Strategy

Amatech/Polycel

Think your business is boxed in? Take another look!

Amatech/Polycel, a very respected company in the custom-designed corrugated container industry, took another look at their strategies for the long term future. Founded by Dave Amatangelo over 20 years ago, Amatech has been providing corrugated packaging for storage, shipping, manufacturing assembly systems and product protection. With locations in Erie, PA and Columbus, Ohio, Amatech serves automobile assembly operations and other manufacturers throughout the Mid-West and Atlantic region. With son Jason learning the business, Dave has had to think about what the company should look like in the future for his business and his family.

Dave had been through Strategy processes in the past. He found them to be too idealistic and lacking in implementation discipline. After talking to other Decision Associates‘ clients, Dave indicated that they had, in his words, a “realistic and thorough approach” that would prevent them from “one more failed attempt at planning.”

Dave, being a forward thinker, took the process to heart and involved the whole team. Dave’s team dove into what was needed to continue Amatech’s success. There were new market niches to evaluate, capital investments to consider, sales to analyze, organizational and development advances to be made, business shortcomings to review and customer survey responses to take into consideration as they planned their next steps for continued growth.

The frontrunners to the Strategic Plan included strategies and goals for pursuing new customers in the existing markets, developing new market categories, expanding the geography, adding new product categories, adjusting the sales strategies, and updating their website to make it friendlier for internet marking.

Today, the folks at Amatech/Polycel feel much more confident in their day-to-day operations, marketing is being seen in a whole new picture and the Amatech Team is thinking “outside the box.”

Finish Thompson, Inc.

Focus on what you do best and go the Distance!

David Bowes, former president and CEO of Finish Thompson, Inc., logged 30,000 miles in preparation for the 20 marathons he completed before his unexpected death while battling cancer in 2007. The Decision Associates team always admired his focus, and his persistence, in reaching personal health and business goals.

David knew there could be no shortcuts if you want to be the best at what you do. You want to be the leader in corrosive fluid transfer while using innovative research and development techniques? You want to engineer and manufacture specialized pumps that are the best in the world? You want to remain profitable for five decades without having a single layoff? Then you’d better make sure every step you take leads you in that direction. He was always thinking long-term.

Today, Decision Associates has the privilege of working with David’s son, Casey Bowes, who worked as the company’s director of international sales, and later as manager of all sales and marketing, before assuming the position of president and CEO at Finish Thompson. During the strategic planning process led by Decision Associates that began in 2004, Casey’s Dad began offering him positions of increasing responsibility — not just to test his mettle, but also to immerse his son in the company operations and culture.

Now Casey is learning from other respected mentors within Finish Thompson, many who’ve been with the company for more than 30 years. He’s also looking for ideas and best practices from colleagues outside the company. A participant in one of Decision Associates’ PEER groups, Casey has a new group of confidants with whom he feels comfortable discussing everything from cash flow and cost-cutting, to human resources and marketing. The group meets monthly to bounce ideas around.

How are things going? Read the company’s newsletter this month, and you’ll see that Casey has a lot to say about the number … zero.

Today, zero represents the number of Finish Thompson employees that have been laid off, the number of regular hours worked per week that Finish

Thompson has reduced, and the percentage of wages and salaries that have been cut at Finish Thompson in 2009. In talking to others in our industry and outside our industry, this is not the norm. Zero is a number Finish Thompson should be very proud of.

In a competitive market and challenging economy where the finish line keeps moving, Casey’s father would likely be cheering from the sidelines.

Say we sell Coca Cola®, Casey says to a member of his PEER group, flipping the tab on an ice-cold drink, In the past, we would have decided to grow sales by adding Dr. Pepper®. But our work with Decision Associates has shown us that, no, you’re going to grow by making your Coke® even better. So we’ve taken our pumps, and instead of adding a model or two to try to grow sales, we’ve gone back to our most popular models, and made them better, and that has, no doubt, made our sales go up and made us more competitive in the long run.

HANDS

Many hands make light work!

They may not be the stars of a hit TV show like Extreme Makeover, but the movers and shakers behind Erie’s Housing and Neighborhood Development Service (HANDS) have rehabbed, renovated, and in some cases built from the ground up more homes than you can count.

Since 1966, HANDS has grown to become one of northwestern Pennsylvania’s largest non-profit providers of affordable housing, with more than 900 apartment homes under management and a successful lease-to-purchase program that has made the dream of home ownership a reality for hundreds of low- to moderate-income families, senior citizens and the disabled.

When it came time to design a blueprint for the future, HANDS President and CEO Chuck Scalise turned to Decision Associates. Chuck knew that community revitalization was one of our core strengths, and that our team was perfectly suited to helping him identify his.

