2020, these benefits and efforts can increase feelings of inclusion by up to 38 percent.

However, women who work for firms that place an emphasis on being present and available at all times can be at a disadvantage when it comes to balancing this potentially damaging culture with the responsibilities of home and childcare. And those returning to full-time work following maternity leave may find a company’s onboarding and integration procedure severely lacking. Industries must be vigilant in helping to establish appropriate boundaries, workload delegation, and time management support, tasks often left to female employees to negotiate. Prioritizing an employee’s health and well-being can be aided by raising awareness at the executive level. A small move like offering a health coach as part of employee personal development can go a long way in improving well-being while also enhancing loyalty.

Gender diversity increases manufacturing businesses’ innovation, return on equity, and profitability, according to a Deloitte study of 600 women and 20 executives in manufacturing. Additionally, manufacturing employees report greater business performance in terms of ability to innovate when they see their employers making an attempt to include them.

Unfortunately, a number of studies have also revealed distressing tales of what it’s like to be a female worker in manufacturing, including multiple instances of sexual harassment and hostile and dangerous working conditions. According to a recent Forbes story, these incidents are underreported in the sector by both victims and coworkers who see them, factors that help shape the negative public perception of manufacturing. A Deloitte study found that women left manufacturing for a number of reasons including unappealing pay/income, not enough opportunities for advancement, poor working conditions, inadequate work-life balance and a lack of demanding assignments.

According to a Gallup poll, the ability to do what they do best and work-life balance are significant workplace considerations for women, factors that manufacturing companies should learn before recruiting. Job flexibility, inclusion, workplace respect, and being appreciated for strengths are also all top influencers for women job seekers, according to Gallup data.

Additionally, only 15 percent of the women polled felt the sector was accommodating of family and personal commitments, with more than 40 percent of women either solely responsible for or equally bearing the burden of household tasks. Taking these factors into consideration would greatly aid companies in their quest to successfully diversify their workforce.

It’s also critical for manufacturers to communicate to female students early on that they embrace gender-inclusive ideals in their organizations. Only 29 percent of women believe the school system actively or somewhat supports female students to pursue manufacturing occupations, according to the Deloitte survey. A lack of knowledge about manufacturing’s potential and early recruiting may also be damaging the business.

In short, hiring more women in manufacturing positions demonstrates a gender-inclusive culture, which in turn attracts more women. Deloitte recommends that women executives in manufacturing businesses be more visible in order to demonstrate gender inclusivity to potential employees, while also emphasizing rewards, flexibility, and culture in order to recruit certified and qualified female candidates.

Current recruitment practices are another explanation for the gender imbalance in manufacturing. According to a LinkedIn survey, there is a gender prejudice among recruiters who are 13 percent less likely to check a female profile and three percent less likely to send women emails after viewing their profiles when looking at prospects on LinkedIn. Removing essential identifiers like names and images from candidate applications before analyzing them is one method to eliminate gender bias.

While identifying gender imbalance is an important first step, creating targets to close the gap is critical for any company aiming to draw more women as future employees. Women in leadership positions can provide a wealth of benefits according to the Deloitte survey, including a variety of viewpoints in decision-making, new and imaginative methods and solutions, a well-balanced organizational structure, and improved financial performance.

And of course encouraging professional development and providing opportunities for growth in order to increase the number of women in leadership positions is vital for manufacturing companies and the industry at large. Creating mentorship programs is also an ideal way to help aid in the retention of female employees.

Hiring competent women in manufacturing boasts numerous advantages: Along with boosting innovation, employee satisfaction, and sales, gender diversity businesses are more appealing to aspiring employees and job searchers. Attracting and keeping women in manufacturing is crucial to the future of manufacturing, providing a varied workforce that ensures there are different perspectives tackling problems in different ways.

The post The XX Factor<p class="company">Bridging the Gender Gap in Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Prior to the First World War, male factory workers dominated as factories were not considered a place for women to be. But this soon all changed when men picked up their arms to join the military during the Great War. The number of women in factories increased to meet the wartime production demands while men carried out their duties in battle. Women were needed, and they willingly chose to work.

The United States Government’s Department of Labor saw the need to create the Women in Industry Service (WIS) in 1918. The WIS coordinated with various organizations and corporations, and although the WIS was established to aid in a temporary situation, it eventually became a major fixture of the Department of Labor by 1920.

It then became known as the United States Women’s Bureau. “It was no coincidence that the Bureau was created the same year as the passing of the nineteenth amendment which gave women the right to vote. The First World War gave women new freedoms and opportunities and led to growth in the influence of women’s rights organizations,” says the Women in the Factories feature from the Elihu Burritt Library at the Central Connecticut State University.

During World War II, a global conflict of an unprecedented scale, women again took their places on production lines as many factories across North America were converted from producing normal household goods to military equipment to supply the needs of war.

Women across the country worked on assembly lines, out of a sense of patriotism or due to financial need with male breadwinners off at war. They ran drill presses, welded, used screw machines, produced munitions, and built ships and airplanes, among other activities. An estimated six million women began working in factories across the United States in positions that were previously unavailable. In fact, by 1944, women held one-third of manufacturing positions in the country. While some factories were producing military goods, most carried on with the same production of consumer goods as before the war.

When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt took a tour of the new workforce known as ‘production soldiers,’ she was impressed. But with so many women working on production lines, childcare centres became essential to enable them to work. She convinced her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to approve the United States Government’s first childcare facilities. Through the Community Facilities Act of 1942, seven centers were built to accommodate over 100,000 children. Industries across the nation were also encouraged to build childcare centres for workers.

Since the war, Rosie the Riveter has become a cultural icon with her bandana-tied hair, flexed arm, and her ‘We Can Do It’ slogan. At the time, however, the image was just one of many propaganda pieces intended to recruit women into the workforce. “If you’ve used an electric mixer in your kitchen, you can learn to run a drill press,” said an American War Manpower Campaign.

Canada had its own version of ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ geared at enticing women to fill positions in factories to contribute to the war effort, as men were fighting overseas. Indicating the essential need for women in factories while men were off to war, Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Liberal Party leader from 1919-1948, addressed the nation in August 1942. “Men and women are needed to make the machines, the munitions and weapons of war for our fighting men,” he stated.

Thousands of women answered the call. The peak of wartime employment during 1943-1944, saw approximately 373,000 women working in factories, according to Veterans Affairs in Canada Remembers: Women at War.

In September 1942, recruitment began with the Women’s Division of the National Selective Service in Canada. Initially, “Selective Service officers were to restrict employment permits to single women or to married women without children, as much as possible,” wrote Ruth Roach Pierson in Canadian Women and the Second World War.

Pierson also noted that “The September registration had revealed that in British Columbia, the Prairies, and the Maritimes, there were more than twenty thousand young single women without home responsibilities and willing to work full time.” Large production factories in Quebec and Ontario saw approximately 15,000 rural workers transferred to these facilities.

These women did their part to keep production facilities operating at peak capacity by learning the trades and skills necessary to support the ongoing war machine. The Canadian government also sponsored childcare centres so women could work.

Canadian women were vital contributors to Canada’s Victory Campaign whereby, in late 1944, Canadians liberated the southwestern region of the Netherlands, with which Canada had a special relationship, from the Germans. The strategic location was then utilized for logistical purposes.

