POWER IN POWER EQUIPMENT, THE

Corporate Report Wisconsin, May 2008 by Warde, Bob

Wisconsin is the new king of outdoor power equipment and last year's business census may prove it, though challenges continue.

Wisconsin has been one of the country's hotbeds of manufacturing in the outdoor power equipment industry. In fact, with a purchase by Briggs & Stratton of the assets of Murray Inc. of Tennessee, Wisconsin likely has surpassed the home of blue grass music and the Grand Ole Opry as the country's No. 1 producer of such equipment, in terms of number of jobs. Wisconsin-based companies that have operations in other states, including Ariens, Briggs & Stratton, Kohler and Scag Inc., makes the state's influence in the industry even more dramatic. Then there are companies not based here that have extensive operations, including John Deere and Commercial Grounds Care Inc., which makes Bob-Cat, Bunton, Ryan and Steiner commercial mowing products in Johnson Creek.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Wisconsin had 3,128 people employed manufacturing outdoor power equipment, or OPE, in 2002, the last year for which numbers are available. At the time, Tennessee had 3,371 for the top spot. Should the percentage of the total number of state residents working in the OPE industry hold up once statistics from last year's business census are released, that number will fall to 2,663, but because several factories in Tennessee have been closed, Wisconsin has the potential to move up to number one and gain a higher percentage of employment.

The OPE industry in Wisconsin has had a colorful and interesting past that, in some cases, dates back to the early 190Os.

For example, the Ariens Co. in Brillion started as an agricultural equipment maker just after the Great Depression. The first product? A tiller. The company began a transition to lawn equipment with the introduction of its Gardneer model tiller in 1950. The tiller had several attachments, one of which was a lawn mower. Two years later, the company introduced the Yardster, which featured a SnoThro snow throwing attachment. After Ariens introduced the Imperial riding mower, it introduced its last piece of agricultural equipment in 1968.

Ariens remains family run and has seen great growth during the past 40 years, first under the direction of Mike Ariens, grandson of founder Henry. It was under Mike's leadership that a series of acquisitions began, including the purchase of the Sperry New Holland lawn and garden tractor line, Promark Co., and Edko Manufacturing. The company's manufacturing facility and a number of new products were introduced.

The most significant acquisition at the time was that of Gravely, a North Carolina maker of commercial lawn and garden tractors. This provided Ariens an entre into the more lucrative commercial equipment business. The company has since purchased National Mower of St. Paul to gain access to the golf course maintenance market, and last year Ariens bought the bankrupt Auburn Consolidated Industries of Auburn, Nebraska, the manufacturer of EverRide zero-turn mowers and Great Dane brand of stand-on mowers used in tight urban areas. The move preserved a source Ariens had been relying on for the stand-on mowers.

CHANCES ACCELERATE

In 1995, Ariens purchased Stens Corp., a distributor of OPE parts for original equipment manufacturers and the aftermarket. Dan Ariens took over leadership of the company in 1998. He moved Ariens to direct-direct distribution, eliminating the distributor network. Also at the top of Dan Ariens' agenda has been the adoption and implementation of lean manufacturing techniques. Ariens attributes the survival of the company in an intensely competitive global OPE market to the use of the techniques. The company says that, as of last June, 665 employees have participated in 1,000 kaizen events for about 280,000 work hours since 2001. A kaizen event is a week-long effort by a group of employees to evaluate a given process and then apply lean manufacturing techniques to drive out wasted effort and recast the process.

"This has truly been an employee-driven process. The effort and energy that has gone into 1,000 kaizen events is incredible," Ariens says. "Employees have not only created a culture of continuous improvement, they have sustained it."

Ariens says the results have been dramatic. While company sales doubled between 1999 and 2007, it has experienced a 15% productivity gain on average during that time. Costs have been reduced, quality improved and delivery times shortened, he adds.

As extensive as the Ariens stable of brands and offerings has become, the most well-known is its Sno-Thro brand of snow throwers. First introduced in 1960 when the company produced 1,865 units, the Sno-Thro has become one of the most popular brands and stories of them being passed from generation to generation are common. Today, the company produces about 100,000 units each year at its Brillion facility in Calumet County, or 50 times what it produced in 1960.

As the company has grown, the Ariens family has continued to invest in its original facilities in Brillion. In 2006, Ariens announced it would invest $6.5 million in its plants, including manufacturing cells, powder-coating systems and a training facility to the plant that didn't have one. "The addition of this third training facility provides opportunities for all our associates to learn the techniques of the Ariens Production System in a classroom setting, reinforcing what they are learning as part of hands-on training," says Dan Ariens.