Under New Ownership: Preserving the Legacy of a Family Molding Business

John Winzeler is 82, and he’s aiming for a century. He’s thinking specifically about his family firm, Winzeler Gear, now in its 85^th year, of which he is the third-generation owner/operator.

“Several years ago, I created a vision and a plan to get Winzeler Gear to its 100^th anniversary in year 2040 without me,” Winzeler told his employees in June when announcing his retirement and sale of the company. With no family members available to take over the business, he felt this was the only way to preserve the legacy of his father and grandfather in the company that bears their name.

 

John Winzeler, third-generation owner/operator of Winzeler Gear, with one of his custom-painted Engel e-victory tiebarless hybrid machines. Photo credit: Plastics Technology 

As previously reported, Winzeler Gear in the Chicago suburb of Harwood Heights was sold in July to Adkev of Goodland, Indiana. The buyer is also a family-owned injection molding business, but much larger — with over $100 million in annual sales vs. Winzeler Gear’s $10 million, and three molding plants, plus a tooling operation in Indiana and Kentucky.

Started in 1987, Adkev has 426 employees, 166 presses and a total manufacturing area approaching 600,000 ft². Winzeler Gear’s one plant adds 45 full-time employees, 42 presses and 42,000 ft². More to the point, the acquisition brings Winzeler’s specialty in automotive gear molding to Adkev’s concentration on precision parts (but very few gears) for automotive, industrial and appliance markets. This combination enables Adkev to offer complete actuator systems for automotive seating, HVAC, steering, door handles, sunroofs and mirrors.

Creating a High-Tech Showplace

Winzeler’s father and grandfather were both experienced tool and die makers. His grandfather “Johnny” and a partner built a successful business in Chicago until it fell victim to the Great Depression in 1931. Johnny’s son Harold launched Winzeler Manufacturing and Tool in 1940, where he was later joined by his father. The firm evolved from general metal stamping to specializing in metal gears for toys and appliances. By the 1950s, Harold Winzeler saw the wave of the future in plastics injection molding and began a shift that culminated when his son John, who came aboard in 1967 with a degree in mechanical engineering, took over the reins in the mid-1980s and converted the firm entirely to injection molding plastic gears under the new name of Winzeler Gear.

John Winzeler built his family firm into a high-tech showcase, exemplified by this cell with multiple robots and an Engel e-victory press. Photo credit: Erich Schrempp Photography and Digital Imaging Studio.

John Winzeler had big ambitions for his family’s firm from the start: “Our goal was to be the best in plastic gear design and manufacturing for a discerning, demanding customer base. Winzeler Gear would be the benchmark for others to match. Our focus has always been on being the best, not the biggest, in our gear industry.”

How to get there was the question. “We’re a small company. How do we perform like a much bigger one?” His answer was strategic partnerships with technology leaders in materials and equipment that could give his firm an edge over competitors. His plant became their research lab and beta-test site for new products, as well as a training site for their employees and showplace for their customers.

One key partner was DuPont Performance Materials (whose products are now supplied by Celanese and Delrin USA). “They supplied 90% of our materials. It wasn’t a formal agreement, but we had access to all the brightest minds at DuPont, from their R&D labs in Switzerland and Delaware to their automotive market-development specialists in Detroit. We recommended enhancements in their materials, and we got to mold and test their experimental materials first. We also collaborated on dynamic testing of gears and identifying potential clients that valued our combined portfolio of knowledge.”

“I created a vision and a plan to get Winzeler Gear to its 100^th anniversary in year 2040 without me.”

This “Gear Gizmo” from NPE 2006 was developed to show off Winzeler’s capabilities and the strength of its strategic partnerships with DuPont, Engel and RJG. Photo credit: Erich Schrempp Photography and Digital Imaging Studio.

Winzeler’s partners in machinery have been Engel for injection machines and robots, RJG Inc. for process monitoring and Labotek for materials handling. For 36 years, Engel was Winzeler’s only press supplier; and for the past 11 years, Winzeler standardized on Engel’s e-victory tiebarless hybrid machines. “We built the plant around their tiebarless machine. Because of our loyalty, we have had access to Engel’s best technical people around the world. We got phenomenal technical support. We’re a sales showroom for them, and they have run many tours through our plant. We got access to their latest developments, and we had input into their R&D.”

Winzeler even got his partners to collaborate in a 2-year project to integrate RJG’s eDart quality-monitoring software into Engel’s CC200 machine controller. Exhibited at NPE 2006, this was the first such collaboration between the two firms.

With the aid of its partners, Winzeler established his business on the basis of two value propositions:

• Design Forward: early-stage design collaboration with customers based on materials and gear expertise.
• Scientific Molding: using RJG’s principles to approach zero-defect molding.