Women performed many repetitive tasks that required fine precision work in electronics, instrument assembly, and optics, for example, something that they proved to be very adept in doing. Women had proven that they could do ‘men’s’ work on factory production lines. These opportunities enabled women’s earning power, although for significantly less pay than their male counterparts. Although many women were already part of the workforce, the war effort was joined by those from middle and upper-class backgrounds who previously remained in the home.

After World War II, most women were let go from their jobs and returned home. The demand for war materials fell, and soldiers were returning home from the war seeking employment to get back on their feet and reacclimatize to civilian life.

Even so, between 61 and 85 percent of women wanted to remain in their jobs after the war. For them, working signified newfound freedom and independence. As Anne Montague, the founder of Thanks! Plain and Simple, an organization affiliated with the American Rosie Movement, noted in the Washington Post: “You know, they said about the men, ‘How ya gonna keep em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ What I say about the women is, ‘How ya gonna keep ‘em knitting with yarn after they’ve seen Lockheed?’’’

In contrast, today, women are encouraged to pursue careers in the manufacturing industry, and technology and the quickly changing world of automation and augmentation will require specialized skills. More women are pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

According to the U.S. Department of Education, STEM degrees achieved by women increased almost sixty-seven percent during the 2008 to 2009 academic year. Close to thirty-three percent of STEM degree recipients in the U.S. were women from 2017 to 2018, equating to close to 240,000 degrees from colleges and universities. This number is up from the 2008 to 2009 statistic of over 143,000 degrees.

Women not only took positions across North America in the manufacturing sector in support of the war effort, but they also sacrificed their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers. For that, women deserve our enduring gratitude.

The post Wartime Women<p class="company">How Joining the Manufacturing Sector Aided in the War Effort</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

The company underwent further expansion between 1998 and 1999 when it established a larger factory off the main Chicago highway, Route 14. Swiss Automation has undergone four expansions in the past five decades, including its 77,000-square-foot main building along with another building in Cary, Illinois established in 2010. The latest upgrade came in 2019, a 20,000-square-foot addition now housing around $13 million in new equipment, and more growth is to come soon.

There are now three hundred employees across the two facilities. Swiss Automation trains employees thoroughly and enables them to progress within the company as far as their ambition takes them. The company is on a constant hiring and training cycle to keep up with the speed of manufacturing and its own upgrades, and it always attracts high-caliber employees with a culture that is encouraging and friendly.

Production Salesperson Karl Mayle observes that the staff members are willing to perform different manufacturing techniques at all points in the customer cycle, and executive leaders are always researching new opportunities in myriad industries to expand manufacturing. Although the company has traditionally been a turning house, adopting high-speed computer numerical control (CNC) machines and mills in recent years has brought in a new customer base.

“Humility and a willingness to expand and support new stuff is key,” Vice President of Operations Marc Moran explains. Swiss Automation looks to one day become a one-stop-shop in its sector of the market. This is bolstered by the fact that the company is known as the training house for these parts in the Chicagoland area due to its relative complexity compared to other businesses and areas within the machining sector. He believes that employees should know how to do everything within the company’s purview.

The ability to attract high-quality workers is a trademark of Swiss Automation’s operations and has allowed it to grow in areas that other companies are unable to, such as offering a workplace with a skilled and diverse workforce comprising women and people of many nationalities in high positions. Being a company that manufactures to a customer’s needs whenever possible, there is always a desire to try different solutions; for example, the company routinely replaces its machines after roughly ten years if processes or products emerge that allow it to operate faster or better. This is relatively early into a lifecycle but by adopting this quick turnaround, it can get more products to its customers and the market overall, a more advantageous situation for everyone.

Employees report high levels of satisfaction with the empowering and close atmosphere, and this contentment translates to a superior product at all stages of the process. Moran says that the goal has always been to treat employees not as a number on a sheet but as part of a tight-knit group of industry experts.

Swiss Automation has experienced continued success and development in the past few years, but an unfortunate wrench was thrown into its processes with the advent of COVID-19 in 2020. Being deemed an essential business in the early days of the pandemic, the company followed all CDC guidelines and did everything possible to keep its workers safe, Moran reports. Mayle adds that no workers were laid off or furloughed.

Despite a spike in cases over holiday 2021 with the Omicron variant, it continues to do all it can to promote safety and employee wellbeing while still delivering the products and customer service its customers have come to expect.

Like many industries currently, manufacturing is seeing a labor shortage, further fueled by the ongoing pandemic, and that is felt here as well. To assist in hiring efforts, the company touts an apprentice program that has been an area of growth even in more difficult times.

It also casts its eye on younger potential team members as it involves itself with both physical and virtual tours of its facilities for high school students, an initiative that Moran refers to as ‘Manufacturing in Your Backyard.’ He finds that it is better to teach from a bottom-up approach, and this has led to both younger employees joining the company, as well as people wanting to break out from their current employment and get a start in manufacturing.

He also is concerned with the current state of inflation in North America and how it will continue to affect the manufacturing sector. “Everything is so expensive that people will stop spending money,” Moran predicts. “Interest rates will raise, as will taxes, and the economy will slow.”

Mayle also adds that there has been a more recent pushback against outsourcing overseas as the cost of this approach in manufacturing has effectively quadrupled, and the prevailing attitude is that it is better to pay extra for products made in the United States. Although inflation may continue to push America toward outsourcing labor to other countries, companies like Swiss Automation have observed a counter push toward reshoring manufacturing—especially in the height of COVID—so as not to worry about potential delays or shutdowns.

For 2022, the company is currently putting up a 28,000-square-foot addition to its Cary facility to fit fifty to sixty more machines and provide more jobs to the area and products to customers. The process is moving ahead at a good clip and a June 2022 opening is expected. Moran also notes the recent donation of Swiss Automation machines to Carey Grove High School and Elgin Community College, the latter to be delivered in February 2022. These charitable actions are done to help young people get into manufacturing and to continue spurring on recruitment within both the marketplace and in the ranks of the business itself.

With these new additions and exercises, Swiss Automation will seek to keep growing and create jobs while taking care of its customers to give the best product with the best technology available. “Customers love our quality, and we want to maintain that and keep building confidence with [them],” Moran says, as the business draws closer to celebrating sixty years as a trusted name in manufacturing.

The post At the Forefront for Over 50 Years<p class="company">Swiss Automation</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Founded by Chief Executive Officer and President Anthony Puccio, the family-owned business started in sheet metal. Expanding its services and capabilities over the decades, the California-based manufacturer now specializes in design, development consultation, and fabricating assemblies and components.

Today, Anaheim Precision Manufacturing has grown to a team of 130, operating over 100,000 square feet across five locations in Southern California and providing superlative engineering, milling, assembly, and other services in-house. Operating with the motto ‘Quality and customer service drive our success,’ the business is also well-known for its ability to produce rapid prototypes in just one to three days, depending on the complexity of parts.

“Our operations range from sheet metal fabrication and assembly to precision turning and grinding, vertical and horizontal machining, and three-, four-, and five-axis,” says Joseph Puccio, Chief Operating Officer. “We also have a design and development arm where we are building and designing aerospace components to spec for our customers.”

One-stop shop
From software to sheet metal and painting to print, APM meets all client needs. The company uses equipment from Haas, Amada, Mitsubishi, Takisawa, and other manufacturing industry giants to perform machining, forming, turning, grinding, welding, deburring, and a host of other services.

