Kee Safety

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :11/04/2008 02:31:30

Kee Safety Inc. is one of the fastest growing companies in America. Exec learns more about the strategies behind this and how, it seems, US manufacturing is far from dead

Written by Megan Santosus and Produced by Robert Tuneburg

Mike Mumau has a simple message for those people who have written off the American manufacturing industry. “Manufacturing isn’t dead if you’re innovative,” says Mumau, who is president of Kee Safety Inc., an ‘old-line’ manufacturing company based in Buffalo, N.Y. “We’re one of the fastest growing companies in America, and we’re not a software company.”

For decades, Kee Safety Inc. has been in the business of separating people from hazards. Specifically, the company manufactures cast aluminum, cast iron and stainless steel modular railing components for designing handrail systems, guardrails, barriers, roof edge fall protection systems, steelwork clamping systems and other related safety equipment. An array of customers ranging from architects and engineers, global contractors, original equipment manufacturers (such as printing press manufacturers that use Kee Safety’s handrails on walkways) and maintenance and repair suppliers buy Kee Safety’s various safety products.

Kee Safety Inc. was launched in 1934 in Birmingham, England and expanded to the United States and Canada in the 1950s. Today, the company has 200 employees globally and revenues of around $50-60 million; in the United States, Kee Safety has 30 employees. The company operates in eight locations in North America, Europe and the Middle East and sells its products in dozens of countries.

For Mumau, Kee Safety sets itself apart from other U.S.-based manufacturers through continuous innovation that is aligned closely with customer needs. “First and foremost, we listen to our customers when it comes to new product design,” he says. “Many of our product ideas come from the field, from customers telling our reps what they need.”

Getting to grips with customers

To ensure that sales representatives capture and convey customer ideas, Kee Safety has institutionalized a formal process for gathering and filtering ideas throughout the company. As part of their regular duties, each sales representative files a report that includes any new ideas proposed by customers. Those ideas are fed into a database that is reviewed by Mumau who serves as something of an ideas middleman between Kee Safety’s North American operations and its corporate headquarters in England. Any ideas with merit that require the investment of research funds are sent to England where they are input into a new product development database.

“We’re always looking for something that will sell products and expand markets and lets us quickly get new ideas through R&D,” Mumau says. Throughout the process, Kee keeps customer needs at the forefront, but the company is careful to consider two important aspects before going forwards: whether an idea can be turned into a product that Kee Safety can manufacture efficiently, and whether an idea can be turned into a product that is Kee Safety can market commercially.

And Mumau says it’s important to include time-to-market in the mix as well. “You can’t take ten years to innovate,” he says. One case in point is the company’s new Kee Access line of handrails that meet various ADA requirements for providing access to people with disabilities. Mumau says it took twelve months from the time the first idea for a product was entered into the database to when the new product line was on the market in 22 countries.

Efficiency is key

Since 2000, Kee Safety has emphasized efficiency as a means to stay competitive due to the volatile prices of its raw materials (prices can literally decrease five percent one month and increase twenty percent the next month). “We set our prices for our core products in January and stick to them for twelve months,” Mumau explains. The experience with the Kee Access line of products exemplifies that efficiency. “We’ve become very good at developing products for different regions at the same time,” says Mumau.

For example, by sharing ideas about disability products among Kee Safety’s global locations, the company was able to design products that met the regulatory requirements of all countries. The alternative—designing a product line specific to each country’s regulations—would be too expensive. “Most of our products are cast,” explained Mumau. “It’s one of our core competencies.” The company creates molds for its components that cost from $8,000 to $12,000 each, and there are about 40 molds required for each product. “If we created different product lines for each country, that would be a huge cost,” Mumau says.

IT – it’s important

Another means of achieving efficiency is through information technology. Kee Safety relies on an enterprise resource planning system from Infor for accounting and manufacturing operations worldwide. The company’s customer relationship management system, ACT by Sage, manages relationships with prospects and customers. The system also ties into Kee Safety’s website, so that when someone requests information online, the request is handled by the system. Within seven to ten days, the system generates a tickler for a sales representative to follow up.

Although Kee Safety does have a small sales staff, most of the company’s products are sold through distributors, strategic partners and manufacturing representatives. Keeping the ratio of employees to revenues low is yet another way the company strives to be efficient, Mumau says.

Kee Safety’s main supplier is a sister company called Kee Safety Logistics. From its supplier’s factory in Birmingham, England, Kee Safety imports at least one 20-foot container each week of finished components—or roughly 60% of the material required for products. Kee Safety relies on domestic suppliers in the U.S. to supply the rest of the materials in order produce a complete railing system.

As a successful manufacturing company in a region of the U.S. that has seen its share of economic hardship, Mumau says it’s important to foster ties with the local educational community in Buffalo. The company offers internships focused on computer aided design to students from the University of Buffalo and the ITT Technical Institute. It’s a way, says Mumau, to give students real-world job experience and dispel the myth that North American manufacturing is doomed. “There’s no reason that we can’t compete, if we innovate,” he says.

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Kee Safety