For more than two decades, this metal heat-treating firm has employed incremental growth to thrive in an industry where success isn’t always the norm

In 1985, Gary Huss, Earl Pack and Chuck Davis sat down to map out a plan. Davis and Huss had worked at the same metal treatment firm in Rockford, Illinois, while Davis had experience on the sales side working at one time in a different firm with Pack. With their combined experience—Pack started in the industry at age 16, and Huss joined up at 22, just out of college—they felt they could do well with a start-up of their own. That year, they kicked off Hudapack, with headquarters in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

Over the years, the three grew the firm slowly and steadily, adding capacity by the decade. In 1990, Huss, Hudapack’s President, and Pack, the company’s Vice President, purchased Davis’s stock, and he retired. Four years later, Hudapack acquired a competitor in Addison, Illinois, and in 1999 moved that operation into a larger facility in Glendale Heights. The company purchased a second competitor in Franklin, Wisconsin in 2004.

“Growth by acquisition was a conscious strategy on our part,” Pack notes. “We wanted to find a related company that wasn’t doing well, but had clientele and processes we didn’t. For us, finding the right business and turning it around was less expensive than starting everything from scratch. In both cases, the acquisitions meant we got greater capabilities and had the opportunity to expand our client base.”

Today, Hudapack serves a wide range of industries, including automotive, biomedical, food processing, marine, mining, pharmaceutical and other clients. In addition, its sound growth planning has helped it add a variety of innovative metal heat-treating processes, such as austempering, salt-to-salt austempering, carburizing, carbonitriding, marquenching and more.

In an industry not known for its stability, Hudapack has managed more than two decades of continuous, incremental profitability. Currently, the company employs more than 160 people throughout its three plants, each of which averages about 40,000 square feet in size; has about 300 active accounts at any given time and reached revenues in 2006 of more than $15 million. Typically, Hudapack averages about 4% to 5% annual growth, in keeping with its grounded, stable expansion through the years.

If you ask Pack about the reasons for Hudapack’s ongoing success, he’ll tell you that there’s no magic to what the company’s done—it’s about people, quality and service.

“In this industry, entry-level people can be difficult to find,” observes Pack. “It’s a tough learning curve, and the work isn’t easy.” To answer those challenges, the company invests a great deal in its employees. It starts with initial and ongoing professional training and extends into paying among the most competitive wages in the industry, offering 401(k) and profit-sharing and covering 81% of workers’ single or family health insurance plans. “When you’re talking about paying $800 to $900 a month for a family insurance package, that looks pretty good,” he adds.

But there’s also an intangible Hudapack provides. “It comes down to the way we treat the people,” says Pack. “The environment here is truly friendly. We have an open-door policy and always work with people regarding their personal issues—family and otherwise. We actively encourage our people to come to us with those problems. If you can help someone, you should because, frankly, good employees are hard to find.” As a result of the benefits and overall care it provides, the company loses fewer than two long-term employees each year.

In any manufacturing environment, there are ways to demonstrate that quality is job number 1. Typically, ISO9001 certification, which is offered by the manufacturing standards body International Organization for Standardization and certifies that consistent processes are being applied, is one common way. But ISO9001 certification is just a start for Hudapack, where customer service and quality go hand in hand.

Whenever the heat treater takes on a new client or project, it works closely to understand the issues clients may have had with past vendors and try to determine how their work and the product as a whole will work in the future..
 
“We need to take into account that we’re meeting specifications that go beyond just the work we do,” Pack explains. “If there are multiple components for a project or certain testing tools, we’ll make sure we incorporate those in our work. Here’s an example: We recently completed a year-long project heat treating hinges for the seats in Dodge’s Durango SUV. Once we understood how the rest of the seat worked, we realized we had to change the process to maintain customer-specified dimensions. We had to go back to the client and show them how everything worked in the context of the hinge and get permission to change our own process. It was time-consuming to get that approval, but you have to get these things right the first time.”

Even with its bedrock values, proven processes and rock-steady growth, Hudapack has experienced trials that truly tested its metal. After 9/11, business turned rocky, with cutbacks at every client. But even that dark cloud had a silver lining for the company.

Stand Up and Be Counted

In some cases, you need to go beyond the walls of your company to have a bigger impact on your industry. In the recent past, Gary Huss, President of Hudapack, testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers about the need to reduce manufacturing costs in the U.S., leveling the international playing field and workforce development.

In fact, Hudapack is both a member and leader of several industry trade associations. Earl Pack, its Vice President, says it’s important that the company maintain a stake in steering its own fortunes—and that of the industry—on Capitol Hill.