Offering CNC machining and CNC turning, precision I.D. and O.D. grinding, mechanical and electro-mechanical assembly, and more, Anaheim Precision Manufacturing is a vertical integrator able to operate as five suppliers instead of one. This includes taking a part from inception – if there’s a design requirement – to building a print job requiring machining, sheet metal, assembly, turning and grinding, and other items like pins, shafts, and bolts and nuts.

From there, APM can perform painting, powder coating, packaging, testing, development, and shipment, all in one solid product. “We’re a one-stop process as far as the manufacturing industry goes,” says Puccio, “and there aren’t many shops out there that are doing all the things that we do.”

Some services are performed through sister companies. This includes painting – through Orange California-based On Line Graphics & Finishing, Inc. Purchased 18 years ago, On Line has a full-blown powder line, eight liquid booths, and the capabilities to produce finishing, printing, placards/nameplaces, and membranes/overlays, and interior labels and control systems for commercial aircraft and treadmill panels.

Another sister company, Riverside California-based D. Mills Grinding and Machining Co., Inc., was established in 2003 and provides CNC machining and CNC OD/ID grinding, sheet metal fabrication, welding, and other services for the aerospace industry.

A focus on quality
As is to be expected, Anaheim Precision Manufacturing adheres to rigorous standards and programs. These include AS9100D and Nadcap.

The latest version of the aerospace industry standard, AS9100D is a quality management system standard centered on the aerospace industry (aviation, space, and defense). Undergoing a major transition, AS9100 was updated to meet the evolving changes of ISO 9001:2015.

According to APM, “abiding by the requirements of the ISO 9001:2015 quality management system demonstrates that Anaheim Precision can consistently provide products that meet customer and applicable statutory requirements thereby meeting or exceeding customer satisfaction.”

Anaheim Precision Manufacturing also adheres to the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Program, better known simply as Nadcap.

A global cooperative accreditation program for aerospace engineering, defense, and similar industries, Nadcap provides “an industry-managed approach to conformity assessment of ‘special processes’ that brings together technical experts from prime contractors, suppliers, and representatives from government to work together and establish requirements for approval of suppliers using a standardized approach,” according to the organization.

Word gets out
Owing to APM’s many capabilities, exemplary quality standards and certifications, and decades of experience, much of the company’s business comes from repeat customers whose highest expectations have been met. Even with two internal salespeople, a considerable amount of work comes from recommendations.

“We’ve developed a pretty strong reputation as far as delivering quality products on time,” says Puccio. “When we are successful, our customers place an order and we deliver the parts on or before the due date. They never have to be in contact with us; we are pretty much hands-off. You give us your problem, and we solve it for you.”

Previously growing some 25 percent yearly, there’s been something of a slowdown for Anaheim thanks to COVID, particularly in the airline sector, with fewer planes in the air and less of a need for parts. Despite this, APM continues to experience growth in other areas and to introduce new products and services.

Notable in the industry for its seamless services and on-time delivery, APM remains unique in the market. With an inherent ability to understand the design and development side and apply knowledge to production work, APM keeps drawing its clients back with its ability to make complex parts quickly and efficiently.

Even with the pandemic, APM has several expansion plans in place. With about 60 percent of its current business build-to-print and 40 percent of its own product on paper, the company plans to build a print business separately and run it strictly as a design and development firm for products. This will happen once it achieves 60 percent of its own product and 40 per cent build-to-print.

“Our goal as a business is to be a one-stop service provider and issue-free. In other words, hands-off,” says Puccio. “As a business, we are constantly looking not at what our customers are asking us to do today, but what changes are taking place down the road. We’re trying to get ahead of the demands of our clients so that we can meet those demands as soon as they pop up.”

The post Meeting the Needs of World-Class Clients<p class="company">Anaheim Precision Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

So what’s the magic making the difference? At Rathburn Tool & Manufacturing, that leadership is personified in CEO and visionary leader, Angie Holt.

Holt’s father, Jerry Rathburn, founded the company in 1983 in Auburn, Indiana (a city known as a pioneer of the auto industry, home to the National Automotive and Truck Museum, and the Early Ford V-8 Foundation Museum). What started as two manual mills on wooden blocks on a gravel floor has steadily grown under Holt’s leadership to include the latest in robotics and computer numerical control (CNC) machines, a 30-person team working multiple shifts, and an excellent mix of engineers and production specialists who pride themselves on producing everything from components for surgical instruments and paintball guns to commuter train and heavy-truck clutch-system parts.

Setting a new vision
Shortly after joining Rathburn Tool & Manufacturing in 2018, Holt, whose father had stepped away from daily operations, found the company had drifted into an unhealthy reliance on a handful of customers and set out to diversify the portfolio, strengthen the employee mix, and add new equipment to enable the shop to achieve the kind of growth she thought possible. She leveraged her engineering background and 25 years of experience in the construction industry to change Rathburn’s trajectory.

As Holt describes it, Rathburn’s magic isn’t the equipment or the people. It’s both. By upgrading and adding new equipment and production lines, the company created greater capacity to turn out parts for their customers. But the equipment doesn’t run itself. For that, Holt and her management team focused on bringing in new talent while celebrating the contributions made by legacy employees. Every project takes skill and creativity—something Holt celebrates by recognizing her team members on LinkedIn to publicly applaud their commitment and ingenuity.

“I love being part of an organization that values its employees,” Holt notes. “From a technical perspective, I’m constantly amazed and excited by every new part that comes off our line. We take a chunk of metal and turn it into a really precise machined piece that helps drive a truck or a train—part of something bigger.”

The company offers a robust tuition reimbursement program for employee training, Holt says, “so we can take the great people who work here beyond the operator level, educate them, and give them opportunities to grow within the company. They can take positions of more authority and with greater earning power. That not only creates great careers for them, but it makes a difference for their families as well.”

Rathburn replaces aging machines with next-gen automation, including robots that handle more repetitive tasks and co-bots that work in tandem with employees. This both improves efficiency and helps overcome labor shortage issues.

It’s all part of strategic planning and a vision that will see the company compete globally and thrive in future disruptions, a lesson that was learned during the pandemic.

Making a case for women STEM leaders
“Being a female leader in the machine shop business does make me stand out a little,” says Holt. “But I don’t let any of that get in my way. My father raised three daughters and gender was never an issue,” she continues.

“There is quite a bit of conversation happening now about the lack of skilled labor and tradespeople. That’s incredibly important not only to Rathburn, but to our economy as a nation. Girls, or maybe I should say women, have excellent opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industries like never before.”

Does being a female leader in a STEM impact Holt’s position as a leader? Some might say the historically male-dominated fields would intimidate female leadership. Holt doesn’t see it that way. “Sure, there are some biases,” Holt notes. “Some people underestimate me strategically, from a business perspective, so that gives me an edge. I view it as a positive,” she says.

“As kids, we would come into the shop on weekends and we’d get dirty. We’d carry things, push a wheelbarrow… whatever we needed to do. There were no girl jobs and boy jobs. You just needed to give it your best and you needed to work hard.”

That’s the attitude she still brings customers—who rely on Rathburn expertise to problem-solve and develop innovative solutions for both small and large production line jobs—and to her team. You can see it in the company values, which Holt helped update shortly after joining the company: proactively solve problems, communicate openly and honestly, deliver value, not product, never compromise on quality, and win together.

