Stainless Foundry & Engineering’s (SF&E) President & CEO, Jim Stachowiak, sat down with Manufacturing in Focus Magazine to share the company’s latest news and updates about restructuring, the COVID-19 affects on the foundry, the future of manufacturing, and more.
A comprehensive, multi-year restructuring process has revitalized SF&E. In early 2015, Stachowiak was put in charge of the business and soon after, a restructuring process to address Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems issues as well as other underlying structural issues, commenced. A series of meetings, internal audits, training sessions, strategic planning exercises and consultations with outside organizations ensued to better understand the company’s strength and weaknesses. Restructuring was an intense, lengthy process that covered all aspects of the business.
“One thing we learned was that we didn’t have a good understanding of our cost structure. We had to do some work, fixing the cost structure, understanding which customers were truly profitable and which customers were not profitable. Then, for customers that weren’t profitable, we put together a plan to figure out how to make them profitable,” recalls Stachowiak.
This restructuring lead to a competitive reduction in lead times for both investment and sand castings through the ongoing Throughput Improvement Process.
Read the full Manufacturing in Focus Magazine article about Stainless Foundry & Engineering here.