HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1986-11-05, Page 1313D
GSS/Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1986
Mike Suliy
The mind -set of the company
is very important if Champion
Road Machinery is serious
about becoming the leading
manufacturer of road graders, Mike
Sully, Vice-president of
manufacturing, engineering and
eznolovee relations suggests.
And that means the company has
to be more receptive to input from
its employee base, the front -Tine
people whose ideas and initiatives
can ably augment Champion's drive
for cost efficiency.
"If we get the majority of
employees wanting to work and
thinking about new and better ways
to work; then we will be a leader,"
Mr. Sully said. "We have to be more
receptive to ideas. We have a lot
more to do in that respect. We just
haven't been as good getting them
implemented as we should."
While Mr. Sully will readily agree
that the mind -set is changing at
Champion, he will also concede that
the company can improve in several
areas. Communication from
management is an item at the top of
the list.
"We have to push
communication," he said. "We have
to let the employees know what's
going on through Newsbreak and
things like the newsletter. All these
things add up and the employees feel
that they know what's going on in
the company."
Sully has graduated through the
ranks at Champion gaining
experience in maintenance,
assembly, parts, the machine shop,.
costing, and office services before
taking on a sales job with Gearco.
Appointed president of Gearco and
vice-president, engineering in 1979,
he added responsibility for
manufacturing and employee
relations to his duties in 1982 as vice-
president of manufacturing.
From July 1984 to July 1986, he
had direct responsibility for the
company's manufacturing plant in
Columbia, South Carolina. a'
We needed to be in the United
States and the price was right in
COlumbia," Mike explained. "The
machining was done here but
Columbia was heavily into
fabricating, assembly and finish
work. The gears and transmissions
came from Goderich but it was a
complete manufacturing facility
producing up to three graders a day.
NoW three-quarters of the grader is
made here before being shipped. In
December we centralized a lot of
overhead functions. It just made
good business sense."
The decision to downsize the
Columbia operation is just one of the
Mike Sully - vice president manufacturing
Mike Sully with Employment Minister Flora MacDonald
many the executive team has made
ih the last five years to help
Champion reduce the cost of the
product. One of the most significant
decisions, Sully suggests, was the
move towards product
standardization in 1983.
Champion had literally tailored the
grader to the customer's wants and
needs but with five ui. bin uiffCi clic
engine options, four transmission
options, and two differential options
in five basic models, the cost factor
was obvious.
"We standardized the engine and
went with Cummins, we developed
one transmission and offered two
frames," Mike explained. "We found
that we lost more business because
of price than we gained through
options. In three months, we had
everything converted and graders
were coming off the line with new
engines and transmissions. If we
hadn't made those decisions, the
company might not be around."
Champion's collective eye is
keenly tuned to cost efficiency these
days and the implementation of
manufacturing resource planning.
(MRP) will help the company
achieve its goal. A formalized
process that ties decision making to
the market, MRP is flexible enough
to allow management to respond to
inaccuracies.
"Two years from now we'll look
back and wonder how we worked
without it," Mike offered. "There
are less than 200 North American
corporations that have a first class
control system. Our goal is to be
Class A. We've spent 20 months
getting there."
Decisions relevant to
standardization and the
implementation of MRP date back to
the early 1980s, ,a time when the
grader market shrunk by 40 per cent
and forced many players from the
marketplace. Champion reacted,
and survived, by getting tough and
committing itself to producing' a
quality product at a better price.
"We were in a growth mode until
1979 but in the early 1980s the
economy forced us to make some big
decisions," Mike said.. "We were
forced to centralize and pared back
budgets even tighter. We have to
have lean organizations with no big
corporate staffs. We invested in
engineering and while we had cut
manufacturing spending, we are
spending a lot in that area now."
With millions invested in new
machinery and manufacturing
technology, the company has taken
"quantum leaps" in manufacturing
and will introduce robotics to the
welding department.
Continued on Page. 4