Living the company’s values
For Holt and Rathburn, living their core values every day is key to their business and their continued success. In one example Holt shared, a customer recently brought in a spray nozzle used to manufacture hot tub liners. For this customer, their existing nozzles were wearing out quickly and needed to be replaced far too often, which meant shutting down the lines to swap in new parts and creating costly inefficiencies.

“I think where we serve our customer best is in providing creative, engineered solutions for manufacturability,” Holt says. In this case, the customer didn’t have the design specs detailing original materials and construction. Instead, the customer brought the part to Rathburn engineers to start with a soft prototype and work to create a better nozzle.

“We made changes, let them test it and give us feedback, and then changed the material to the hard final production material and let them test that,” recalls Holt. “We were able to make something much longer-lasting and create a print so we could improve the design as we went.”

Building a community, not just a business
From the company’s 1983 founding, Rathburn Tool & Manufacturing has focused on building more than just a thriving business. In 2021, Rathburn founder, Jerry Rathburn, saw a need in the county to support local veterans and their families. It was a cause close to Jerry’s heart and tied to his own personal service as a Vietnam War vet.

Working together, Holt and her father established the Veteran Endowment Fund of Dekalb County with a goal of assisting people with essential needs such as food, housing, utilities, transportation, medical services, educational training, and more.

“Our veterans have sacrificed in ways I can’t imagine,” Holt says. “I’ve heard plenty of father’s stories as a combat soldier on the ground and in the jungles of Vietnam. We’re indebted to them for our freedoms—and they need us to help lift them up once they return. The Veteran Endowment Fund is designed to do just that now and for years to come.”

Leading the way for the future
Holt is quick to acknowledge that most family businesses don’t live past the second generation. Some sources show that as many as 70 percent of second-generation businesses fail, while nearly 90 percent of third generation companies go under, are sold, or merge with others. She’s been deliberate about securing the fundamentals of Rathburn Tool & Manufacturing and creating a valuable and lasting legacy for her successors.

“Just as I grew up mopping the floors, cleaning the machines and filling the vending machines when I was a kid, I really want to put those things in place for my children and my nieces and nephews. I want them to understand the value of hard work in driving success, the value of the employees, and the things we can do to make their lives better.”

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that her father is proud of what she’s accomplished. “He says I do a better job than he ever did. In my eyes, my dad’s my hero, and to have a compliment from him—from a fellow who doesn’t give out compliments easily—that means something. It makes him very proud to be able to pass this company along to family.”

The post Second Generation Leader Helps Guide Family Machine Shop to New Levels<p class="company">Rathburn Tool & Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Virtek was established in 1986 in Waterloo, but now boasts a reach extending across North America and even the world, with customers in Europe and Asia as well. This extended reach is thanks in part to its association with parent company Gerber Technology, a designer and developer of engineering software. Across its 30+ years in business, Virtek has become adept at addressing the needs of prestigious companies worldwide and applying its own brand of precision, reliability, and innovation.

Virtek Vision’s product offerings are primarily designed to make projects and work much simpler, and streamlined for whatever industry a client may be working within. Virtek uses 3D VPS (Vision Positioning System) technology to assist in fabrication work and with alignment, while its inventory outfitted with Spatial Positioning Systems (SPS) is chiefly used for location-based services in assembly. Laser Projection Systems (LPS) can be applied in both three-dimensional and flat, two-dimensional spaces for precise measurement, assessment, and inspection, among other processes.

Indeed, diversity of application is a strength inherent to the company’s approach to business, as these unique laser solutions are routinely applied to varying purposes and for wildly different markets. Virtek counts itself as the largest laser manufacturer in the world across industries like aerospace, automation, construction, and more, lending credence to its identity as a trusted name in laser solutions.

The company is quick to cite innovation as a cornerstone of not just its growth but its very identity as a business. Virtek has new product releases practically every month, with an eye toward increasing product and process efficiency across the manufacturing sector and its many market spaces. The company also aims to lead the way in the laser market by embracing what is referred to as Industry 4.0, the term associated with the continued interconnectivity between automation and computing software as industries worldwide embrace modern forms of technological integration. This will allow laser technology like that at Virtek to continually evolve in smarter ways to both better serve the end user and stay connected with robust and sophisticated automated systems as they continue to evolve and upgrade.

What’s more, a move toward greater automation in manufacturing can help customers experiencing a recent negative trend facing many sectors, that being the lack of skilled labour. Many businesses today are reporting challenges in finding enough skilled workers to execute tasks and deliver results, a gap in the market that recent trends in automation look to ease, if not outright fill, as time goes on.

For Virtek Vision’s part, the company continues to seek individuals who will take advantage of the environment of opportunity and exploration it provides. Virtek offers a great deal in the way of diversity, benefits, and team-building events to encourage a sense of camaraderie and a collaborative environment in the workplace. Vision is not just a part of the company’s name as much as it is a key value that the long-tenured business has made that name on.

Laser technology is a field that demands a high level of competency and knowledge, and to this end, the offices of Virtek Vision offer comprehensive support to those both within and outside of the company itself, a must for the complex solutions it offers. Virtek’s global service team is always ready to serve a client’s needs, offering three levels of customer assistance and product assurance worldwide. The company also sets itself apart by offering a solutions-based webinar series on its website, as well as remote demonstrations of all its products to ensure clients are always sure of the best use of a piece of Virtek technology. On the philanthropic level, Virtek extends regular charitable support to the United Way, which provides aid on an international level to various nonprofits.

From beginning to end, the team at Virtek are committed to the ideals of trust and reliability when it comes to the relationships they’ve built with their customer base – relationships perhaps better identified as partnerships, a meeting of ideals to always determine the most effective and preferred course of action.

In 2021, Virtek appointed Dietmar Wennemer and Chris Rasmuscak into new positions of CEO and COO, respectively. These appointments last year came following Virtek’s new ownership under AIP (American Industrial Partners) and will fuel further innovation-based company growth going forward. Moving ahead into 2022, Virtek will be hitting the road to be a part of trade shows like JEC World 2022, the leading industry show for international composites. The company also finds itself amid an important anniversary, as Virtek celebrated 35 years in business in 2021. This distinction is one that the company feels is worth celebrating with the current state of the world, especially when it comes to how its growth and market leadership have evolved in these challenging times. In an online press release, Virtek acknowledges the hard work of both its suppliers and partners, as well as the longtime support of its customer base, for getting the company to where it is today. The company further tips its cap to employees throughout company history who have aided its commitment to innovation and growth: “The best is yet to come; we are very excited for all that 2022 has to offer.”

With renewed motivation and always-evolving solutions to meet the needs of an eager customer base, Virtek Vision’s future and place within manufacturing circles seems as bright as it was some 35 years ago.

The post Leading the Way in Laser Manufacturing Solutions<p class="company">Virtek Vision</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Vidir Solutions, headquartered in the heart of Manitoba, is working to not only bring in more female employees to its industry but also invigorate more rural communities. From its two offices in Manitoba and a third in Pennsylvania, the company is embracing these challenges to help combat the current labour shortages and build a better modern economy.

