It was a Thursday
night and the fledgling South Toledo firm was only two
months old when the frantic call came in.
On the line was the manager
of an Indiana automotive supplier. His brand new factory
was in big trouble because it couldn't produce door
panels for a new Chevrolet car fast enough.
It had fallen so far behind
that the Chevrolet plant it supplied had to be shut
down at a cost of millions of dollars a day. Could the
assembly line ghostbusters from Industrial Engineering
Technologies straighten things out, asap, the manager
wanted to know?
"They missed the boat. It was
a new car line and they just didn't have the capability
to do it," said Timothy Stansfield, president of IET.
"I think it was just a case where it was greatly underestimated
how to do this."
It was to be a trial by fire
for IET, which had hired its third engineer just weeks
before and its second engineer a few months earlier.
Mr. Stansfield, the founder, was the only one over 30
years of age and then, just barely.
Located on Tedrow Road next
door to Rusty's Jazz Cafe, IET is a good example of
the new breed of small firms springing up in Toledo.
Born during the recession when bigger companies were
slashing their payrolls, IET's few employees had the
energy to work long hours, the ability to respond to
emergency calls quickly, and the lowest fees around.
"All of us know people who don't
have jobs now, so we all feel very fortunate," said
Mr. Stansfield, who graduated from Rogers High School
in 1977 and the University of Toledo in 1981.
But back to Indiana.
Mr. Stansfield got to the plant
Friday night and found chaos, It was full of frustrated
employees and dozens of engineers running around.
He returned to Toledo the next
day, enlisted the firm's two other employees, loaded
computers and other equipment into a car, and drove
back.
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IET's Tim Stansfield, left, reviews plans
with Brian Paul at Hickory Farms' distribution center
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He, his partner,
William Proctor, and their employee, Ron Miller, fresh
out of the University of Toledo, set up shop on the
plant floor and began an intense scrutiny of the assembly
lines.
"Our mission was primarily plant
layout, the allocation of labor, and material flow,"
said Mr. Stansfield. "in the next eight weeks, probably
70 percent of the equipment was relocated. There were
major changes in the way materials flowed."
They discovered the key reason
why the line was so slow: it made six products and each
required varying amounts of assembly.
"We set up six lines to do everything
right in the line. It greatly simplified the whole system.
The place was no longer full of inventory in different
stages of completion," said Mr. Stansfield.
Would he do it differently were
he to get that call today?
"Now, I would have just hired
ten temporary employees," he said.
The only advertising IET has
done is an ad in the phone book, but it has eight employees,
a remodeled building, and enough work to keep its employees
and sometimes temporary professionals busy.
Fewer than 10 percent of its
jobs, however, are in Toledo. Its three newest jobs
are figuring out how to increase capacity at an Owens-Corning
window factory in Virginia, helping to move manufacturing
equipment at a hair-products plant in Atlanta, and conducting
time and motion studies in a Kentucky factory that makes
capacitors for appliances.
Much of IET's work has been
in factories where interior automotive components are
made and most of the firm's clients are people who Mr.
Stansfield knew when he worked at Sheller-Globe, which
was purchased by the international conglomerate United
Technologies, Inc.
IET's engineers can simulate
an assembly line or warehouse operation on a computer
and then work with a company's engineers or line operators
to work out the fine points.
After six years with Sheller-Globe,
and two with the engineering-architectural firm of SSOE,
Inc., Mr. Stansfield was asked by a former co-
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worker to become
the manager of a new factory, Manchester Plastics, that
was ramping up to assemble armrests for Cadillac.
"I didn't want to be a plant
manager but asked if I could do some industrial engineering
work," he said.
In 1989 he quit his job at SSOE
and spent three months helping design the Manchester
plant's layout.
It was not a great time for
taking risks. His wife, Carol Stansfield, was pregnant
with their first child.
"I think if we had realized
what we were doing, we wouldn't have done it," he said.
"But if I knew it would have turn out like this, I would
have done it a lot sooner. Everyone says you create
your luck, but gosh, I was lucky."
The next five projects he got
were at various Manchester Plastics plants. A similar
pattern developed with United Technologies.
"Once I got into one United
Technologies plant, then that plant manager would tell
somebody else," said Mr. Stansfield.
The work load grew, but he didn't
feel comfortable adding another employee.
"I wasn't sure I could pay a
full-time person," he said.
But he soon came to a point
where he had to expand or limit. He talked with Bill
Proctor, a 1986 Ohio State University grad and former
co-worker from SSOE and they agreed that Mr. Proctor
would become a partner rather than an employee.
"Working for someone else, I
didn't always have the control that I wanted," said
Mr. Proctor, 29. "If I want to do something extra for
a client, or a little different, I can do that."
Mr. Stansfield expects IET's
annual sales to double in the next two years, and additional
four to seven employees to be hired, and in the next
five years, to broaden ownership in the firm to selected
employees.
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