Checon’s 50th Anniversary– Almost!

by Allen Conaway

Ten years ago as Checon was preparing to celebrate it’s 40^th Anniversary, we had a lot on our minds.  Computers were going to crash, and phones would surely stop functioning as we moved into the new millennium.  Of course along with everyone else, we dodged that bullet and not a single thing happened that New Years day to slow the progress that was well established during our first 40 years.

As it turned out we had a few other much more dangerous events ahead, that would challenge us to a greater degree than the 2000 bugs in our computers.  The first was the failure of one of our largest suppliers, a refiner.  With over $600K worth of our material in their plant we were shocked to find that we would not be seeing any of it for years to come.  Soon after the events of September 11, 2001 pushed our business, along with the rest if the country, into a long and difficult recession.

In fact it wasn’t for another two years before we started to see real strength return to our business.  It came in the form of new products.  Our in-press welding business now three years into it’s second-generation technology suddenly took off.  It was on the back of this booming business segment that we made the strategic decision to acquire our principal supplier of specialized electrical contact materials.  That in turn started a series of events that led us to relocating all of Checon to our new building in North Attleboro.

With 20% more manufacturing space we spent the next two years shifting operations while ramping up production at an unprecedented rate.  The decision to move into silver products turned out to be a good one as we doubled our sales during the first year.  The market for these materials was ripe but we needed to expand our product offerings.  Our top priority was to develop a new silver tin oxide material that exhibited two principal characteristics; it had to perform well in AC applications and have the ductility to be manufactured as Toplay.  We invested in technical staff and equipment and have since introduced our new GTi line of ductile materials.  We’ve also delivered a new silver nickel product line and we’ve added to the alloys we offer.  All these materials are now offered in strip and wire including a low cost silver cadmium oxide wire.

That extra space was getting filled up quickly but fortunately we were awarded a grant from the State 2007 to train our employees in the techniques of Lean Manufacturing and we were well into the process.  We set about reducing the inventory in our plant with staggering results, cutting our silver ounces to a third of what it had been.  Other efforts reorganized operations and eliminated unused “stuff”, streamlining production.  While there is still tremendous opportunity yet to be tapped, the early success in reducing invested capital positioned Checon to handle the latest chapter with little drama.   (For more on that last three years, check back with me in April!)