Rick Gallagher, President, Gallagher Corporation. (movie link)
 

Mark Pecha, Manufacturing Manager, holds a Cotton Doffer — a high wear urethane insert part for a cotton harvesting machine. The highly engineered process to manufacture this part is always subject to the continuous improvement philosopy at Gallagher.

These under water oil exploration cylinders are cast with a metal insert and then machined.

by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO

Gallagher Corporation in Gurnee Illinois, www.gallaghercorp.com, is one of the best custom molders of urethane products.  Since their 1964 beginning, they have differentiated themselves by developing a number of unique and proprietary processes to mold and cast urethane.  While they purchased their first Mazak in 1985 they didn’t buy any more for years, then several years ago they started to aggressively expand their machine shop.  Their most recent purchase is a Mazak Multiplex Multi-tasking CNC machine with a Gantry (automatic) Loader.  What could a company that specialized in urethane technology possibly want with all those machine tools?  I called their president, Rick Gallagher, and asked for an interview.

Rick quickly set me straight.  While, yes, they are specialists in the design and engineering of urethane products, they really are a process focused company.  Everything is a blend of design, engineering, physics, chemistry, material handling and now machining.  Rick confidentially revealed their core value, “We never let go of a problem.  We always get it.”  A shop floor challenge for them was to get parts through the plant in “pristine” condition.  This was difficult when they had to send parts out for machining. No matter how they coached their suppliers the handling and moving provided dinged the parts.  Now that the machining is part of their internal process they are able to keep the parts in “pristine” condition, which is critical to their unique process.

Urethane molded and cast products are critical to the agricultural, off road construction, truck and oil exploration industry because of its high resistance to wear.

The over 70 Gallagher employees work almost around the clock in a safe and  continuous process improvement culture. They provide high quality products on time.  They deliver product in 2 days to 3 weeks, depending upon the customer’s requirement. 

Why did Gallagher Corporation decide on Mazak as their machine tool supplier?  As Rick said, “The program language is easy (Mazatrol), no one knows G-code, and the first machine ran very good.  It’s our philosophy to stick with a good machine and supplier when things work well.  There’s really nothing to gain by changing.  In fact, you probably increase your cost of operations with multiple suppliers.”

I have some additional observations about Gallagher.  It is a very entrepreneurial organization and Rick is quite a visionary.  They allocate significant resources to R&D.  They have always had the courage to invest in people and equipment to improve their process.  As soon as I walked into the lobby, I could tell that safety is very important at Gallagher Corporation.  There are numerous safety awards in their lobby and both Rick (movie link) and Mark Pecha, Manufacturing Manager, stressed that because of their focus on safety their employees have a very positive morale.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  If your employees know you’re looking out for them, they’ll look out for you.