Posted on a bulletin board in Vince Nardy’s Solon office is the slogan, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every morning.”
CEO Nardy says his 350-employee company embodies the philosophy in that slogan. Hunter Manufacturing Co. designs and manufactures nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) air filters and air filtration systems, and specialized vehicle and space heaters for military and homeland security applications.
Although annual revenue is in excess of $100 million, Nardy refuses to take credit for Hunter Manufacturing Co.’s accomplishments. He says it’s his employees who set the company apart and make it successful
“(By) creating a culture with bright, energetic and ethical people, you excel irrespective of the strategy,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with Nardy about the challenges his company faces in the homeland defense market and his responsibility to his customers.
How do you keep your company competitive?
We have an incredibly aggressive and bright management team … not just the upper management but the build-out of the organization has a direct correlation to our ability to grow and be competitive.
We are focused on bringing in intelligent, energetic and ethical people. That’s the formula for our success in terms of being competitive. And certainly the markets we serve have been rising, which adds to the excitement.
How are you dealing with the emerging homeland defense market?
We’re very actively engaged in trying to penetrate that market. In the building protection segment, we’re trying to leverage the Department of Defense NBC technology into the homeland sector. Then with the March acquisition of Base-X soft wall shelters, we’re actively pursuing first responders with decontamination shelters.
We are providing solutions to a number of federal government buildings today. We are taking this technology and educating people in the private sector, such as financial institutions, that would potentially find this technology of value. It’s really very targeted marketing.
How has homeland security changed how you go to market with your products?
The pace at which designs have to come to market is certainly a little bit quicker. The government is much more methodical — really has a process unto itself — and requires a significant amount of testing and validation.
In the homeland sector, you’ve got to move very quickly and demonstrate your capability. It’s a challenge but I think we’re up to the task.
We have our own engineering group, both at Base-X and at Hunter. We have a facility in Edgewood, Md., where we do pure research and development. We have a pretty extensive staff of engineers at Hunter, working on the development of various military products. We do use outside resources on occasion, as needed.
What kind of responsibility comes with being a supplier to the U.S. military?
There’s a significant amount of responsibility, and I can say there’s a significant amount of pride associated with that, as well. We have plaques displayed in our lobby outlining performance in which we’ve had calls from the Department of Defense to expand our capacity substantially in a very short period of time to meet various mission needs. We take our status and our position very seriously.
In a number of cases, we are the only ones that supply certain products, and in order to maintain that position, you have to be able to flex your manufacturing capacity in pretty short notice both ways, up and down.
It’s an interesting business model being associated only with the Department of Defense; that’s really all we do. Some government homeland security, but it’s really an offshoot of the Department of Defense. As such, you live and die by the sword.
There are time periods when business requirements surge, and there are time periods when requirements are at pretty low volumes, and you have to be able to maintain a cost structure that can support the lean times as well as the times when business is pretty strong.
One of the things that we’ve invested in very heavily is lean manufacturing. We set up assembly cells that are designed to be able to have variable output depending on how many people we put in a cell. We’ve focused a great deal of time standardizing the work, which leads to improvements in quality and allows us to flex our capacity in fairly short time periods.
Our capacity has expanded by many multiples. The company size has expanded. We were a $16 million business in 2001. So we have been, by virtually all accounts, very successful on a number of different fronts, and that is a direct correlation to the talent that resides in the organization.
How do you define ‘World Ready,’ your company’s motto?
Our products are utilized all over the world. We heat air, cool air, filter air and provide shelters in which we’re able to manage that air. Whether it is in vehicles, in shelters, in buildings for the Department of Defense, we’re ready to service their needs around the world.
At the end of the day, it’s great to be a profitable and growing company but our focus is on the war fighter, and if you’re fulfilling their needs, everything else falls in place.
We’ve had a number of e-mails, phone calls, testimonials coming back (from military personnel stationed in the Middle East.) It’s amazing how powerful a heater is, in terms of comfort, when a soldier has been in a very difficult, unpleasant situation, to be able to come back to a unit that is easy to use, very reliable, always at the ready for them.
Recently we had a colonel in to talk to our organization in Solon; we received an award for our performance over the last 10 years. He had just about everybody wiping their eyes, including me. It was just a very powerful message that warms your heart to know that you’re making a difference. Moments like that really put all of this in a proper perspective.
Just about everybody has a relative, a friend or a friend-of-a-friend in the military who is either in the Middle East or could be going to the Middle East, and we continually try to educate and remind (employees) that it could be your sister, your nephew, your grandson using our equipment, so you want to make sure that when they get it, it works right, and people really take that message to heart.
HOW TO REACH: Hunter Manufacturing Co., (440) 248-6111 or http://www.huntermfgco.com