Vidir, from an old Icelandic term for ‘willow’ as a nod to the Scandinavian immigrants who helped build the company’s hometown, traces its lineage nearly fifty years. Like many companies, it was created to fill a simple need; founder Willie Dueck found that many local farmers were losing hours to tedious machine repairs while many skilled immigrants had no local jobs and started a machine shop to accommodate them.

Over the decades, the company has shifted to manufacturing and distributing its trademark movable storage units, which can be found in stores around the globe. Today, Vidir continues this legacy as well as being North America’s leading provider of automated material handling machine systems and components.

Talent Acquisition and Public Relations Specialist Carissa Rempel (Willie Dueck’s granddaughter) feels that being located outside major metropolitan areas boosts employees’ mental health. “They’re not fighting traffic to get to work; they’re not fighting pollution,” she explains. “They can have a quieter life; they are less concerned about threats to safety; they can get out in nature more.”

She notes that a smaller town can also provide a more intimate workforce. “People care about each other in a way that you don’t often see in a large urban manufacturing centre because in those places it’s very easy to leave work at work,” she says, elaborating that a unique work culture develops when co-workers are also neighbours, peers and friends.

Carissa’s husband, Vidir CEO Ernest Rempel says that the small-town feel also reflects Vidir’s attitudes towards customers and employees. By developing intimate, long-term relationships with its customers over the years, Vidir has cultivated a welcoming atmosphere that has become self-perpetuating. “We’ve found that is an attitude or a way of life that comes back to you,” he says.

Of course, by establishing itself in rural areas, Vidir must also facilitate the infrastructure development needed for its manufacturing operations through partnering with local governments and other businesses to bring about the necessary amenities and housing. While some companies may balk at the time and resource investment, Vidir has years of experience working with local governments to bring about mutually beneficial change.

“It’s an organic growth situation,” Ernest says. Being a job creator means that Vidir can provide opportunities for new businesses as well, bringing new life to small towns. “Many of the manufacturers that are now in the area are here because somebody started working at Vidir, and then branched off and started their own shop.”

In addition to the rural expansions that are reinvigorating North American manufacturing, the company’s drive to bring more women into manufacturing occupies its leadership. Today, the company boasts fifty percent female shareholders and twenty-five percent female ownership. For Carissa, this is just the beginning. A new campaign hopes to bring more new female workers to Vidir and to manufacturing as an industry.

The campaign has gained public attention with its ‘Spotlight’ video series profiling various female employees at the company. Each subject can explain her career, job duties, and her views on women in manufacturing, and the video is posted on Vidir’s social media channels.

“That has been a tremendous success for us—just showcasing women in manufacturing,” Carissa says, adding that the videos illustrate women in all company roles rather than more stereotypical clerical duties and have been met with immediate success. “We found that to be incredibly effective in showing women what is possible,” she says. By displaying women’s manufacturing success stories, she and her colleagues hope to inspire others. “Our approach was ‘See them, be them,’” she says. “If women see other women doing it, they will naturally be drawn to it as well.”

Carissa and Ernest believe that the campaign is both logical and long overdue. “A lot of women, I think, don’t even consider manufacturing as a career,” says Carissa, noting that the sector is not promoted in schools or widely thought of as a female industry. “There is a tremendous workforce out there that isn’t being utilized, and we are in a labour shortage,” she continues, “and we have people available—they’re just not being utilized.”

Ernest highlights the days of World War II in which millions of women worked factory jobs to support the war effort. “We’re missing a whole section of our society that could be working here,” he says. “Somehow, we forget that’s possible.”

Carissa relates that, while manufacturing is not typically considered a traditionally female-oriented sector, the industry can benefit from a more mixed workforce. “Manufacturing is about innovation and creativity,” she says, “and with women, that’s often a very innate character trait.”

Applying these advantages and more can help Vidir and other manufacturers improve their business model. “It’s also quite common for women to be very organized and set on making things as efficient as possible, which is great for lean manufacturing,” she says. “We want to both promote that externally and promote that at Vidir.”

In some instances, new female employees have limited work experience outside the home, so Vidir has implemented comprehensive training programs for all employees, moving to more specific and advanced programs for specific roles. “Focus on the safety aspects first,” Ernest says. “If you’re already short on employees, getting them hurt and sending them home doesn’t help you either.”

From there, advanced on-the-job training with peers can integrate new hires rapidly. These highly regimented programs measure trainees’ progress and ensure full comprehension before moving to the next level.

“We’re not putting people into situations where they’ll be over their heads,” Ernest says. In addition to employee skills, he says the program boosts retention levels as employees feel they are succeeding. “Their success is our success and vice versa.”

The campaign has already sparked results with a sixty percent increase in female employees last year alone but Carissa says that Vidir is just getting started. “We do have a goal of our workforce being at least twenty-five percent female by 2025, and we’re close—but not quite there,” she says. A $1,000 referral bonus for new hires continues to drive up recruitment.

Other such improvements include such fundamental amenities as female washrooms—“something that’s often overlooked,” Carissa remarks—to a policy of case-by-case flexibility for working mothers. “Just because something might work for someone doesn’t mean it will work for everybody,” says Carissa, who herself works from home to be with her children.

While it may be argued that applying such an individualized policy may be challenging, Ernest argues that, in the long run, it is a mutually beneficial situation. “If there are ways we can improve our business and allow that to happen or encourage that to happen, then we’re after that one hundred percent.”

Vidir continues to enjoy success in its new strategy, and hopes to inspire other manufacturers to follow suit. Ernest has two words for other businesses hoping to follow in Vidir’s footsteps: “Just start,” he says. “The concerns and shortcomings will present themselves, and you’ll get a chance to deal with them.”

The company’s aforementioned policy of flexibility and communication has helped the company navigate this new road, and he admits some ideas have had to change and evolve. But that, he says, is inevitable. “Don’t be afraid of change.”

As Vidir enters 2022, the company is continuing its mission to embrace new demographics. “Our workforce right now is about forty-three percent visible minorities or first-generation Canadians,” Carissa says, and the company is bringing in government programs such as English language learning to further get employees up to their full potential. While the company continues its growth, new challenges are to be overcome and goals to be set.

Carissa notes that if Vidir succeeds in achieving its twenty-five percent female workforce ahead of schedule by 2025, the goal will be stretched; in fact, she hopes Vidir can one day have an equally gendered space. “We’re 50/50 out in the world,” she says. “It should reflect that in the workplace.”

The post Embracing Change: Vidir Solutions Brings More Women, Rural Workers to Manufacturing<p class="company">Vidir Solutions </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

With markets ranging from OEMs in rail, agriculture, material handling, forestry, off-road construction and mining to infrastructure, energy, and fabrication, the company’s dedication to quality is upheld by a team of dedicated experts.

Brannon Steel’s long and proud family history began with Tom Brannon who, at the age of 40, left his job at Dominion Bridge, sold his house and used the money to launch the company.

“Tom basically saw an opportunity back in the ‘60s to help a small guy out,” says President Kirk Brannon. “Dominion Bridge was a very large company where the small guy couldn’t get service, so that’s really the early roots of Brannon Steel.”

Tom was quickly joined by son Al, who continued to advance his own skills and knowledge of the business world through both night classes and hands-on experience.

“Those family roots were important then and are still important today,” says Kirk. “Al took over from his father in the ‘80s, and it was under his leadership that our biggest growth started taking place, with a focus on the larger OEMs.”

