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Howland Machine Grows by Diversifying
NILES, Ohio -- Bruce Dewey stands in the assembly shop of Howland Machine Corp., double-checking the blueprints for the nearly complete steel skid assembly on the shop floor.
As company president, he must ensure that the 20-foot-long assembly is perfect before it’s shipped to be installed in a Navy submarine.
“From the time of contract to shipping, this will have taken four months of work,” Dewey says. “Everything we manufacture goes through 100% inspection.”
The assembly is one of four Howland Machine will make for a conveyor system to help move material from one end of the submarine to the other, Dewey says.
All materials are certified based on the Navy specifications, and Howland Machine does all the manufacturing and assembly work at its 24,000-square-foot shop in Niles. Work with the Navy will constitute about 25% of the company’s business this year, up from less than 10% in 2011, the company owner says.
Howland Machine landed the job through a referral to a prime contractor, Dewey says. Such referrals make up a quarter of business at Howland Machine, repeat customers the rest.
Despite the lack of an outside sales force, Dewey reports sales are up 25% to 35% from 2011, which was 50% ahead of 2010.
“The overall economy has been strong. Manufacturing has been strong,” Dewey says. “This month is a little soft, but it doesn’t mean we’re slow. People are always hesitant to spend before a presidential election.”
Since buying the company from his father 27 years ago, Dewey helped Howland Machine grow from a small shop in Howland that manufactures spare parts for the aluminum industry to a multi-industry machine shop on 3.5 acres in Niles with room to expand.
The company primarily serves original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and does some work in the power-generation, aluminum, steel and automotive industries. Customers typically have their own engineering and assembly departments, but lack the expertise needed to manufacture the machine types Howland does, “and that’s where we come into play,” Dewey says.
“Some of the projects are extremely close tolerance with complicated geometry,” Dewey says. “Some of the materials are difficult to work with and difficult to machine.”
Such materials include everything from titanium to Monels and Inconels. The latter two are superalloys made by the West Virginia-based Special Metals Corp.
Howland Machine’s 20 full-time workers operate both manual and CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines, switching from each machine, depending on the project.
Strong sales in 2011 allowed the company to spend about $300,000 on new equipment and increase its capacity to take on projects of larger scale, Dewey says. The most recent addition, a horizontal floor mill 22 feet long and eight feet tall, took a full year for the company to rebuild, but “it opened up a market for us,” he says.
Almost all of the machines in the shop have been rebuilt and refurbished by the people who work on them every day.
Increased capacity helps Howland Machine increase its local customer base to 30%, Dewey continues. As long as Howland Machine’s been in business, Taylor-Winfield Technologies in Youngstown has used the shop for small and large jobs, from fabricating machine frames to making some of the parts it sells, says Pete Dunlap, Taylor-Winfield purchasing and aftermarket assistant sales manager.
“If you give them a very complicated piece, you don’t have to worry because you know that when they do it, it’s done correctly,” Dunlap affirms. “If there’s a problem, they’re local and we can work together to get it ironed out. It’s very convenient for us and it’s good to support the local community.”
Howland Machine has as many as 200 jobs lined up at any time with work always coming in, says shop manager Michael Anthony. Completion time for a project depends on the needs of the customer. That can range from a day or two to several weeks.
“A lot of what we get is in a rush basis. There’s not a long time period to do any of the jobs we have,” Anthony says. “Some of them give us as much as 12 weeks time to run a job. Other people say they’re broke down, and we’re doing repair work for them, and it has to be done the same day.”
As the economy and manufacturing begin to rebound, Anthony says his challenge is finding enough skilled employees to do the work, a common concern among area manufacturers.
“When the mills were up and operating, there was a lot of training and guys served their apprenticeships,” Anthony says. “Over the last 15 to 20 years, that hasn’t been [the case]. Large companies like that don’t do [training] anymore. Small companies like this prefer to hire people who are already trained, so it created a vacuum.”
Dewey says Howland Machine is contending with the employment issue with some in-house training, but it stills need workers with experience in manual and CNC machining, fitting and welding. The company could comfortably hire between 10 to 12 people, he says.
“Typically, they’re going to have a minimum of four to five years in a job shop, essentially where they’re able to adapt and run different machines,” Dewey says. “The ideal employee is going to have a conventional machining background and then has worked his way into CNC machining over the years.”
Howland Machine is a founding member of the Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition, which was formed to raise public awareness of the needs of the local manufacturing industry. On its website, MVManufacturing.com, the group reports that despite a decline in manufacturing employment from 2009 to 2011, the Oh-Penn Interstate Region experienced a 6.9% growth in industry and expects that growth to continue by 33% over the next two to three years.
With the coalition, Dewey says the area should be able to counter its “plight for people” and accommodate that growth.
“There’s a lot of opportunity in the manufacturing field,” Dewey says. “It’s not dirty, dingy, ugly, unsafe anymore, and I think having the coalition and getting young people into industry is going to make a huge difference over time.”
FIRST PUBLISHED in the print edition of The Business Journal. CLICK HERE for subscription information.