23 minute read
It's All About Size
SIt’s All About IZE
By Raquel Chole
MIGHTY. The word that describes springmakers across North America. Whether they are a small company with under 15 employees, a midsized company, or one of the big hitters with multiple locations, they have an impact on the industries they serve, the customers they supply to, and the communities they enrich by creating jobs and actively supporting local events and charities. The springmakers featured in this article vary in size and serve every industry that uses a mechanical assembly. For the largest companies, automotive is a key area served; for some of the smaller springmakers, they have found a niche in specialized markets that are unique to their geographical location.
Dendoff Springs Ltd
Mary-Anne Morris, Managing Director
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada www.dendoff.com
Dendoff Springs was started by welding entrepreneur Hubert Dendoff over a hundred years ago. He saw an opportunity and morphed the business into a spring company. Eventually, the business passed on to his son-in-law and then to his granddaughter, Mary-Anne Morris, who took over at the young age of 23 upon her father’s death in 1985.
“We serve resource-based industries,” says Morris. “Our parts are mostly used in heavy work, like forestry, mining, oil and gas and locomotive suspensions. We have developed our expertise in these heavyweight parts that are unique to our location and this is what we export from British Columbia to other parts of Canada and the U.S.”
Morris is proud of the resourcefulness and versatility of her manufacturing operations. She specializes in custom work, and that usually means very large components. Dendoff does hot coiling as well as cold coiling (up to 5/8” diameter) of springs. Specialized leaf springs are a core product for the company and some of their leaf springs assemblies can weight up to two thousand pounds. There are not a lot of springmakers in Western Canada in general, according to Morris, which has helped her build a client base that numbers in the thousands across all different industries.
“The Fords and GMs of the world are well catered to by some of the bigger spring companies in Eastern Canada and the U.S. Here we have to be a little more flexible. Out here in B.C., we don’t have the big OEMs as you have in the east. In forestry and mining you have a lot of the larger springs and a great variety of needs,” explains Morris.
Resource-based industries are what drive the B.C. economy, and these comprise the major exports for this region. For example, logs from this province are shipped directly to China for processing — work that was once done in Canada. It has eliminated the need for sawmills
in the area, but Morris feels this may be an industry poised for a comeback due to current economic situations that may drive the need for local processing of timber. That would be a happy outcome for her province, as well as her company, since her team has the knowledge to make the parts that industry needs — yet another niche market Dendoff Springs has historically served.
The size of the company has been especially beneficial in the area of training. “All our employees are well trained and versatile, and most of our guys have been here for 25 plus years, so they have a lot of skill,” says Morris. On the downside, many of them are getting close to retirement. Morris recognizes the need to onboard and train new people, but with a relatively small shop, it is prohibitive to take on someone new before the person they are replacing is ready to move on or retire. “Our guys take the product from start to finish, as opposed to in larger companies where someone might be a machine operator and just wind springs all day and maybe do some quality checks. While our shop guys are very versatile, they typically don’t crossover between hot coiling and leaf springs to cold winding; however, on the products they are responsible for, they can do it all from the setup, the coiling, the grinding and whatever else is needed to get the part from raw material to finished component,” explains Morris.
In looking to the future, Morris muses that some adjustments will be necessary because of the global situation we find
Top: Mary-Ann Morris and her son, Mason Wood. Bottom: Old company ad.
ourselves facing. “A few years ago, my answer about our future state would have been completely different,” she says. “As of May, Canada in general was still pretty closed down. We were able to operate, as we were deemed an ‘essential service’ during the pandemic. We did, however, experience a dramatic and abrupt slowdown. It taught me that we need to look at new automation and be less reliant on skilled manpower to succeed in the new future. If we improve by automation, I think everyone is aware that there will be changes related to technology. It’s critical to keep things rolling until our economy opens up again.”