A cousin of the family, current president Kirk started at Brannon Steel in 1988 and considers himself “the holding generation”. Al’s sons, Tomm and Dave Brannon, the current owners of Brannon Steel, have been working in various roles within the company for over 25 years.

While leadership has changed over the years, the company’s dedication to providing exemplary customer service — a mainstay of its commitment and a key to its ongoing success — has remained steadfast.

“Customer satisfaction is a thread throughout the company,” says Dave Brannon. “Our employees are committed to customer satisfaction. They take responsibility to make sure the customer always gets what they need. The customer is key and when everybody understands that, everyone pulls together and gets the job done.”

Success involves not only listening to customers over the years, but the willingness to invest both time and money, adds Kirk.

“We’ve grown as a result of understanding what our customers’ needs were, and they’ve evolved and continue to evolve,” he explains. “We’ve grown our company from what was originally a cutting house, and over the years we’ve gone into more value-added offerings. I think that’s what our strength is now.”

The company’s growth can also be attributed to ongoing loyal partnerships with various OEMs over the years, a growth that’s organic, Kirk adds, and not reliant on mergers and acquisitions.

“It’s definitely a two-way relationship,” he says of the company’s clients. “The good thing about us is we’re able to adapt and move fairly quickly, unlike large organizations where it’s tougher for them to transition. We don’t have to answer to our shareholders. If it makes sense to us, we’re investing.”

That customer relations side of the business is one of Kirk’s more active roles as President, and one he thoroughly enjoys.

“At the end of the day you have to be willing to take the good and the bad,” he says. “It’s not always rosy. When things aren’t going so well you need to listen, and I think that’s the one thing we’ve always done.”

Customer service, he adds, is how you go about solving problems, and how you deal with issues: it’s picking up the phone, resolving the problems and moving forward so you don’t encounter the same problem again.

Along with maintaining quality customer service, Brannon Steel also remains dedicated to Al’s original vision of serving the local community. Just a few of Al’s positions over the years include two successful stints as campaign manager for the mayor of Brampton, chairman of the Peel Memorial Hospital board, founder of the Progress Club in Brampton in 1980, and president of the Brampton Board of Trade in support of the business community. Today, Al’s passion is seen in the company’s support of numerous organizations including Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Oak Ridges Hospice, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and the William Osler Health System.

“Al has always displayed a commitment to our local community and has a deep sense of civic duty,” says Kirk. “Growing up, that’s what I saw, and what his boys saw. Their father was actively involved.”

That drive to support and give back has carried over to the employees as well. To celebrate its 50^th anniversary in 2018, the company launched the Brannon Steel Family Foundation, and encourages employees to donate to their own personal charities each year. “Brannon Steel is in Brampton, but a lot of our employees live in surrounding communities,” says Kirk. “Whatever community they’re in, we tell people to get involved and if you need support, come back to Brannon Steel and we’ll help.”

This atmosphere of support, teamwork and cooperation within the company has also extended to dealing with the ongoing effects of COVID, which has of course wreaked havoc on supply chains and labour.

“Finding quality people and retaining them isn’t easy, but we’ve had success,” says Kirk. “In the front lobby we have our service recognition board that lists 10, 20, 30 and 40 year employees. As you reach each milestone, your name moves up the chart and it’s pretty impressive. We’re proud of the fact that we have many people who have chosen to spend their entire careers with us.” Brannon Steel has a long established service reward program which recognizes 3, 5, 10, 20 and 30 year anniversaries with gifts and travel vouchers.

Those types of accomplishments continue to outweigh pandemic challenges, and aside from celebrating an impressive 50 years in business, the company received the Silver Award in 2020 and, in 2021, was recognized with the Gold Supply award from Caterpillar.

Looking ahead, Brannon Steel strives for continued growth, perhaps following in the footsteps of Magna International, a Canadian-based, worldwide automotive parts supplier. “We want to continue to be a significant parts supplier to OEMs,” says Kirk. “That’s our niche market and that’s what we want to be recognized as in North America.”

On that front, the company has met with great success, with customers including Caterpillar, Hitachi, JLG, John Deere, Skyjack, Tigercat and Volvo, to name a few. “We want to continue to grow in the upcoming years and create more jobs in Brampton,” Kirk says.

When asked what makes the company stand out, Kirk looks to the employees and the team spirit displayed throughout the company.

“We have an all-hands-on-deck approach,” he says. “Whether it’s your internal customer or your external customer, it’s working together with everybody to make everybody’s job easier and safer. It’s that culture of responsibility and ownership.”

When it comes to the company’s longevity, Dave says, “I have to go back to customer satisfaction — understanding their requirements and making sure people are satisfied.”

The company also has no commissioned sales people, instead preferring to provide a salary to further build teamwork. “We work with a bonus system, but it’s non-commissioned,” says Kirk. “That way you’re not just looking after your customer — you look after all of our customers.”

Promoting that sense of camaraderie makes a difference. Brannon Steel recently had its ISO audit, and after interviewing all employees, the auditor made a point of commenting on the company’s positive atmosphere and culture.

“If you’re here all day it can be stressful, but there’s that honesty and integrity and passion,” says Kirk. “We’re only steel, but people are passionate about it. And it is seen throughout the organization.”

That atmosphere is paramount to the company’s ongoing success, he adds, especially during the past few turbulent years, with employees working at home and later returning to the office. “Being home is good on one hand, but you lose that whole teamwork feeling,” says Kirk. “But you have to look at safety first, and that’s what we do.”

Protecting employees has always been a priority at Brannon Steel, not only during the pandemic’s upheaval, but throughout several previous recessions. The company has remained dedicated to riding out the tough times, preserving a family atmosphere, and not only growing, but thriving.

“What does this company do? We cut carbon steel plate with Oxyfuel, Plasma and Laser technologies. We make parts to print and add value along the way by forming, machining, beveling, rolling and kitting. That’s what the company does, but the culture is the true success of this company,” says Kirk.

Now, he says, one of our customers’ biggest concerns is, can Brannon Steel keep up with continuous growth in their business?

The answer to that is a resounding yes. In the late ‘80s, the company had one building with 20,000 square feet; after continued expansion and re-investment, today Brannon Steel occupies three buildings covering 200,000 square feet.

“I always say to people, we recognize as the market’s growing we will grow with it, and we recognize the downturn,” says Kirk. “When the downturn comes it gets really ugly, but we have experience with surviving recessions. We’ve gone through several and every one is slightly different.”

Brannon Steel, he says, has seen it all, has learned a lot from each, and has become a stronger company for it.

“It’s our honesty, our integrity, and there’s a passion we all have here,” says Kirk. “It’s not just a brand. When people come to Brannon Steel and talk to our employees, when we do tours, you hear it from them, too; it’s not just us paying lip service to it. It’s about teamwork from the plant floor all the way through the office.”

The post All Hands on Deck: Committed to Customers, Community, and Collaboration<p class="company">Brannon Steel</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Driven by a desire to create the world’s most modern volumetric mixers and fuelled by superior in-house research and development, engineering, and production teams, ProAll is proud to reveal the development of its Spider 2.0 system designed to once again propel the company to the industry forefront.

