Though the press release headline read, “Ramco Specialties announces it will keep world headquarters in Hudson,” Rick Malson, president of Ramco Specialties Inc., says moving wasn’t the aim.
“Honestly, the full intent was to stay in Hudson if we could find a way to do it,” he says.
Malson grew up in Hudson and most of his family still lives in the area near where the family business was founded by his father 40 years ago.
Instead of moving, the manufacturer of threaded fasteners is building and transitioning to a 165,000-square-foot facility in its hometown to increase production space, which it needs as it draws back manufacturing functions from overseas. The company also is looking at purchasing $2 million in additional capital, adding heading machines along with ancillary tapping and light assembly equipment.
Stabilizing pricing
With currency vacillating as much as 10 to 12 percent between the U.S. and Taiwan, onshoring its manufacturing eliminates the pricing volatility. It also gives the company a greater ability to meet customer demand by moving reliance off foreign partners.
“If our suppliers in Taiwan are busy, or have a full or towards full capacity, prices go up. Whether it’s justified or not it’s just a market tendency that we’re susceptible to,” he says.
The move has helped Ramco stabilize its inventory, cutting down the lead time needed to fill orders and avoiding unforeseen problems, such as the West Coast dock worker strikes earlier this year. The other benefit is that certain companies want to deal with domestic manufacturing, primarily because they like the ability to have flexibility in part design.
“If you want to have a part design that’s made in Taiwan, it’s a significant amount of time to make that happen between prototype and samples flying back and forth, and freighting parts to and from. Here we can actually make samples with them in the building, work with them, and get to the end product a lot quicker,” Malson says.
That has prompted Ramco’s shift toward engineering, and working to personalize products for clients.
“We’re really trying to get more aggressive with adding value instead of just quoting a commodity,” Malson says. “We’re actually designing parts now for the 2016 and 2017 model years. So it’s something that we’re looking where we’re designing the part instead of quoting somebody else’s part that’s been designed two or three or 20 years ago.”
The strategy is paying off, he says, and it’s becoming an area of significant growth.
Getting help
While transitioning production back to the U.S. and customizing products have had their benefits, the process could be hampered if Ramco can’t find employees to handle the increased workload. The company has committed to add about 20 employees in four years, mostly to operate the heading or tapping equipment, but also to add sales, engineering and administrative personnel. Filling manufacturing positions, Malson says, is a challenge.
“This is technology that kind of left us and went overseas years ago, and now to find somebody to run equipment, they’re in their twilight years or they’re a little more experienced and there’s not that many of them,” Malson says. “For us to be able to find an experienced header operator, or a person running the machines making the nut product, it’s really a higher-level job that’s difficult to train. And it takes years to have somebody we consider an expert on that, let alone starting from the ground floor.”
To address the issue, Ramco is looking for young candidates with general mechanical capabilities and searching the engineering departments of local universities.
“You really have to make an effort to be competitive in the employment market, more so than I would expect,” he says. “But we really make an effort to try to make sure that the people are compensated fairly, or well, because I don’t want to lose anybody in a key role, and it’s very difficult to get someone to jump ship and come here in a key role.”
Still, the company is optimistic, leaving room to expand its facility up to 370,000 square feet. And Malson is forecasting 10 percent top-end growth in the next few years.
“There’s so many different opportunities for us to chase down, it’s staying focused on one or two of those instead of taking every opportunity that comes at you and chasing it around,” he says. “But one of the advantages we have as a smaller family business, so to speak, is that we can make quick decisions and we can go after directions like that.”