Morris foresees an operation that is smaller, increasingly automated and serving an even more specialized clientele. Her son, Mason Wood, recently entered the business on the purchasing and inside sales end of the business. Before that, he spent a three-month stint in the shop. He most enjoyed the troubleshooting aspect of the shop floor. He found repairing and maintenance and fixing machines when they broke down rewarding and interesting. That’s a good omen for Morris: she’d love to see Dendoff carried on by family. Time will tell.
Morris follows the strategy of her father and her grandfather before him, of focusing on maintaining status quo for the business — keeping things steady. In her time in leadership, she has seen major industries peak and then diminish. Wind power generation is a great example. It was a huge thing, says Morris. Dendoff
ramped up to supply. Then, the bottom dropped out and it was gone. The same sort of issue occurred when most highway guard rails moved from an all metalformed construction to concrete-formed structures or water containers. So, she counts on her stock, stable customer base to see her through.
Over the years, Dendoff built the business on the heavy parts other springmakers often shy away from, and that product line helped the company become a trusted supplier to the likes of Hayes Manufacturing in the 1950s and ‘60s. Dendoff still produces that product line and actually makes leaf springs that can weigh up to two thousand pounds and are used on the massive logging trucks that are ubiquitous in Western Canada. In addition, Morris is especially proud of the work done for the Royal Hudson Steam Locomotive Company; Dendoff supplied every spring used, engine to caboose, from the suspension springs to the tiny springs in all the windows, as well as the window latches and even parts in the whistle.
Rather than adding processes and in keeping with her maintenance of business philosophy, Morris sees value in terms of incorporating higher level management philosophies, like Lean Thinking, 5S or Six Sigma. All of these would be helpful; however, this is where Morris experiences resistance to new methods from her team. That may change, as automation increases and retirements cause newer, younger employees to enter the business.
The barrier to automation, though, is the cost of upgrading equipment. “Everything in the spring world is so expensive. The prices are so much higher than they used to be, but there is a payoff. It is about picking and choosing and planning for it,” says Morris.
While Morris started in the spring industry with a bit of a frightening jolt and only a short experience of working with her father before he died, she now considers it “old hat” after 40 years. “Things can come and go but I no longer get as scared as I used to when I see bad stuff in the business. You deal with it and move on,” she explains. At the end of the day Dendoff, though small, is right sized for the company it aspires to be.
PIctured (l-to-r): Ritchy, Linda and Rich Froehlich.
Ace Wire Spring & Form Company, Inc.
Linda Froehlich, Owner and Chief Problem Solver
McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania acewirespring.com
“My father always said: ‘Don’t do automotive!’” says Linda Froehlich, owner of Ace Wire Spring & Form Company. “They’ll own you. They want parts for the cost of wire…even when we can’t get the wire anyway.” She feels this strong statement will resonate with many small and midsized spring companies.
For Froehlich, midsized is a great place to be, a safe place to be, though she admits smaller might be better in these times because it is so challenging to find manufacturing floor employees. The most profitable operations, she feels, are the companies with fewer than 26 employees and often these have only family involved in the business.
Froehlich says the big problem for companies like Ace is enticing young people to come into the industry. It is her fondest wish that springmaking could be seen as a career rather than just a job, as it was in days gone by, and that young high school graduates could find the satisfaction in making parts that are at the heart of every mechanical assembly.
Ace has been in business for more than 80 years and Froehlich loves the atmosphere: teamwork, family and future. “Future” because wireforms and springs will always be needed — they are the energy that moves things. She encourages employees to “stay, grow and continue on because there is always a tomorrow here. And, someone who starts here and thinks big could be an owner one day.”
Froehlich sees the Ace niche as being the jobs no one else wants. “Automotive and appliance are down and dirty industries,” she says. “What I want is the work the other guys don’t want to do. When we see a job that is in our product line, we say, ‘Yes, we can do this.’”
Some of that confidence comes from the continual investment in new equipment. Ace recently invested over a million dollars in new equipment, and through these machine acquisitions it is easy for the Ace leadership to see how technology has changed every aspect of the business. Froehlich credits the ingenuity and imagination of her team with using this new technology to create parts that translate to successful production outcomes for their clients.