Partnerships also helped Winzeler realize his ambition to turn his family firm into a high-tech showplace. It features ample use of automation and computerization: integrated molding cells with linear and six-axis robots; Engel’s quick-mold-change system (of which Winzeler was an early adopter); automatic quality monitoring on each shot with RJG’s eDart; data collection of up to 150 process parameters with EngelNet; machine-vision mold protection; centralized materials drying and conveying of up to 20 different materials with a Labotek system; and extensive gear quality analysis capabilities, including novel testing instruments designed by Winzeler itself.

The Art of Manufacturing

Winzeler Gear is a showplace in another sense — reflecting its owner’s passion for the arts. Winzeler is a supporter of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He has two exhibit spaces at his plant for works by student artists at SAIC, photographs of jewelry made from plastic gears, and a “gear dress” created by Chicago artist and designer Cat Chow. There are also ample displays of “gear art” throughout the manufacturing areas, QC lab, toolroom, administrative offices, entry foyer and other spaces. Winzeler is also known for distributing calendars each year with imaginative “gear art” illustrations.

Winzeler’s plant is decorated throughout with original “gear art” to suggest “a uniquely creative environment.” The Labotek automated central conveying system (at right) can move up to 20 different materials. Photo credit: Erich Schrempp Photography and Digital Imaging Studio.

“Walk through our facility and you see art everywhere,” says Winzeler, “integrated into every part of our manufacturing plant. From the moment you step in the front door, where you walk into a gallery of gear fashion art, to the plant floor, you are immersed in a uniquely creative environment, one that promotes collaboration and creative problem-solving.” In other words, his use of art made a statement about his company: “We’re creative, high-tech and forward-looking.”

He was making a statement to more than just his customers: “This isn’t my father’s factory,” he says. “We’re trying to change the way people look at manufacturing. We have brought a lot of school kids through here to show them what manufacturing can be like today.”

Where Is the ‘Next Generation’ in Manufacturing?

“What keeps me up at night is the question, ‘Where is the next generation of passionate, curious people that want to absorb all there is to absorb to advance our industry — injection molding and gear manufacturing? Big data, data analytics, plus the ability to understand all the complex processes of manufacturing are truly the future,” he told the Technology & Manufacturing Association (TMA), in a LinkedIn video post. “Yet we’ve taken the technology, the controllers on the machines and the industrial internet of things [IIOT] way beyond the capabilities of our basic workforce. The opportunities today are greater than ever, but the gap is even greater.”

Winzeler has worked with the TMA to help local high schools restore the industrial arts programs that once were common but now are scarce. “We shot ourselves in the foot by taking out all the high-school auto shops and machine shops and replacing them with computer labs,” laments Winzeler.

He has tried diligently for decades to combat this loss of training. For a while, his Winzeler Manufacturing University program offered free education for employees and was even mandatory. “It was a complete failure,” he concedes. “Most people didn’t want it, so it was not a good use of money.”

He has had two notable successes, however, in two hires who came to him as young men and are now past 60 and work as senior operating managers. “They’re irreplaceable today. They came from a time when we still had technical education in high school,” notes Winzeler. “They didn’t want college; they were more hands-on people who learned by doing.”

One of them is Harry Soling, VP of operations. Winzeler paid for him to get a bachelor’s in Business and an MBA through night school. Winzeler also helped him train to become an RGJ Master Molder.

Mark Smith, director of quality, went to night school at a community college to learn IT skills. With Winzeler’s financial support, he also took executive overview classes at RJG and in-person and online classes from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) to become a Certified Quality Engineer.

Winzeler intends to continue his crusade for reviving an American industrial workforce after his official retirement. “We have to tell stories — success stories — like those of molders who have recruited with internships at local high schools, and states like Minnesota that offer scholarships to people who pursue a local apprenticeship program.”

There’s another element to the “people development” problem that Winzeler hopes to publicize: “We need people in HR (human resources) who understand manufacturing personalities and career paths, so they know how to hire and develop people with intelligent curiosity but no academic credentials.”

Finding a Good Fit

After building up a facility that could mold 150 million plastic gears annually and doubling its size through acquisition and integration of a building next door to the original Harwood Heights plant, Winzeler began planning for an ownership transition three years ago. Invaluable to the process, says Winzeler, was MBS Advisors of Florence, Massachusetts, a firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions involving plastics processing operations.

MBS was formed in 1998 by Terry J. Minnick, a well-known plastics professional who began his career with Dow Chemical and owned and ran an injection molding business in New England for more than a decade.

In Adkev, Winzeler found a new “guardian that is aligned with our values and culture.”

MBS partner Andrew Munson worked with Winzeler for two years to “identify the right guardian for Winzeler Gear,” as Winzeler puts it. The search settled on Adkev, led by Gary Rheude, who Winzeler describes as “a visionary moldmaker.” Winzeler confesses that he was previously unaware of Adkev (named for Rheude’s sons Adam and Kevin). Though ranked among the 100 largest U.S. injection molders by sales volume, “They kept a low profile. They’re the biggest molder you never heard of.”

What counts for Winzeler is that Adkev is “highly regarded for precision and quality like Winzeler Gear. They are aligned with our values and culture that determine how we treat customers and employees and engage with our community.”