The roads you drive, the bridges you cross, the food you eat, the house in which you live – chances are that Vibco vibrators have played a role in their creation.
Vibco Vibrators Inc. has been designing and manufacturing industrial and construction vibrators for more than 40 years, and it has been awarded more than 25 U.S. patents for the designs. But that isn’t the only remarkable thing about Vibco, winner of the 2007 Business Excellence Award for companies with fewer than 100 employees.
Enter Vibco’s facility in the village of Wyoming, in the town of Richmond, deep in the South County area, and you will see employees who actually like their jobs, a lot.
All employees, from assembly to shipping, are encouraged to share their ideas, collaborate and implement ways to improve processes; most days at Vibco are energetic brainstorming sessions, according to Vibco President Karl Wadensten.
Wadensten, whose father, CEO Ted Wadensten, started the company, is the spark for the innovative firestorm – the ultimate motivator. As a member of the Young Presidents Organization, which teaches leadership skills, Wadensten injects philosophies such as the “have fun at work” ideals of the book “Fish!” into every part of the business.
“When you come here, you immediately notice the paradigm shift from your average workplace. People are smiling and happy to be here,” Wadensten said.
The company began with Ted Wadensten, an immigrant from Sweden and the youngest of seven children, who studied engineering in Europe and worked for a company that made vibration equipment. The company expanded into the U.S. market and sent Wadensten to spread the word here.
Once in the United States, Wadensten noticed what he considered to be subpar techniques, so he began toying with equipment, redesigning products to make them as efficient as possible. In 1962, Wadensten broke away and started Vibco in New Jersey.
In the late 1960s, U.S. automakers recognized the negative business impact of high levels of workplace noise and focused their noise reduction effort on vibration equipment. The auto industry challenged the vibration industry to come up with a quiet version of the equipment.
Vibco’s founders tried various ways of reducing the noise made by the ball in the race of the vibrator, but they couldn’t find a satisfactory option. So Vibco tried something that had never been done before: It offset weighting a gear or some other spinning wheel, perfected the design and ultimately produced the same frequency and force as the ball vibrator with almost zero noise.
What began as a challenge from the auto industry translated into Vibco’s claim to fame.
The company was awarded a U.S. patent for the design of the Vibco Silent Pneumatic Turbine Vibrator, and Vibco officially became the home of “The Silent Vibrator Guys!”
Vibco moved to Rhode Island in 1974. Its vibrators were initially used in the agriculture and automotive industries, but the products now touch almost every industry in some way.
The company is international and has a hefty product base, but the employee programs, activities and accomplishments are all Karl Wadensten and his team want to talk about.
“We consider each person who works here an internal customer and give them the same care we give our external customers,” said Linda Kleineberg , Vibco’s marketing manager. “We all support each other in our tasks, our creativity in the market, and our personal goals.”
There are four employees who have been at the company since it moved to Rhode Island in 1974, and the average tenure is about 13 years, Karl Wadensten said.
Vibco takes employee health seriously and employed a wellness coach to run fitness programs. Every morning, Vibco employees start the day off with a group stretch. They also have programs such as “Commit toBe Fit,” which helped the 34 program participants – about half the work force – lose a total of 284 pounds over six months.
“We are a progressive company that understands the value of prevention from a health care standpoint,’ said Ritch Finnegan, the wellness coach contracted by Vibco to run physical activities, weight loss and stretching programs for the employees.
To improve the health of its manufacturing process, the company created a position called “kaizen sensei” based on Toyota’s results-oriented tools for continuous improvement. Paul Cary, the former lean manufacturing consultant for Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Services (RIMES), filled this role in 2006. Otherwise known as the “lean champion,” Cary’s job is to identify and eliminate waste in Vibco’s manufacturing.
Vibco considers anything that doesn’t add value to the product or services, such as defects, overproduced inventory, wasted resources, wait time and transportation, to be waste, Cary said.
“We train people to identify areas of waste. This is done daily from the start of the process to finish, and our products are produced using the fewest possible resources,” said Cary.
“To be competitive, you have to jump on the lean train,” said Kleineberg, adding that Vibco shares its lean manufacturing methodology with its supply chain as well.
In fact, earlier this month Karl Wadensten took Vibco’s shipping department to visit three other manufacturers in the state to observe their methods and take away some best practices.
“We’ve done this before with machine shops and our assembly team, and we are doing an office trip as well. We want to share and learn from others some things we can implement here,” Karl Wadensten said.
The company also stays competitive by “being highly flexible, innovative and delivering products on time,” said Cary.
“I see a tremendous amount of opportunity for us because of this,” Cary said. “We distance ourselves from the competition by listening to our customers and responding to them.”
Vibco anticipates its growth will continue in the existing market. The company has experienced four straight years of revenue growth, representing a 42-percent increase from fiscal year 2002.
In addition to Rhode Island, Vibco has offices in Phoenix; Tampa, Fla., and Canada. •
