Bonvenuto says a former employee had taken the Oberg apprenticeship program and implemented it in Costa Rica. He was looking to exit the business, so the facility’s owner inquired if Oberg would be interested.
After the purchase, management made a commitment to employees that Oberg wasn’t going to transfer jobs from the U.S., and all employees would be working on similar projects.
“We may be in a lower cost region in Costa Rica than we are in the U.S., but we certainly are not in a lower skilled region,” Bonvenuto says. “There’s no drop-off in what we do in that facility.”
Over time, as employees in both facilities had an opportunity to visit each other — and Oberg backed up its promises — the fears have been allayed.
“It’s a big part of what we do, but its not a competitive part at all,” he says. “It’s a complementary part to enable us to land other, bigger projects, where we can introduce a lower cost element on portions of the project that make us successful to win a larger project.”
And just as Oberg’s U.S. facility transformed to new markets and capabilities in 2008 and 2009, Costa Rica went through the same process a few years later.
Overall, Oberg has been fortunate to have low turnover. Employees are given challenging projects, continually learn and are respected for what they do.
The company doesn’t have products — it relies on its customer partners, Bonvenuto says.
“If we put the customer needs in front of our own, if we put the employee needs in front of our own, then things fall into place in terms of making profits and making money to reinvest back into the business and grow the enterprise,” he says.
He feels the company is just scratching the surface on the medical device, aerospace and energy sectors, while it investigates how to use in-house technologies in new markets.
Oberg isn’t trying to be everything to everybody. It’s focused down on customers who want it to be a true partner, rather than a commodity supplier.
“We’ll continue to try to gain more market share and execute better and grow that way, but we’ll also continue through our strategic plan to continue to reinvent ourselves,” Bonvenuto says.
Takeaways:
- People are a differentiator — no matter what the industry.
- Training must evolve to fit company and trainee needs.
- Attracting employees and culture go hand-in-hand.
The Bonvenuto File:
Name: Dave Bonvenuto
Title: President and CEO
Company: Oberg Industries
Born: Barnesville, Ohio
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business with an emphasis in accounting from West Virginia University.
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it? I remember it well. I worked splitting wood at a lumber company.
A couple of my high school football teammates convinced us that we should go there in the mornings and split wood before workouts and conditioning, so we’d stay in good shape, and then have the rest of the day to hit the pool and do those types of things.
We hung in there for the whole summer — and made it out with 10 fingers and 10 toes. Still to this day every time I pass a gas station or supermarket where you see those bundles of wood that are stacked and wrapped, it reminds me of those mornings.
We worked as a team, and you had to work hard. We had a quota that you had to hit every day. It kind of goes back to our competency model in the apprenticeship program. We could make it a five-hour day and kind of milk it along, or we could work hard and get out of there in 3½ hours. So, we said, ‘Let’s work as a team, let’s work hard and efficient, and let’s get our stuff done and get out of here.’
You started at Oberg in 2001, what advice would you go back and tell yourself? We lost a generation of manufacturing, and didn’t recognize then as a country and a company the challenges of attracting people into advanced manufacturing. That was — and it still is — a very challenging decade.
We had to try to educate young people, guidance counselors, schools and parents about the virtues of advanced manufacturing, saying that this is a great career path for your child.
Clearly, that message has been getting pounded the last few years; looking back it would have been great to probably start pounding that message in 2001.
