Machine tools importer and distributor Methods Machine Tools Inc. will double the size of its Orange County technical center in a move to Anaheim in coming weeks.
The expansion is expected to help the Sudbury, Mass.-based company better serve its Southern California customers, according to Methods Chief Executive Bryon Deysher.
It is also part of the company’s aim to tap potential opportunities here as the manufacturing industry shows signs of rebounding, Deysher said, citing a trend of U.S. manufacturers bringing business back to the states as offshore labor and logistics costs rise.
Privately held Methods imports machine tools from Asia and Europe for distribution throughout the U.S. Its equipment portfolio includes milling machines, lathe systems, and other computer-numerical-controls (CNC) machining systems.
The company was established in 1958 in Sudbury as an equipment dealer and has grown to employ more than 300 workers companywide. It has regional footprints via its technical centers in California and Arizona, as well as in Illinois, North Carolina and Michigan. The technical centers are primarily used for customer service, training and demonstrations of its machines.
Products distributed by Methods are used in a range of industries—from commercial and medical to defense and aerospace—and by such companies as Caterpillar Inc. in Peoria, Ill., and Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, N.J.
Methods has roughly 15,000 active customer accounts and has sold and installed about 30,000 machines.
“Depending on the craftsmanship of the machine, prices can be anywhere from $100,000 to upwards of $2.5 million,” Deysher said. He declined to disclose company revenue.
Methods currently has a Southern California technical center in Buena Park that it shares with another distributor. It will have the new Anaheim center to itself when it moves—a “huge change” that will allow the company to double the number of machines for demonstrations to 12, according to General Manager Steve Raucci, who oversees the company’s Southern California business.
Raucci served in the regional manager role at Methods’ Arizona location before moving to OC about three months ago. He has since hired four employees for a total of 16 and said he plans to hire an additional two or three next year.
“It’s a big thing that we’re splitting away from the other company,” he said.
The 11,000-square-foot Anaheim facility is being retrofitted for the technical center. It will include offices and a showroom, as well as classrooms.
In-house demonstrations of its products are essential in bringing on new clients and notching deals, Raucci said.
Methods has been operating in California for about 18 years, starting with a technical center in Fountain Valley. It moved to Buena Park in the early 2000s.
“OC is a pretty industrialized county,” Raucci said, adding that about 35% of the company’s Southern California business is from Orange County. “Aerospace and medical industries are the two biggest areas. OC is a meaty area for us.”
Employee training also is a key component of Methods’ technical center operations.
“Training is very important, especially for the service guys and in terms of applications and engineering,” Deysher said. “The actual, physical training [of employees] will occur here in Sudbury. They get their hands dirty here” so they can help customers at their respective regional centers.
“Dirty Hands”The perception of “dirty hands” has long been a hindrance for the manufacturing industry in finding and recruiting talent, Deysher said.
“The big issue surrounding the whole item of ‘training’ is that it’s getting very difficult to attract younger people into the industry,” he said. “A lot of kids want to work on Wall Street in a jacket and a tie. It’s up to us importers and manufacturers to pose to these young people that this is a really viable occupation for them. It pays well, and you learn a trade. You’re not standing around looking like a chimney sweeper. It’s not just sticking a piece of steel into the machine and pushing a button. You have to understand the machine, understand how long these tools last. You’re looking for precision, accuracy—all that is inherent in the machine. To then [try and] train someone and replace a 40-year veteran is difficult.”
That’s a sentiment shared by many at the local businesses and organizations engaged in the manufacturing and technical-services sectors. Some companies have recently invested more resources into opening or expanding technical training facilities in Orange County.
Source Refrigeration & HVAC Inc. this year moved its training center from Chino to a larger facility in Anaheim, where the company keeps its headquarters.
Source services refrigeration systems for grocers and other stores, including Walmart, Ralphs and Target. It has about 1,000 employees in more than 30 locations across the country, with about 150 of them at its Anaheim office.
Its current training center is a mock-up of a functioning grocery store, with lines of low-temperature display cases, walk-in freezers and exposed wires. It has eight levels of courses developed and taught by in-house staffers.
Hyundai Wia
U.S. divisions of international companies also have entered OC to support their customers and provide local training opportunities. Hyundai Wia Machine America Corp. opened a 2,000-square-foot showroom and technical center in Cypress in August, a couple of years after the company opened its U.S. corporate office in Carlstadt, N.J.
The company is part of South Korea-based conglomerate Hyundai Motor Co., which has the U.S. arm of its automaker business in Costa Mesa.
Cypress also is home to a 20,000-square-foot Training and Productivity Center run by Swedish metal-cutting tools maker Sandvik Coromant. The company established a technical center in OC last year.
Methods’ Deysher said he sees OC and Southern California in general as “a big opportunity for our products.”
“There’s sort of a renaissance going on in the metal-cutting industry, in CNC machining,” he said. “And Southern California is where a lot of those industries and those customers are reinventing themselves, moving to newer technology and expanding.”