The desire to provide safe, attractive places for people to live is at the heart of all we do, explained Chuck, whose parents, Charlie and Kathy, founded the organization to help people displaced by urban renewal. Without stable housing, said Chuck, your other family issues can’t be addressed — you can’t deal with your mental health, your education, your kids or your job if you don’t know where you’re going to be sleeping tonight.

Chuck was initially interested in a Succession Plan for HANDS. But, after talking with Decision Associates, he realized, in his words, that this would be a little bit cart before the horse, because without a good strategic plan, and knowing where your business is going, who the kind of people are to be at the helm, etc., you need a strategy plan first so that when you do your Succession Plan, you know what the roadmap is.

Chuck understands he won’t be around to guide HANDS forever and that the need for their services will only increase. Sharing the organization’s vision and values with newer employees became an essential plank in the organization’s strategic plan. Decision Associates also helped Chuck and his board to identify competencies that will strengthen fiscal oversight in an increasingly complex housing market.

In the beginning, Decision Associates met with Chuck to help identify what was in his head about HANDS’ future. They customized the process to meet the needs of HANDS and some very specific goals that we had established. He also commented that he liked this approach as opposed to the cookie cutter textbook approach. At the end of the day, we will be even more successful because we have addressed these issues.

Our staff learned a lot about the organization by participating in the strategic planning meetings, said Chuck, They contributed their ideas and felt that they owned the process. Now we’re looking at ways to leverage our management experience, build new partnerships, and rescue other housing projects that could use our help.

Need someone to hold the ladder? You know where to find us.

Machining Concepts

A fine-tuned machine!

Machining Concepts had been growing at a clip of 30 to 40 percent a year before the economic downturn. The strategic plan that Decision Associates helped them develop was performing like clockwork as they turned out high-quality precision parts for a diverse range of customers.

Owners Jim Willats and Mark Wilkosz were confident their strategic plan would pay off when the going was good, but they didn’t realize it would see them through the bad times, too. Today, 18 months into a deep recession, Machining Concepts is doing more than holding its own – it’s winning repeat business from cost-conscious companies, developing strategic partnerships, and tapping into unexpected new opportunities that are positioning the company for future growth.

Jim and Mark first knew they had found their niche when contracts for precision-machined parts began pouring into their small CNC machine shop back in 1993. Their 30 years of combined experience in engineering and manufacturing, and a host of value-added services, gave them an edge in a crowded market with established competitors. But after a dozen years of steady growth, it was time to make some strategic decisions about where to take the company next.

That’s when they turned to Decision Associates. When we perform a strategic assessment, we research the industry, not just the customer. What makes the industry tick? What do the top performers look like? Who are the customers? Who are the competitors? What obstacles are standing in the way of growth? What actions are critical to achieving the company’s goals?

As we worked through the process together, it became clear that if Machining Concepts was going to serve the needs of its customers and potential customers, it needed to expand its machining capabilities with new, multi-tasking CNC machines, and it needed to develop the highly skilled programmers needed to run them.

They bought the equipment and they hired the people. “With these resources in place, we’ve been able to increase our machining capabilities and offer our customers a much more efficient machining process,” says Jim. “Now we’re constantly developing new opportunities to produce parts for new and established customers.”

Customer relationships can prove to be a real strategic advantage, just when you least expect them. Machining Concepts thought they’d lose a major piece of business when a customer was sold to a company in California. Instead, it opened the door to the larger company, which has customers and vendors all over the world. They’d never have known if Decision Associates hadn’t performed an independent customer survey for them. The hum of CNC machines is music to our ears.

Merit Tool Company

The buzz goes on!

Merit Tool Company had its start in the Erie, PA area more than 40 years ago. As a solid precision machining company, it has been successful through many economic downturns and continues to be one of the best in its class in the nation. The buzz of the machines keeps going on while the business strategy is successfully working with the Merit team.

Decision Associates helped Bill Muck, President, and his team in 2006 with a Strategic Plan and Customer Survey and, as with several of our customers, they have continued to work with us over the years. Recently, the timing was right to update their plan. Many of the current team had never been through strategic planning process and didn’t know what to expect. However, they dove in with great enthusiasm, learned from the process and have been rejuvenated in their work at Merit.

The team identified several areas that they wanted to focus on in the coming years. Decision Associates helped them identify those areas and prioritize them, and their action plans are now in place.

Bill Muck credits the consistent focus on strategic planning over a period of five years as being key to growth and profitability. He says that “Don told us that if we really worked our plan, we would grow faster than we predicted and be more profitable. He was right on both counts.”

As an ISO-9001 business, their guidelines are strict and Merit is proud that they meet those requirements. You can just hear the buzz of the machines and the excitement of their staff as Merit Tool works their way into the next decade of business.