Raymond Corporation
Manufacturing forklifts keeps Chenango County a viable player in state’s economy
by: Melissa deCordova
Skilled welders and machinists looking for a top-notch career opportunity need look no further than Chenango County’s own backyard: The Raymond Corporation in Greene wants you.
The subsidiary of Toyota Industries Corporation is already far and away the county’s largest employer with 1,000 workers. And even though its welding department is known to be the largest in the state, positions are still available.
“We need good workers,” said Vice President and General Manager Rick Harrington.
The call for more employees is just one sign of the 85 year-old business’ positive outlook. This outlook was best exemplified last year when The Raymond Corporation was able to weather the nation’s economic woes relatively unscathed. No workers at the Greene plant were laid off despite a 12 percent drop in the materials handling industry.
A very small number of the company’s employees weren’t as lucky at Raymond’s Brantford, Canada and Muscatine, Iowa plants. The company, which employs 2,400 in total, also maintains a parts distribution center in East Syracuse.
According to Chief Executive Officer and President James J. Malvaso, constant product innovation and complete dedication to meeting customers’ requirements has helped set The Raymond Corporation apart from the pack.
“We were able to still maintain very good revenue rates and profit levels in a very competitive industry last year,” he said. “We were able to do that because of our world class manufacturing operations and world class distribution systems ... that produce and deliver the highest quality trucks at the lowest cost to the consumer.”
The Raymond Corporation is the leading North American provider of materials handling solutions that improve space utilization and productivity. High performance, reliable, ergonomically designed products range from a full line of manual and electric pallet trucks and walkie stackers to counterbalanced trucks, Reach-Fork trucks, orderpickers and dual-purpose Swing-Reach trucks.
The Raymond Corporation’s trucks are utilized for moving virtually any consumer product available on the market today. High-volume warehouses, such as Maines Paper and Food Service in Binghamton; The Gap warehouse in Fishkill; and Wal-Mart warehouses across the country each utilize anywhere from 100 to 200 of Raymond’s trucks. Locally, forklifts are in operation at Norwich Pharmaceuticals in North Norwich, Mid-York Press, Inc. in Sherburne and MeadWestvaco in Sidney, among others.
Moreover, the company works with over 200 suppliers within and outside of New York State.
Reaching the 85th anniversary milestone this year was cause for great celebration. From its founding by George Raymond, Sr. in 1922, to its pallet patent in 1939, to the development of the first narrow aisle truck in 1951 - followed by computer-controlled, ergonomically engineered and microprocessor driven products created later in the 1980s - Raymond is the longest lasting and most innovative company in its industry.
Since Malvaso took the helm in 1993, more than $75 million has been invested in property, equipment and new information technology infrastructures. The company’s revenue growth paints an even more impressive picture. In 1993, revenues were about $145 million. Today, they are just shy of $800 million.
Perhaps the most significant corporate development was in 2000 when Toyota purchased The Raymond Corporation. The association has made way for a strong foothold in the worldwide marketplace. “With the Toyota Materials Handling Group, our businesses combined represent the largest lift truck manufacturers in the world. We can supply American, European and Japanese-styled products to any customer, any where, at any time,” Malvaso said.
Also during Malvaso’s tenure, The Raymond Corporation was the first electric fork lift manufacturer in North America to successfully introduce AC technology for electric lift trucks in narrow aisle applications. The company introduced several new products including three- and four-wheel, sit-down, counterbalanced trucks as well as leading edge walkie pallet and walkie stacker trucks.
“All of our positive outlook in this industry goes back to Malvaso himself,” General Manager Rick Harrington attests. He points to a period in 2002 when the industry was also down, and the company went from producing 7,000 units in 2000 to 5,800 in 2001 and 4,600 in 2002.
“It’s significant that that’s when we chose to do a building project. Our president fully expects the market to come back up, and when it does, he wants us to be able to offer a higher quality product. It’s the Malvaso tradition,” Harrington said.
The last of three physical plant improvements - begun in 2006 and representing $16 million for construction and equipment - will be completed this year. Combined, the new construction added 78,000 square feet of space, making the physical plant nearly 500,000 square feet.
The first addition was designed to incorporate a new hydraulic system for lifting cylinders, the second was for manufacturing a sit down counter-balance line and the third, an environmentally friendlier paint system that provides a more durable, harder finish.
The emissions-free paint system was an initiative of Toyota Industries. “We were already more than compliant with industry mandates,” Harrington said. “Toyota just asked us to be more aggressive.”
In addition to physical plant improvements, employees went through 40 plus hours of training in problem solving last year. In fact, the company just recently honored the employee who developed the 2,000th of 2,013 ideas that were identified to improve productivity.
