BOC Hydraulics Typifies Manufacturing Ingenuity
SALEM, Ohio -- It’s mid-morning on a Wednesday. Employees at BOC Water Hydraulics Inc. are busy drafting, welding, machining, milling, reconditioning and manufacturing components that will eventually be used in operations throughout the country – and in some cases – out of the country.
Company President Todd Olson stands beside a large white board that displays columns of customer names, each column headed with a day of the week. Companies less known to those outside of the industry that hail from Texas, New York, and the Chicago area are on the board. There are some heavy hitters as well: U.S. Steel, Alcoa and BP.
“When you see a line drawn through them, that’s good,” laughs Olson, as his company meets deadline after deadline in a business that becomes more demanding every day. “That means it made it.”
BOC Hydraulics is a prime example that the days of manufacturing distinctive products stamped as made in the Mahoning Valley are alive and well. The company, founded in 1993, designs and makes high-pressure hydraulic valves used in industrial applications and processes, including steel manufacturing, oil and gas refining and the marine industry.
“We’re growing about 15% every year,” Olson reports. “It slowed down at the end of last year, but it’s picked back up for us in January and February.”
Last year the company celebrated its latest expansion – a new, free-standing 15,000-square-foot office building, along with an additional 16,000 square feet of production space tacked on to its existing 34,000-square-foot plant.
Among the more interesting projects recently was a complex water hydraulic-valve system BOC manufactured for a split-hull dredge, The Murden, used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“This is the first time this has ever been done,” Olson relates. Split-hull dredges have been used on barges before, he clarifies, but never before on a powered vessel. The Corps of Engineers was interested in replacing the use of hydraulic oil in its split-hull dredging operations with water hydraulics because such operations once left oil slicks that could damage the environment.
Although more expensive, the water option appealed to the Army Corps since it eliminates any chance of oil pollution and the costs related to environmental cleanups. BOC submitted and won the bid to manufacture the hydraulic valve system and the cylinders used to open the hull.
The Murden was commissioned last summer, Olson says, and its first job was to dredge a harbor in Clearwater, Fla. Shallow dredges such as The Murden remove sediment and sand from the bottom of a waterway or harbor, thus increasing the depth and ensuring the safe passage of ships and boats. Sand and water is pumped from the bottom and into a large open hopper in the center of the ship. When the hopper is filled, the ship moves to an approved dumping site.
Once the ship reaches the site, BOC’s water hydraulics system kicks in and governs a process that opens and closes the hull – actually two separate hulls – from bow to stern. The Murden can then dump the sand and sediment through the bottom of the ship rather than pumping it over the side.
“We made the entire system that splits this ship in half,” Olson reports. “It’s pretty intense.”
Projects such as The Murden help BOC to enter new, promising markets, Olson says. In addition to domestic projects, the company engages in some exporting – roughly 4% of its total sales – to Mexico, Indonesia and to countries in South America.
Much of the manufacturing process originates with a concept. Or sometimes a customer delivers a design, Olson says. Engineers at the company work out the appropriate schematics for the component.
During this particular week, there are 300 to 400 orders employees that are busy preparing for shipment. “We do a lot of replacement orders, so most of our customers are coming to us with maintenance dollars. It works out real well,” he says, “especially in difficult economic times since I’m not waiting for a capital budget to be approved.”
The bulk of BOC’s business is derived from about a half-dozen product lines that can be applied to different industries and customers.
“We have 11 CNC [computer numerically controlled] machines that are all integrated into our data network,” Olson says. Once the initial drawings are completed, the material – say, a block of stainless steel – is ordered and the specifics of the part are programmed into the company database.
When it comes time to begin manufacturing, the information is stored and fed into one of the CNC operations for machining. A valve body, for example, is being machined on the shop floor, but will also require further processing before it’s assembled. “It will go up to Akron, where it’s dipped in a liquid salt bath” that heat-treats the part and produces an anti-corrosive property to the surface of the steel, leaving it with a black finish. Then it’s returned to the Salem site for final assembly.
“We make several different versions of this,” says Bryan Hedrick, a machinist putting the final touches on a valve box. “The amount of flow the customer needs will determine the size of the package they get,” he explains.
Employees are busy not only manufacturing components, but reconditioning cylinders, valve boxes, rams and other pieces of equipment for industrial users across the United States.
On this morning, Dan Hazelbaker, a CNC lathe operator, is working to correct a small problem on a piston rod that fits into a large cylinder. “We’re fixing a groove on it to make it right,” he says, as the part spins inside the machine.
Welders, fitters, manual machinists and fabricators – are all important to the process, Olson notes. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he says. “We’ve got a reputation and we’ve been able to attract talent. These people have tremendous skill sets.”
BOC has a repair and distribution center in Chicago that is close to many of its customers, Olson notes.
Once the parts are machined, they move to a final assembly area where the product is put together and tested, Olson notes.
He points to a three-path valve strung with hoses near the top and roughly the size of a household furnace that BOC recently completed for a German company. “It’ll be sent to Germany and be coupled with a German-manufactured high-pressure water pump,” he says. “They’ll be coming in over the next week or two to witness the final test.”
The valve will then be sent back to the states as part of the larger pump system and installed with an oil and gas operation in Wichita, Kan.
“Everything on this, with the exception of a few sensors, was manufactured right here,” Olson says.
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Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.