Manufacturers share pivots, investments at chamber event

Tim Stack: SRC workforce welcomes automation help.

Panelists at the annual Manufacturing Outlook on Dec. 7 reflected on workforce recruitment and retention and investments in automated equipment before a sold-out crowd of 450 attending the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Kevin Ausburn, CEO and chair at SMC Packaging Group, said his company has invested roughly $21 million in production equipment over the past five years. The new equipment is in addition to a facility purchase in 2018 that led to an $18 million, yearslong expansion and consolidation of SMC’s operations, resulting in a 415,000-square-foot center completed in 2020 in Partnership Industrial Center, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

The project was finished a month before the coronavirus pandemic’s arrival, and the 50-year-old company, which manufactures corrugated packaging, protective shipping cartons and packaging supplies, subsequently became busier than ever as customers worldwide ramped up e-commerce purchasing, according to officials.

“Our business has been really strong since the summer of 2020, really until the summer of this year,” Ausburn told the crowd, adding it was a record year for sales. “It was almost more than we could handle.”

While Ausburn didn’t reveal the amount at the event, he told SBJ in June the company was on pace to sell $200 million in the fiscal year ending Oct. 31.

“We’ve got some of the most cutting-edge equipment you can have in the corrugated business,” he said at the chamber event. “It’s been beneficial from the standpoint of capabilities and increasing our capacity. It’s been good from a recruiting standpoint. Employees like the idea of working on new equipment and computer control, more automation, more material handling.

“It has created some challenges from the training standpoint, getting employees up to speed on operating that equipment,” he noted.

Ausburn was joined on the panel by moderator Christina Angle, chief financial officer of Erlen Group, as well as Nikki Holden, president of Custom Metalcraft Inc., and Reginald Davis, plant manager at The French’s Food Co. LLC.

Embracing automation
Davis said French’s Food also is training its employees on the company’s growing inventory of automated equipment at its Springfield plant, which produces Frank’s RedHot sauce, mustard and crispy fried onions.

“They’re still not smarter than people,” Davis said of the equipment, adding it will help make employees more productive. “I wouldn’t be afraid of the automation that’s coming or that it means we’re going to have less jobs.”

He said company officials meet with all employees to explain the equipment whenever a new piece arrives at the plant.

Two attendees at the event, Tim Stack, executive vice president at SRC Holdings Corp., and Tracy Jenkins, corporate relations representative at Brewer Science Inc., agreed that manufacturers should embrace automation. Stack said SRC employees used to fear autonomous robots but no longer.

“Five years ago, they may have thought, ‘Hey, it’s going to take my job.’ Now, it’s ‘We’ll take all the help we can get,’” he said.

Jenkins said automation has helped change the work structure for employees at Brewer Science, which produces materials for smartphones and tablet computers.

“They are able to monitor things from home or their computer versus being right in front of the product being made,” she said, noting the company employs 40 of its roughly 500 employees in Springfield.

Workforce challenges
The panelists also spoke about workforce challenges, particularly finding enough quality talent in an employment environment where job openings outnumber those looking for work. Nationally, manufacturing job growth continued to trend up in November, adding 14,000 positions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The industry’s employment level has averaged an increase of 34,000 jobs per month this year.

However, Missouri’s unemployment rate was 2.6% in November, well below the 3.7% national mark. It’s even lower in the Springfield metropolitan statistical area, as the jobless rate was 2% in October, the most recent BLS data available.

To help retain workers, Davis and Holden said their companies offer work-from-home options for those who have that ability. However, they agreed that in manufacturing the workforce primarily must be on-site.

Davis said French’s also tries to help workers evolve into new roles by allowing them to bid for a vacancy when one arises that they are interested to fill at the plant.

At Custom Metalcraft, which manufactures stainless steel equipment, cross training is done as much as possible, Holden said.

“We have tried some flexible scheduling. Our employees loved it, but frankly productivity went down, which wasn’t a viable model,” she said, adding the company has shifted most of its manufacturing facilities to four-day workweeks. “That has definitely helped and that gives us that extra day if we need additional overtime, or anything like that.”

Erlen Group’s Angle punctuated the workforce discussion by noting, “There’s no silver bullet here to solve the labor issue.

“If there was, we probably wouldn’t be telling you.”

The event wrapped up the chamber’s Outlook series for the year, which also annually includes programs on the economy and health care.