It has been many years since Ace made the leap from being a small-sized manufacturer to finding their sweet spot as a midsized operation. “At one point, with my dad as the owner, we had 7 to
8 employees. By the time my husband Rich and I bought it, we had 26, and we grew it. Now our ideal number is 50 employees and we are a little shy of that,” she explains. “We have a great team of people. My husband and I are still working, and our son Ritchy is in the business For Froehlich, midsized is a great place to be, a safe place to be, though she admits smaller might be better in these times because it is so challenging to find manufacturing floor employees. The most profitable operations, she feels, are the companies with fewer than 26 employees and often these have only family involved in the business.
as well; some of the grandkids may come in eventually.”
Froehlich is happy they have stayed in the business during what she calls scary times in the world today. “What would Rich and I have done during the pandemic if we didn’t have this business to go to? We can’t travel now. I’ll see Rich headed out the door on a Saturday or Sunday and I know he’s going over to Ace to see how things are going.”
Most of the pivotal decisions that moved Ace from small to medium were sales related, not in terms of entering markets, but in terms of adding sales muscle. First, they added manufacturers’ representatives to sell products on a commission basis. Later, as that produced good results, they added a sales manager who took them into the world of trade shows, which brought in high levels of desirable business. Now, their best manufacturers’ rep manages all the other reps, which takes the burden off the home team.
One other decision resulted in game changing growth when, in the late 1970s, Ace purchased a Torin that could make
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up to 5/8” diameter parts. Froehlich remembers the shock of having to write a check for $125,000 for that machine, but now realizes that was a small ticket item compared to today’s machinery price tags. Their next investment is likely to be equipment that can run 24/7, says Froehlich, echoing the sentiments of Mary-Anne Morris of Dendoff in needing more automation when shop floor employees are hard to find.
While most spring companies never get the opportunity to make a stand-alone product, Ace found success with their own invention, called the Super Clip. It is a giant paper clip that remains popular today and can be ordered at www. superclip.com. It can securely hold 100 sheets of paper and Froehlich lights up with delight when she talks about it: “Everyone who sees them loves them and wants to buy them.”
Froehlich remains optimistic for the future and is quick to remind others of the company motto: It’s always springtime at Ace. “I wish my dad could see what we’ve become today, from his beginnings in an attic to a 55,000 sq. ft. operation, with plenty of incremental growth in between.” Ace has grown, has survived a pandemic and will continue to thrive.
Twist, Incorporated
Mike Given, Vice President Kali Smith, Vice President of Business Unit Development at Twist Aero
Jamestown, Ohio twistinc.com
Delving into some of the largest spring manufacturers in North America, a pattern of diversity of product lines emerges, and Twist is one spring company that has expanded in intriguing ways. They now have eight manufacturing plants in Ohio, plus one in Mexico. Their size has allowed them to become self-sufficient as a company, performing operations from forming to stress relieving, along with some heat treating and a broad range of plating, which gives Twist the chance to control quality, cost and lead time, making them a winning supplier to their clientele.
Mike Given, vice president, says that developing plating operations has been a major advantage, because Twist can offer coating services to anyone on the outside that needs coating and they have a broad product range to choose from, including zinc, acid and alkaline zinc nickel, PTFE, e-coat and powder coating.
Rather than sending parts out, Twist built a plating facility, so everything can be done in house. The in-house coating division also allows them to process parts faster without reliance on outsourcing to suppliers, where they are at the mercy of the coaters with regard to capacity and for transit time.
These in-house processes allow Twist to react to customer requirements with agility because they have the capability to manufacture specialized equipment in-house, from sheet metal fabrication to full electrical integration.
“Our goal is to be an essential supplier to our customers. We can supply more than one product, allowing them to reduce their supply base. Our latest venture has been our new facility in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. This facility was not built to move work from our U.S. operations, but to add new market segments to our overall business plan,” says Given.
