Cam showing me the Brad Foote "Idea Book."  At least once every year, ideas and suggestions are collected from every employee (250 employees).

Cam showing me a machine designed and built by the Brad Foote staff.

Henry Kirchner, Senior Sales Engineer, Machinery Tooling & Supply (a MSI related company) shows one of our Brad Foote Gear vending machines.

by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO

My visit to Brad Foote Gear Works, http://www.bradfoote.com, with Henry Kirchner, our Machinery Tooling & Supply Senior Sales Engineer, reminded me that dramatic, positive change doesn’t happen overnight, but when it does happen, the impact is enormous.  I’m embarrassed to say that my last visit to Brad Foote Gear was just after Cam Drecoll and his partners purchased the company in near bankruptcy.  That visit (almost ten years ago) was a sobering experience.  The facilities had been abused for years and the new owners had significant acquisition debt to deal with.  Over these ten years Brad Foote has grown into an excellent customer of our tooling company, Machinery Tooling & Supply.

Today, Brad Foote Gear is on the top of their industry.  When I asked Cam what his vision was he said, "to be the most competitive, high quality, large gear manufacture in the U.S. operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."  Point and click here to watch and hear Cam.  As we walked through the plant, I quickly realized that his vision has been transformed into solid strategy and implementation.

This strategy now includes a significant commitment of resources to the wind generation of electrical energy.  Why wind turbine technology? Cam was determined to find a niche that matched their exceptional gear making expertise.  He quickly recognized that the world needs alternative power sources and that the wind turbine offers the most economical opportunity to do so — if a twenty year gear box can be developed. Currently, Brad Foote is one of the leading U.S. wind manufacturers.  These wind turbine towers stand 300 feet high with a blade spin diameter the width of a football field.  Brad Foote Gear is right in the middle of developing that twenty year gear box.  They continue to invest heavily in the technology to lead in the wind turbine business.  They own the largest form gear grinders in the United States and are capable of manufacturing highly engineered, complex gears that weight 100 lbs. to 100,000 lbs.

Is Cam worried about foreign competition?  Yes, but not really.  They continue to develop their own manufacturing equipment and innovative cells to give them differentiation by reducing labor content and increasing throughput.  And, oh yes, Brad Foote was the first gear company in the U.S. to be ISO certified. That happened in 1993. In the last six years they have not had any non-compliance notifications.  It was exciting for me to see how far Brad Foote Gear had advanced since my last visit.  Today they are an aggressive, creative, vertically integrated U.S. manufacturing company capable of competing anywhere in the world.