“Spider 2.0 is basically the concept of a concrete business in a box,” explains Marius Swart, lead on the development of Spider 2.0 and CEO of 7SalesSteps. For ProAll, Spider 2.0 represents a revolution in volumetric concrete delivery – and in earning business.

“It wants to give the customer who uses the ProAll mixers the liberty to gather customers and serve them online, accept orders placed, dispatch trucks, invoice customers and provide service, follow-up, and backup to these customers,” says Swart.

This includes letting a customer experience equipment performance, including knowing where trucks are located, whether the equipment on the truck is operating as it should, and whether any preventative steps are needed. “It actually monitors every moving part on the truck and allows the owner to interact with that,” Swart says.

If a tank needs to be cleaned and is causing a hold-up, the system would indicate that via an array of dashboard items that can be monitored remotely, allowing customers to look at a truck and see, for example, what temperature it’s running at and how much water it has to mix with cement.

“It’s in this beautiful remote place, but you can interact with it and understand everything that’s going on with that truck,” says Swart.

For example, when the truck has completed pouring and the driver inputs the yards poured, an invoice can be prepared for the customer, and a note automatically sent through Spider 2.0 that delivery has been completed. “The product interacts with the customers and the drivers with side contacts, all through mobile interaction,” says Swart.

While the diagnostics interact with the truck and the dispatch functions with the office and the customer interactions, a third part helps the business owners obtain more customers.

“With this part, Spider provides a marketing function for the truck owners, which allows them to specify what type of customers they would like to reach out to, and in what proximity they would like them to be to the loading yards these trucks operate from,” says Swart.

This means the customer could specify the area within a chosen radius, whether city-wide or state-wide, for example, and be provided with a list of potential users of concrete truck services, such as those in paving; those in pool, residential, and commercial construction; and DOT service providers and utility providers.

The customer could then engage on the marketing side by sending monthly reminders of services provided and encourage people to register and receive information and learn about concrete and any specials available.

“We can build this community where people could learn more about concrete and we’d just stay in front of them,” Swart says. “When they’re ready to react, all they do is click a link on the website, and if they register, they don’t need to do anything.” If not, they can place their order and the entire process then automatically works from the beginning. In essence, he says, Spider 2.0 brings all the elements of a concrete business to the customers, making it as easy and hassle-free as possible.

“It allows companies to grow to a place they can handle,” he says. “There’s only so much capacity in a geographical area. It’s vast and there’s not a single organization that has kept all of it, but we can bring that vast universe of customers to a concrete company.”

If they say they can handle 1,000 more potential customers, ProAll can expand that marketing reach for them, while helping decide how many trucks are needed. “Then all that company needs to worry about is how many internal people they want to have in their business and how hard they want to work,” says Swart. “We feel we can help them understand their customer universe that’s out there.”

While Spider 2.0 isn’t operational yet, ProAll launched the initial version in January at the World of Concrete in Vegas. This featured a working demonstration to show customers the different markets and interactions through a working model. While there are no commercial customers yet, customers are testing various elements.

“Like all of these things, we have enough real-life input from people that use various components, and the diagnostics, dispatch, and marketing pieces have been around for a long time, but not necessarily in the concrete world,” says Swart. “As we feel the temperature of how hungry people would be for all the combined features, we will adjust our launch dates. We’re keeping our finger on the pulse.”

Spider 2.0 has been a huge accomplishment during a truly challenging few years dealing with supply chain issues, which can be extremely difficult for a manufacturer.

“Everyone has felt supply chain issues, but we have thousands of components that go on these mixers supplied by hundreds of suppliers from all around the world,” says Andrew Coates, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Other issues now include the challenge of buying truck chassis, with all manufacturers sold out for 2022, and sales now starting for 2023: It’s a huge hurdle to leap for a company that builds and sells concrete mixers, with more than 80 percent of those mounted on chassis.

ProAll has had some unexpected achievements, however, with a large amount of growth over the past few years.

“Prior to the pandemic we had 80 to 85 employees, and now we’re 150 plus,” says Coates. “We’ve almost doubled the size of the staff since the pandemic started. From the point of view of revenue and bottom line the company has grown substantially in the last 24 months, and that’s had challenges as well with hiring new people.”

It takes time to train new people, and it takes time for the person training them as well, he adds.

“It’s pretty incredible that we’ve increased production capacity by almost 100 percent in the last 18 months,” he says. “To do that while struggling through supply-chain issues and labour shortages and COVID restrictions and chassis shortages, is a real testament to the team that we have, and what we’ve been able to do in such a challenging environment.”

The construction industry is experiencing a boom, he says, with the concrete industry a part of that. Also, while mobile mixers and volumetric mixers have been around for 50-plus years, they’ve started to see an explosion in the industry.

“We might be growing a little quicker over the last year and a half, but all of our competitors have shown growth as well,” says Coates. “That tells me it could be the industry, but it’s also the adoption of volumetric mixers.”

These mixers improve quality control and quality assurance, allowing companies to take on work that maybe they couldn’t before and complete jobs with high engineering specs.

“I think ProAll is outpacing the boom because of the acceptance of the equipment and the automation of the technology that’s been added to the volumetric mixers,” says Coates.

And that growth is both a challenge and an accomplishment.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Swart says. “It’s great that we’re having growth, but there have been quite a few challenges to that, and there continue to be as we look forward over 2022 and 2023. Outside the COVID challenges that may persist: we also have challenges of introducing new technology to a mixer and then having a misstep.”

Adoption is good, he adds, and companies will all move towards more and better technology, but that doesn’t mean you make the right step. So, as it moves forward, ProAll will continue to listen carefully to customers regarding what they’d like to see on mixers, and where technology or automation can genuinely make their life easier.

“We all know technology is going to become more integrated into our lives, whether it’s at work or at home, but how it’s integrated we don’t know,” Coates says. “When it comes to volumetric mixers, I don’t know what that’s going to look like in terms of the control system in five years, but we have an educated guess and by listening to customer feedback, we hope we implement the right technology.”

It’s this forward-thinking that sets ProAll apart from its competitors, adds Coates. “One of the things we pride ourselves on is building a mixer that has improvements and adjustments built on customer feedback,” he says. “That’s the reason we’ve got to the mixer that we build today versus what we built 10 years ago.”

While Coates believes his competitors have done that as well, he thinks ProAll “blazed the trail,” especially on automated equipment. “We were the first one to do that and we continue to lead the charge there.”

ProAll is looking to grow, expand, and be ready for volumetric mixers to become much more common than they are today, says Coates of this fairly niche product.

“With the growth we’ve seen over the last two years in the industry, I think our [targets] are really lofty because we believe we’re right at the beginning of a shift in the market.” “Volumetric mixers will never replace drums, but we believe they’ll grow to take on a larger share of the concrete space, the ready-mix space.”

That dedication to forward-thinking and customer service is only reinforced by ProAll’s Spider 2.0, a program that allows full control and full visibility of customer business.

“We feel we cannot oversell the importance of giving somebody the ability to run a business like a franchise,” says Swart. “The one thing that’s elusive is for a concrete company to understand the customers. It’s hard.” It’s hard to pre-plan that, while with Spider you can be very planned about how big you want your business to be at what time.

“The casual market hasn’t been touched in the U.S.,” Swart adds. “People still get concrete from a variety of sources, and the volumetric concrete delivered to homeowners and casual contractors – that market is very much untapped.”