Along with their commitment to completing all processes under one corporate umbrella, Given says that Joe Wright, founder and president of Twist, takes pride in reinvesting in the business and is very active in day-to-day operations. He is committed to having the “latest and greatest” technology. As a result, they annually invest $1–3 million in technology and are also in the process of building a new, state-of-the-art e-coat facility. They can do this because they are a debt-free company. “This allows us to be independent,” says Given. “It’s a nice sales tool for us, as well.”
Most of their business comes from sales of automotive components, medical components and aviation brake springs, though in the early 1980s they were 80 percent or more automotive. Today, Twist's size has allowed them to become self-sufficient as a company, performing operations from forming to stress relieving, along with some heat treating and a broad range of plating, which gives Twist the chance to control quality, cost and lead time, making them a winning supplier to their clientele.
automotive makes up approximately 55 percent of their total business. By diversifying their product, Twist ended up with a more diversified customer base. Now their largest customer only represents 10 percent of sales, so diversity has become their success story.
One venture has been the formation of the division called Twist Aero, which is not spring related at all. Kali Smith, vice president of Twist Aero, explains that this division engineers and manufactures systems that support aircraft on the ground with preconditioned air units, frequency converters, Boom Air hose management and other products. That division represents a quarter to a third of total corporate sales for Twist.
Smith is proud to help carry on the family business, which got its fitting name from an unusual source. “My mom had a horse named Twister and, when my grandfather was launching the company, he realized Twist would be a great name for a spring company, and that was how it started,” she explains.
As a strong component of the next generation of leadership for her family business, Smith says it simply: “We’ve been in business for 50 years and we’ll be around 150 years from now because we are well positioned for that.”
Peterson Spring
Mike Putz, CEO
Southfield, Michigan USA www.pspring.com and www.racingsprings.com
Mike Putz grew up in the family metal forming business. His father owned Gagnier Products/RKM, a small stamping company, and his dad’s work ethic was second to none that Putz ever experienced. So, it seems fair to say metal forming is in his blood. “I’m the guy who looks forward to Monday mornings because I love what I do — just as my dad did. We go on vacation and my kids would want to include a picture of me on the phone in the scrapbooks, because…well… I can enjoy my holiday better if I know all is well in the shop. I remember feeling that way about my dad and his commitment to his shop.”
Following the sale of Gagnier Products/RKM to Dudek & Bock Spring Manufacturing Company, after some transition time at Dudek, Putz eventually landed at Peterson, which was family owned for 105 years until it was purchased by MiddleGround Capital in April 2019. Putz marvels that a large metal forming company could go through as many generations of family management, as Peterson did, and still be active owners. The family was involved in every aspect of the business before the sale.
“I love the family aspect of this business,” he says. He has found it to be unique to the spring manufacturing industry. “Two years before I went to Dudek, the board meetings at Gagnier/RKM were (comprised of) me and my dad. The next year, I was across from an empty chair because he had died. But then, when we were sold to Dudek, I was sitting with the Dudek family. Then, I got to Peterson, and now I get to do it all again. I am blending the family values from the Petersons with the professionalism from MiddleGround.”
“There’s a culture that the Peterson family built, and I spend a lot of time ensuring that culture continues. I want to be sure this is ready for the future. It’s the uncles, the cousins, the sisters and more who are all involved, not just historically among the owners, but this is what you see on the shop floor. It’s family, just like my dad’s company was, though it’s much bigger in size.”
A wall at Peterson headquarters is dedicated to the company milestones over the years, and Putz enjoys that visual tour of the company’s past while also looking forward to the contributions their current business will add to the timeline. With
Putz finds many advantages to Peterson’s size. “The most important aspect is that we have the resources to supply customers with a range of equipment, a strong engineering intellect, and with a global footprint that has a local touch. We’ve broken down the silos within the company so we can provide better support across all areas of our operations.”
Mike Putz
pride, he mentions that the company had springs on Apollo 11 and 12, but is quick to add with a sigh of relief that there were no Peterson springs on Apollo 13.
