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Supplier Survival
Issue: November 2004 Issue
Author(s): Kristen Hampshire
A bright idea and a brand-new business strategy will boost business at Wrayco Industries – just in time. When Gary Gibb's only customer suggested last year that he diversify and supply fuel and hydraulic tanks to other prospects, he anticipated slow orders and dwindling deals down the line. "I'd been advised for years that 100 percent was not healthy, but our situation was working well," Gibb says of his "captive shop." The Stow-based steel fabricator has produced complex weldments... |
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2002 Manny Awards
Issue: May 2002 Issue
Author(s): Inside Business staff
Given one word to describe this year's Inside Business Manny Award winners, it would have to be 'ingenuity.' As a group and as individual manufacturing companies, this year's honorees stand out for their creative solutions to challenges ranging from the need for better-trained manufacturing employees to a call for life-saving sports helmets. These innovations are particularly notable for their success against the backdrop of a nationwide economic slowdown. Canton-based Hendrickson International, for exa... |
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Crossing the Border
Issue: November 2001 Issue
Author(s): Karin Connelly
Manufacturing companies weigh the risks and rewards of going global. James B. Cole has seen the ups and downs of international trade. As CEO of Noshok, a manufacturer and distributor of industrial instruments, pressure gauges, transducers and other auto-industry parts, he has learned to distribute the 34-year-old company's products to a wider market: the world. Although Noshok sells primarily to American companies, Cole, who took the reins at Berea-based Noshok in 1976, recognized in 1980 that to grow s... |
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Manufacturing: Top of the Line
Issue: November 2000 Issue
Author(s): Jeff Rozic
At 9 a.m. on a weekday, 20 Northeast Ohio business leaders gather upstairs in a warehouse at Cleveland State University near Chester Avenue and Interstate 90. Like martial artists on their sensei, they concentrate as though training for black belts. Kris Thieker of Sigma Breakthrough Technologies Inc. has been a master black belt since her training at General Electric in 1995. She wields not cement blocks to be chopped in half but laptops, as does each pupil. Her students are pursuing their black belt &#... |
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Protection By Preparation
Issue: October 2003 Issue
Author(s): Jane Debo
Manufacturers can't predict the future — especially these days — but they can keep their bases covered with proper planning. As the status of the United States' economic future remains unclear, a trend is emerging in American business: Companies are reevaluating their financial strategies to not only become more efficient but to simply stay afloat in an increasingly competitive environment. For manufacturers, this is no different. In Northeast Ohio, 17.7 percent of all nonfarm jobs are in the ... |
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Shop Class
Issue: November 2002 Issue
Author(s): Paul Matheis
In the contemporary manufacturing jungle, an investment in people can help turn a profit. The signs and symbols of a manufacturing heritage are all around Northeast Ohio. Often, they exist only as reminders of the glory days, artifacts from a Darwinian-style economic adapt-or-die conflict. Simply put, manufacturing in this region ain't what it used to be. Toward the bottom of the manufacturing food chain, but no less vital than other components, are machine shops, also known as job shops or tool-and- di... |
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Manufacturing Excellence: Running Lean
Issue: September 1999 Issue
Author(s): Terry Troy
In the 1980s, lean was often equated with mean eliminating jobs and closing facilities to add to the corporate bottom line. Today it more often indicates a redeployment of personnel and resources to facilitate growth. With todays tight job market and increasing global competition, running lean may be a companys only option. Championed by the Lean Enterprise Institute in Brookline, Mass., the concept of lean business operations has its roots with Henry Ford but has grown and evolved with the input of corp... |
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A Brave New Manufacturing World
Issue: May 1999 Issue
Author(s): Terry Troy
In a century-old, red-brick building on Clevelands near West Side, manufacturing old and new is woven into the fabric of the city. There on West 25th Street, under the watch of a once coal-black water tower, now covered in dark-green paint with crisp white lettering, Thermagon Inc. produces polymer-based materials for the computer and electronics industries. The water tower, raised above the streets rooftops on spiderlike black legs, is from a bygone era as is the rust-covered fence that meshes with a br... |
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Manny Awards: Clean Sweep
Issue: May 1999 Issue
Author(s): Fran Stewart
Osborn Manufacturing, the century-old Cleveland brush maker, has undergone sweeping changes in the past year starting with a new name to reflect its broader world focus. Osborn International, a multimillion-dollar global manufacturer, was formed last year when parent company Jason Inc. acquired Brushes International, the leading supplier to the overseas brush market. In February, the company also acquired Sealeze, the Richmond, Va., manufacturer of specialty strip brushes. Its been an exciting and wonder... |
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Manny Awards: Hot Potato
Issue: May 1999 Issue
Author(s): Fran Stewart
Chip making is high-tech business whether the silicon or the potato variety. And Shearers Foods Inc., the family-owned manufacturer and distributor of Grandma Shearers Snacks, has become an industry leader in its use of computerized equipment to make the latter variety. Take the Opti-Sort, for instance. Shearers Foods uses the sorting system as a quality-control device for final inspection of the more than 50,000 pounds of potato chips the company produces each day. The machine uses lasers to peruse them... |
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