MIC Group

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :2/21/2008 5:27:48 AM

MIC Group successfully provides a wide variety of manufacturing services to a number of industries. The company has grown considerably since the 1960s. Exec learns more

Written by Ian Armitage and Produced by Pat Harlow

A J.B. Poindexter & Co., Inc. company, MIC Group is a respected US supplier of high alloy machining solutions. Providing a wide variety of manufacturing services, and with experienced personnel and advanced vertically integrated manufacturing services, MIC offers unrivalled support to customers.

Founded in 1963 in Houston, Texas as Magnetic Instrument Corporation, initially producing small electromechanical assemblies, MIC was moved to Brenham, Texas in 1977 and purchased by J.B. Poindexter & Co., Inc. in 1992. The company has grown rapidly and is projecting revenues in excess of $140 million in 2008. The growth came about both internally and through acquisitions and the company now has two plants in Brenham plus plants in Houston, Texas, Duncan, Oklahoma, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Monterrey, Mexico.

Nelson Byman, President at MIC Group, spoke to Exec from the company’s 134,000 square foot, air-conditioned Brenham facility, about the group and how the company has developed over the years. He explains: “We are a great company providing a wide variety of manufacturing services to our customers. We are a top class supplier of high alloy machining solutions and have experienced personnel and support our customers no matter what.”

His colleague, and the company’s vice president of sales and marketing, Roger Atkins, adds: “Our manufacturing services include investment-casting, precision-machining, electron-beam-welding and mechanical-and-electronic-assembly. Many of these services were added in response to our customers’ needs. We really do our very best to offer a superior product and service to our esteemed clients.”

“We have developed a strong and broad customer base,” continues Mike Baker, vice president of the Brenham facility. “These customers include the leading companies in industries such as oil and gas services, aerospace, ordnance, petrochemical products, and power generation.”

A popular choice

MIC Group is an extremely successful company and its President thinks the reason why is quite simple: “We establish partnerships with our customers by living up to our quality policy,” he says. “That policy is to meet the customers’ stated and implied requirements.” Mr. Byman makes it sound easy, but the company spends a lot of time and effort investing in and perfecting its offering to ensure its customers are left satisfied.

Roger Atkins adds: “To build on what Nelson is saying, we meet the requirements of our customers by understanding their business, their need and their wants.” In doing this the company is able to provide what Nelson calls “added value” to customers, while building mutually beneficial long term relationships.

Despite its wide range of services, MIC actually focuses on a very small group of customers. You might think that strange; however, it isn’t. Roger says it is done in an attempt to “reinforce and build the strong relationships on which this 35 year old company is built.” Believe it or not he says, “MIC does business with a few loyal customers, opting to build very close and mutually beneficial relationships. We feel that having too many customers dilutes the attention we can give to each customer. Some of our customers have been with us a very long time - as much as 30 years - which gives you an indication of how highly we value strong relationships.”

Nelson agrees and says: “The longer we work with a particular customer, the better we understand their business needs and the more we are able to offer the best, value-added solutions. The complexity of the parts we use and build today means you had better have close relationships – without them you are nothing.”

Dedicated people

Despite having a small, select group of customers, MIC offers them a variety of integrated manufacturing solutions. “We make some very complex parts for extremely niche markets; this means we have to be the very best we can be,” says Mike. “Therefore, we ensure we invest in keeping this company ahead of the competition whether that be through bringing in new machinery through considerable capital investments over the years, adding new processes, or developing and training our people.

“We devote a lot of time and effort to listening to our team members and trying to make sure we meet their needs,” adds Byman. Knowledge is a premium in this industry, he says, and he is proud of the work his people do. To improve that however, MIC invests considerable sums of cash in helping them grow. “This is necessary to ensure we provide a quality product,” says Nelson. “Material costs are very high so we can’t afford not to do a good job. We cannot afford to have any mistakes at all, so we need the best people. With the scarcity of skilled machinists, it has been necessary to provide our own training and mentoring programs.”

Superior service

The MIC team believes that that they offer customers a level of service their competitors can’t match; a fact supported, according to Roger Atkins, by full order books. However, there is always room for improvement and Nelson is targeting some very “aggressive cost improvement targets in conjunction with a strong lean manufacturing program” over the coming months.

“One of the things we are doing is transforming this location [Brenham] from a process oriented facility into a product orientated facility. Even though we are a contract manufacturer, there is still some similarity between the products being demanded by our customers and we get a considerable amount of repeat activity. So, we are basically breaking our business up into individual units that can handle specific product configurations. From there we are grouping the machines together in a cellular units and applying lean principles to be able to support those products.”

Future plans

All its facilities are ISO 9001 certified, and the team is excited by what the future may hold, particularly as the company’s biggest market sector - oil and gas - continues to grow. However, raw material has been a tremendous challenge over the past several years both in terms of availability and price. “The prices have gone through the roof,” explains Nelson. “So, we will need to keep an eye on that and continue to drive waste out of our business.”

Another challenge is finding the right people, in particular, qualified machinists. “With the oil boom here in Texas as strong as it is, machinists are very much a premium and we have had to be creative in getting people. This means recruiting in non standard ways and providing unique incentives,” explains Roger. “It also means that we have to do a lot of training internally, bringing younger people on board that have never been in a machine shop and providing them with the support necessary to grow.”

MIC Group’s overall strategy is to continue to grow the business both at home and abroad, particularly in the oilfield sector, looking at how it can better serve that market. “We will look at how we can improve, and possible acquisitions may be the result,” says Nelson, as MIC looks to boost its product portfolio. “We have had spectacular growth over the last five years and are looking for more of the same in the coming five years,” he adds. “To do that, we are going to need to add to our internal capacity and capabilities, as well to provide services in the locations most strategic to our customers, whether in the U.S. or offshore.”

ERP is a major challenge for MIC too. With acquisitions - it has added four businesses over the past two years - the company has different ERP systems in place, creating what Mike calls “a very complex environment.” The plan is to consolidate into one system. “ERP is certainly a large part of what we will be doing over the next six months,” adds Nelson, who also says, “We are not in an industry where we can sit still; we have to keep our eyes on the ball, listen to our customers, make the right investments and stay abreast of developments in technology.”