Manufacturing in the Rock River Valley moves from furniture to aerospace

Friday

Feb 28, 2014 at 7:00 AM

By Alex GaryRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD - Tom Busse doesn't hesitate when asked what has changed in manufacturing since he started working for his father's company in 1982 while still in high school.

"The magic world of computers," said Busse, who now is president of Rockford Toolcraft. The company has 350 employees designing and building heavy gauge stamping dies and running production metal stampings and assemblies.

"Almost everything is computer controlled from die design to inspection process, all done with some (Computer Aided Design software)," Busse added. "Let's start in engineering. It used to be three drawing boards and a bunch of pencils. Now, we have 15 CAD stations with six kinds of software. It costs thousands each year just for licensing. But what it can do is worth it."

Jere Eyer, managing director at Northern Precision Plastics in Belvidere said the greater computerization and automation has made for a more exacting product.

"If you had a car a couple of decades ago you'd see some gaps," Eyer said. "Now, everything is within a tight tolerance - 10 one-thousands of an inch."

Eyer said some of Northern Precision Plastics customers have specialized scanners to measure the dimensions of what they receive against the large prints to know instantly if his company fulfilled its quality requirements.

Northern Precision Plastics is a custom manufacturer of plastic injection molded parts, with about 40 employees making things such as injection molded armrests for riding mowers, thermoformed parts trays for food service machinery and thermoformed polysterene front fascias for slot machines.

Computers also have made it easier to find - and lose - customers.

"It's easier to get your name out there from an advertising standpoint," Eyer said. "In the past 24 to 36 months we've gotten some good leads from our website. Our business in Macau, China, has really taken off. Macau is becoming a bigger gaming center than Las Vegas.

"But it's also easier for customers to find other vendors and compare pricing. There's a lot more pressure on pricing."

Tino Oldani, president and CEO of Ingersoll Machine Tools, has been in the manufacturing business long enough to see how an airplane is built change three times.

"When I started out airplanes were made with parts riveted together. Thousands and thousands of smaller parts riveted together," Oldani said. "The big evolution in aerospace came from Europe and that was to make these complex parts out of one piece of aluminum. You would take the aluminum and machine the material away until you had the part you wanted.

"Now, we have evolved to adding material," said Oldani, who took over Ingersoll Machine Tools in 2003. He immediately made developing automated fiber placement machines - which essentially compresses thin strands of materials together to form parts - the core focus of the company. "We are adding material to form composite parts that are even lighter, but harder and very strong."

Ingersoll Machine Tools now employs 192 people in Rockford, making massive machines for customers such as Mitsubishi, United Technologies and NASA.

John Lewis, a former economist at Northern Illinois University who now runs a consulting firm in Sycamore, said the transition to composite materials is crucial for a Rock River Valley manufacturing industry that constantly evolves to thrive since the 1860s.

"Rockford has done a better job than most communities in maintaining its manufacturing industry and that's mainly because manufacturers here have shown an ability to transform over time," Lewis said. "Rockford has gone from furniture to machine tools to fasteners to aerospace."

In the 1880s, Rockford was the second largest producer of furniture in the U.S. trailing just Grand Rapids, Mich. By the 1970s, this area was called the screw capital of the world because we were home to such major fastener companies as National Lock, Rockford Products, Camcar Textron and Elco Industries.

Today, with such aerospace suppliers as UTC Aerospace Systems, Woodward Inc., GE Aviation and Honeywell International, the Rock River Valley is one of the 10 largest aerospace markets in the U.S.

"The next innovation Rockford manufacturers need to embrace more is working with composite materials," Lewis said. "That's the direction you are seeing the industry going and there are some companies going in that direction. Rockford needs to see more of that transformation."