As the head of the largest privately held spring manufacturer in North America, Putz finds many advantages to Peterson’s size. “The most important aspect is that we have the resources to supply customers with a range of equipment, a strong engineering intellect, and with a global footprint that has a local touch. We’ve broken down the silos within the company so we can provide better support across all areas of our operations.” Size is also an advantage in terms of purchasing power for raw materials and with outside processors.
Despite their size, Peterson has been savvy in morphing the business as needed to suit the times. While they remain major players in the automotive realm, their focus has turned to high performance race car valve springs and that is currently their strongest division. “Our racing division is really big. We still do a lot of automotive,” says Putz, “but we focus on a lot of border wires and some elements of steering as opposed to being as generalist as we once were.”
The Peterson team is very cognizant of what is happening with the electrification of vehicles – especially because they make valve springs. “Crazy enough, though, we are doing a spring in an F150 electric vehicle drive train,” says Putz. As part of the commitment to pursuing a variety of markets, Peterson also is a player in heavy equipment, heavy trucks and agricultural equipment.
In the next 105 years, they’ll continue to diversify that customer base. “We want to be in those next waves of vehicle developments. We want to be part of electric vehicles and we need to find our niche there. We research and speculate on where the market is going because we want to be the ‘go to’ spring manufacturer,
and we have the backing of our private equity owners to do that,” says Putz.
A natural outcome of being PE owned is that a sales process will happen, likely by 2029. So, Putz is driven to be operationally focused. “We create value on the shop floor so we can be as lean and as efficient as possible, so that we become a strategic asset as an add-on to a larger company or a platform for a buyer who wants what we offer.”
When Peterson was founded in 1880 by August Peterson, he was going to create a company that would last from generation to generation, not just for his own kids but for the extended company family. “August Peterson accomplished that dream,” says Putz. “I am making sure it’s still sustainable. The Petersons created a place for generations to make good livings for the families who worked here, and that legacy continues.”
Mubea North America
James Sheehan, CEO
Florence, Kentucky USA www.mubea.com/en
Mubea is an international powerhouse with 48 locations in 20 countries and that gives Mubea a number of clear advantages, says James Sheehan, CEO. Their size enables Mubea to invest in technology and also affords them a purchasing advantage with vendors. The biggest asset that Sheehan sees is that customers can find one-stop shopping for their global platforms.
“We are here to serve our customers, and where our customers go, we follow,” says Sheehan.
A good example is Mubea’s Mexico footprint. If someone were to draw a circle around our North American operations with a 600-mile radius, they would see the vast majority of U.S. customers are located within that area. “We are always considering further expansion and have done so in Eastern Europe and China, for example, and we are in early discussions to bring in new technology that will support that expansion,” says Sheehan.
Despite being large, the company is agile. It is still family owned and the owners are very involved in the business, which shortens the decision-making process. “We can bring products to market quite quickly,” explains Sheehan.
Leadership at Mubea is eager to see what the future will bring for the world
James Sheehan
of springmaking. Sheehan’s team, for instance, sees great promise for the use of reinforced glass fiber in strengthening leaf springs. Using reinforced glass fiber leaf springs could save 40 kilos of weight per heavy vehicle. Electrification of springs has good potential for battery cooling plate applications.
“I think in America in general, we have a passion for success through providing stable employment for our people and aspiring to operational excellence. Regional expansion into the U.S. and Asia has been important to the growth strategy of the company and has created some pivotal success moments for us. That, combined with regularly introducing new technology will take us forward,” says Sheehan.
To understand the history, the culture and the modus operandi of the company as a whole, Sheehan recommends a book that captures the Mubea spirit well, called “The Mubea Way.” The book delves into the vision of the founders to provide sustainable growth and success because, “as a family company, we’re in it for the long haul,” he explains.
A common thread of family commitment runs through these featured companies because there is a family feel to the business, regardless of size and current ownership. It is a philosophy that does seem unique to the spring industry. While owners can have feisty debates about which markets are best and what size is the right size for them, the continuous thread that runs through is that the businesses they built are well positioned to have an impact on many generations of families whether those families are the owners or part of the team on the floor. n