“Our achievements have been incredible since starting in the fall of 2006 and all through last year,” Harrington said. “Some of the 2,013 improvement ideas received from employees were closed in two days. Others, if they involved another department, took up to 20 days.”
The newly implemented problem solving ideas saved the company $498,000 in 2007.
The Raymond Corporation recently began working with several emerging technologies that can be used with electric forklift trucks in warehousing and distribution centers. Perhaps the most exciting development was embracing hydrogen fuel cell technology last year, an effort that will continue in 2008.
Capitalizing on grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the New York Power Authority - as well as investing $550,000 of its own into the project - Raymond is currently on the forefront of developing hydrogen fuel cell-powered lift-trucks. It is also the first business in New York to have an indoor fueling dispenser for the new energy source. The environmentally clean technology would increase productivity in warehouses by significantly reducing the time it takes to change the large batteries that currently power materials handling trucks.
But not only The Raymond Corporation studying the new technology, but - following in a long-standing tradition - it is also sharing the benefits and potential risks of multiple hydrogen fuel cell technologies with the overall industry.
“Sharing data has been the company’s philosophy since the Raymonds gave away our double faced pallet patent in 1937,” said Charlotte O’Dea, a marketing specialist at Raymond and former director of the Chenango County United Way.
Malvaso said another ongoing project in 2008 is the Pro Fleet Plus management system. While each truck four or five computers already inside, customers are looking for data about how much their trucks are driving and lifting and the time it takes to do so. Using the captured data, the company plans to offer a more useable information management tool that will increase efficiencies within the warehouse.
Fifty percent of Raymond’s employees in Greene live in Chenango County, and, their health matters to the company’s leaders. “We treat our employees like family,” Malvaso said. Since implementing a new program for workers and their families five years ago - one that includes free mammogram and prostate screenings, on-site fitness consultation and training and weight watchers meals in the cafeteria - Raymond’s health insurance costs have remained steady.
“It’s a really good thing for all of us. You can’t control health care costs. But Raymond has demonstrated that you actually can hold that cost down,” Malvaso said, pointing to a zero percentage increase in insurance costs since the program was implemented.
Philanthropically, Malvaso is a strong believer that corporations also need to be good corporate citizens. Thus, the Raymond Foundation has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to non-profits, schools and municipal government. It last year awarded the Greene Fire House and Community Center a check for $650,000, and regularly sponsors an apprentice program for the Greene Central School District. It also sponsored a co-op program with engineering schools at Clarkson University and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Harrington said the company continually tries to get schools to better educate students toward blue and white collar jobs, rather than gray, service-oriented ones. (O’Dea represents the company as a member of the Chenango County Workforce Investment Board.)
“So many kids end up taking service-oriented jobs and are unhappy,” he said. “We need to gear up education to place more emphasis on math and computer skills for these kids.”
Harrington said that welding and machinists jobs require highly skilled professionals with PC skills who understand how lasers and robotics work and are proficient with inspection and measuring equipment.
“The assembly line at Raymond is no longer the dark and grinding place that typified most manufacturers in the past, nor is it as manually intensive,” he said.
In fact, the assembly line processes have been re-configured over the past several years according to Toyota’s well-known production and technology standards. The culture change has affected the way people do their jobs and resulted in quality improvements in the 80 to 90 percent range.
“It’s a philosophy to works to eliminate waste and create the highest quality products,” Harrington said, adding that the plant in Greene is held up by Toyota as an example of how quality and production improvements can be made in a very short time.
Malvaso attributes the materials handling industry’s decline in 2007 to pressures on the consumer, the weak U.S. dollar and housing market credit crunch. He said he expected the industry to fall off another 5 percent in 2008 before leveling next November after the political elections.
Responding to New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s recent State of the State address, Raymond’s leader said he was “pleasantly surprised” that the current administration is trying to become more business friendly. “New York is currently re-establishing itself as a manufacturing state,” he said.
“We are a $300 million business in North America and a $100 million business in New York,” he added. “A lot of goodness has come to this region because of the growth of Raymond.”
In Chenango County, Malvaso said he was “somewhat disappointed” with the lack of progress made to improve existing transportation and energy services infrastructure. He said the state Route 12 corridor “is dangerous” and “not the most friendly of routes” that his trucks must take. “I’m disappointed that it remains two-lanes,” he said. In addition, he said he had hoped that the natural gas pipeline project from Lebanon to Greene would be further along.
“We would have to change our heating systems from propane and oil to natural gas and that wouldn’t be cheap, but we would do it if they would bring a line here. We now have municipal electric, but I’m not sure how long that will perpetuate,” he said.
“If the greater Chenango County community is serious about economic development, these infrastructure issues need to be addressed,” he concluded.
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