Back to shore

Jeff Schmitt balances the reality of off-shore manufacturing with how to bring production back to the U.S.

“At the end of the day we’ve got to figure out ways to be competitive,” says Jeff Schmitt, senior vice president of operations for The Coleman Company Inc., Golden, Colo. “As the person responsible for both the U.S. and international sides of manufacturing for Coleman, I manage make vs. buy decisions. Any products we manufacture in the U.S. have to competitively win that business based on cost, quality, delivery and safety. And for those products we manufacture off-shore we have to make sure we retain control of the product’s quality.”

Schmitt worked for a variety of organizations before taking a position with Coleman in 2011. He points to each job he’s had as contributing to his leadership capabilities. Undergraduate work in aerospace engineering taught him to think through problems in a logical manner. As a platoon leader in the U.S. Army, Schmitt gained the ability to adapt his leadership style to a variety of people and situations. His takeaway from IBM was process, process, process. At Pitney Bowes, he learned how important it is to integrate the different functions of a business—from sales and marketing to project management, through engineering and including customer service. And at Coleman, he’s honed his understanding of how products fit into retailers around the world and how those products drive value for customers. “I’ve seen big companies and small companies,” he says. “Everything is ultimately pulled together to create a delightful experience for the end user.”

In addition to managing make vs. buy decisions at Coleman—long known for manufacturing stoves, lanterns, coolers and personal flotation devices (PFDs) and now a global organization with a portfolio of brands—his responsibilities also include working with the company’s sales team to develop its demand forecast and managing production at Coleman’s three U.S. factories.

Make vs. buy

Making the decision of whether Coleman products are made off-shore or in the U.S. boils down to how to create the best supply chain that’s supplying the best products in the world to end users, Schmitt says. Because labor was and still is significantly less expensive in Asia, most consumer packaged goods (CPG) are produced off shore. “But some of the trade-offs you have with that are significantly longer lead times and the need to make significant investments in your quality organization to be sure you don’t lose control of the product,” Schmitt says. “A lot of people say that the reason to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. is to improve quality. If they’re saying that, that means they don’t have the appropriate levels of quality coming out of their factories in Asia—which is a situation nobody should ever allow their business to get into.”

Making reshoring happen

While Coleman still manufactures products in Asia, the company is invested in returning manufacturing to the United States when it makes sense to do so—and Schmitt has had a hand in making that happen in Coleman’s Sauk Rapids, Minn., facility that produces PFDs. As a result of the reshoring efforts that Schmitt is leading, Coleman has expanded the Sauk Rapids factory from about 60 people in 2011 to 270 people to date, and expects it to grow by another 100 to 150 people in the near future as it continues to bring more business back to the plant. “None of our competitors are manufacturing PFDs in the U.S,” Schmitt says. “The way we were able to bring product back to the U.S. is by maximizing the benefit of reduced lead time, which results in increased flexibility to respond to customer demand. You have to be able to have competitive landed cost, and the way we were able to do that was by taking labor content out of the process.”

Taking labor content out of the process does not, however, mean eliminating jobs. “We’ve actually grown jobs in the U.S.,” Schmitt says. “And we’ve done that through the use of automated equipment.”

The vision for automation meant controlling a polyester fabric as it moves at very high rates of speed through the sewing field to achieve the efficiencies needed to hit competitive costing. “When we told the automation manufacturers and suppliers what we wanted to do they said it wasn’t possible,” Schmitt says. “They told us nobody in the U.S. is moving fabric that fast and hitting that many stitches per inch at those quality levels. We took that as a challenge to go out and develop tooling and fixtures and equipment ourselves.”

Coleman’s team developed its own tooling, integrated with smaller Brother machines. The tooling is synchronized so it can move in conjunction with the machine to double or triple the size of the sewing fields. “What we have now is not just one fixture plate moving around; there are moving parts controlled by the machine on that fixture,” Schmitt says. “It allows the operator to set up the sewing job, which means, for instance, placing two pieces of fabric, three pieces of webbing and three buckles in place and hitting ‘Go.’ The machine does everything else to move the parts around as needed.”

A lot of people say that the reason to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. is to improve quality. If they’re saying that, that means they don’t have the appropriate levels of quality coming out of their factories in Asia—which is a situation nobody should ever allow their business to get into.
—Jeff Schmitt

Integrated design

Designing the automation involved several different tiers of employees. The process began with an engineering team designing tooling and fixtures that met the requirements from a cost, quality and delivery perspective. “The engineers are great, but they’re not necessarily experts in sewing,” Schmitt says, “so we involved our maintenance team. We have a great team of maintenance technicians that have really evolved their skill sets as we’ve grown the business.”

For Coleman to develop its automated processes to meet or exceed quality requirements, it was necessary to involve quality experts and the operators. Much of the process meant talking with the operators, showing them the concepts of what the tooling and fixture were going to look like, and compiling their feedback on how they think equipment would be best operated.

“For example, sewing machines have always been foot-operated, so we designed the controls on the floor as foot pedals,” Schmitt says. “But the operators told us it would be faster for them to use hand actuators located on the machine directly adjacent to the fixtures. Instead of having to put the fabric, webbing and buckles on the machine, back up and then look down to see where the foot pedal is, they said it would be easier to put the actuator right next to the fixture.”

Closely related to operational efficiency is the focus on minimizing repetitive stress injuries for operators. “We have put focus not only on the immediate safety of our operators but also on designing processes that minimize the risk of repetitive stress injuries,” Schmitt says. “In addition to the hand button, we also ensure that the machine and operating surface is at the right height for the employee so they’re not reaching too far or bending over. And instead of using large tables with piles of fabric or buckles, we have adjustable bins connected to the tables.”

Automation and growth

Schmitt admits that transitioning to a more automated process can understandably cause anxiety among the people who move product through the facility, but that anxiety can turn to support if they’re included in the process and the benefits are made clear.

“First, we explained that the reason we were moving in this direction was that we can bring jobs back to the U.S., so obviously there was a lot of enthusiasm around that,” he says. “And another important element is that we’ve been able to create a set of higher skilled jobs by teaching people how to operate CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) sewing platforms. They’re learning skills that will help them down the road so they can continue to grow and prosper—whether with Coleman or another company.

“We want this to be a scenario where not only are we growing our business and bringing products back to the U.S., but it’s critical that our employees know that they’re growing with us,” he says. “We really were a 20th century industry that we’re bringing into the 21st century.”