“That’s another forward-thinking aspect and no one else is doing that,” says Coates. “We’re hearing what our customers are saying and trying to push in that direction. Both historically and still today it’s something that sets ProAll apart from other companies in this space.”

The post ProAll’s New Spider 2.0 Trucks Pour Concrete and Deliver Business<p class="company">ProAll</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Headquartered in Brantford, Ontario—around one hour from Toronto—the company operates from its 30,000-square-foot main distribution facility supported by several satellite distribution hubs across North America. This small yet mighty team packs a powerful punch when it comes to serving some of the U.S. and Canada’s most prestigious Fortune 500 manufacturers, shipping as far afield as Mexico and beyond.

“We aim to be the preferred chemical supply chain partner to North American manufacturers big and small. If you buy chemicals, Netchem has the expertise to help ease your supply chain stress. You will love working with our team!” says Stephanie Khurana, President.

The young, dynamic leader describes the company as a “small business with big business capabilities,” and this is one of its prize features for attracting clients. “It means we can be responsive and act quickly to help our customers, all while still being able to service large projects,” she adds.

To this end, Netchem holds all necessary licenses, including those needed to supply active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the United States and Canada. “This process was a major undertaking by our regulatory team. Netchem’s quality team is excellent at supporting customers facing increasing regulatory hurdles,” says Khurana.

After having many conversations and sorting many supply chain emergencies on behalf of clients, Khurana has several pieces of sound advice for manufacturers. “Always have more than one supplier for any key material in your supply chain. Supply chain diversification is a critical strategy for your business, not a project for a rainy day,” she says, pointing out that most businesses should have learned this lesson due to COVID-19.

The reality of straining supply chains continues, as Khurana makes very clear. “Supply chains are buckling under the cumulative strain of the past two years. [Before] the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains were optimized for efficiency and low costs which removed a lot of excess capacity and redundancy,” she says. “We are paying the price for that now. Some areas of the supply chain are unable to cope with the strain. For example, consider the port of Los Angeles—which is still backlogged—and the frequent lack of available trucking to move goods from ports to their destination,” Khurana continues. These are pretty serious issues.

Khurana could not be more pleased with her team for shining in the face of adversity over the past two years as they have battled COVID-19 market challenges as well as those in their personal lives. “Each member of the team has risen to this challenge. Living with and working through COVID has taken a personal and professional toll on everyone, and I could not be more grateful to everyone at Netchem. We have been able to step in and support businesses where major producers in the supply chain have gone offline,” she says.

This is key because, in Khurana’s experience, small, diversity-driven businesses do not always have the same access to large corporate customers as larger, publically traded firms. “While many large corporations have a supplier diversity program, the integration of this program with corporate procurement is lacking,” she says. “Businesses who incorporate supplier diversity programs report that this drives value through their organization. [That] is because having a diverse array of partners allows you to develop better solutions,” she adds.

The company inherits its pragmatism from its founder, Paul Khurana, a chemical engineer and late father to the present-day president. The senior Khurana went into business again in 1991 after discovering that retirement was not entirely his thing.

In those days, ordering chemicals from abroad did not have the advantage of instantaneous communication via the internet. Not only was quality potentially unknown, local manufacturers had no way of being certain that their newfound suppliers were real, let alone in business. As a result, procuring raw materials back then was a perilous affair.

Paul Khurana took the risk out of obtaining quality chemicals on behalf of clients, later evolving the company’s emphasis into offering supply chain support as internet intermediary giants started changing the nature of the chemical supplies market. His daughter Stephanie has become a progressive and accomplished leader, thanks to a family history of valuing higher education. After she had spent several years in the pharmaceutical industry, he invited her to join him in the business. She accepted, realizing how much she loved “the speed at which one can get things done in a small to medium-sized business.”

She accepted but sadly lost her father only three months later, and the road from there was a tough one for the family and the team. With his passing, the business went to Paul’s wife, Laura Khurana. Following her retirement in 2019, her place as president was passed on to Stephanie.

She describes herself as “a proud member of the board and the supplier advisory committee of WBE Canada (Women Business Enterprises, which supports, promotes, and certifies women-owned businesses in Canada) and an advocate for supplier diversity.” Supplier diversity, as described in the WBE report, The State of WBE Certification in Canada – The Suppliers’ Perspective, “extends internal diversity and inclusion (D&I) into the upstream supply chain. It offers firms owned, managed and operated by diverse groups of people (i.e. Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, veterans, visible minorities and/or women) equal opportunity to become suppliers of goods and services.”

Such initiatives remain critical, as Khurana highlights that female business ownership is still quite low, with one such statistic going a long way toward illustrating her point. “In 2017, only 15.6 percent of small and medium enterprises (under 500 employees) in Canada were owned by women,” she adds.

In light of this reality, the new leader makes every effort to encourage healthy diversity in the firm, and she is equally determined to modernize everything about the business, including its image and its operations. Much has been done in service of this goal; there is now stylish new branding, a fresh website, and a consistent online presence. Its internal processes are being overhauled too. The company now has “a more robust [human resources] process and policies that support our team through issues like family leave,” she says.

Another recent addition demonstrates the company’s commitment to continuous improvement. Its informative newsletter shares current information drawn from several fields to support and inform clients who like staying abreast of developments in their markets, as well as those looking for the latest solutions to supply chain challenges. “This only goes out once every month or two, so it won’t clutter your inbox,” Khurana tells me.

Netchem’s team consists of thirteen industry experts, and the company is actively hiring and currently in search of a French-speaking sales team member for its Quebec office. “I work with an incredible team. Having a work environment that is respectful but relaxed is important to me, and I hope I have helped cultivate this at Netchem,” Khurana says. “I believe that work should be a place where people can freely express their opinions and ideas for the betterment of the business. It’s very important to really encourage people to share their views and not just pay lip service to this idea of an open forum.”

She asked her team what makes the company a great place to work. Their responses listed a positive work environment, great people, and flex time among the many factors. Other aspects include the fact that “management trusts and respects each employee’s contribution,” as well as the tremendous effort the company put into protecting staff and clients during the COVID-19 emergency period.

Netchem is also involved in local community projects. Currently, one of its largest contributions goes toward Feed Ontario, a group giving aid to food banks throughout the region. “Over half a million people in Ontario relied on food banks last year. [Readers] can help support food banks across Ontario by donating to Netchem’s campaign for Feed Ontario before April 10, 2022, and we will match [their] donation,” she says of the company’s donation program at https://www.canadahelps.org/en/pages/help-feed-ontario/.

Looking ahead, Netchem, Inc. is set to continue spreading its expertise. As its customers face tricky market conditions with issues that Maersk.com lists as “protectionist trade policies, tariff wars, and industry consolidation,” keeping its ear to the ground is vital to helping them navigate increasingly complex regulatory requirements.

“I believe that supply chain transparency will be the watchword of this decade. Companies and consumers want to understand where their goods are coming from and that the sourcing process is responsible, sustainable and ethical all the way through,” Khurana says.

Stephanie Khurana is determined that Netchem will become, in time, the preferred supplier of North America’s most respected manufacturers and part of the larger, international solution for the “responsible and sustainable sourcing,” of materials. “We are on our way and look forward to making this true for more future customers, and I would say it’s not a vision; it’s a plan!” she says, smiling.

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