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1) Arrow Gear celebrates 60th anniversary
2) New equipment updates
3) Ad series feature Arrow anniversary
1) Arrow Gear celebrates 60th anniversary
This year, Arrow Gear Company is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
Arrow Gear is among the leading precision gear manufacturing companies in
the world, servicing the aerospace and precision commercial markets.
Arrow begin operation in 1947 when founders James J. Cervinka and Frank E.
Pielsticker opened a small shop in an industrial building in Worth,
Illinois. As the business grew, the move was made to a larger facility in
Lyons, Illinois.
By 1960, Arrow’s workforce had grown to nearly 35 employees. This growth
warranted the move to Arrow’s presentation location in Downers Grove,
Illinois. Since that time the original building has been expanded 7 times
and now totals over 145,000 square feet. The workforce is now over 230, and
Arrow has achieved a reputation as one of the most advanced gear production
facilities in the world.
Now, 60 years after its founding, Arrow Gear has moved far beyond those
modest days to a position as a renowned and respected gear supplier to the
world market.
The Arrow Gear story is compelling for several reasons. First is the journey
of a small startup organization which managed to ascend to a position as a
world leader. And second is the case study of how the company survived
despite decades of foreign competition which brought about the end to
thousands of other American manufacturing companies.
Upon reflecting on Arrow’s journey, Cervinka states, “I think the key to our
success was that we genuinely enjoyed the business of making gears.”
A vital component of Arrow’s success has been the highly qualified and
dedicated personnel who have contributed to the company throughout the
years. Arrow has been fortunate in its ability to have recruited and
retained some of the top gear people in the industry.
To fully understand the Arrow Gear story and how its success was achieved,
we look back at the major turning points in the company’s history.
The Arrow Gear Specialty
Perhaps the most important key to the early successes of Arrow Gear was its
chosen product specialty – spiral bevel gears. Many would suggest that
producing spiral bevel gears involves the most complex metal working
processes of any manufactured component. Due to the unique geometry of
spiral bevel gears, they are still considered to be an esoteric specialty.
Today, Arrow produces a full range of gears, but the young company embraced
the intricacies of spiral bevels. As a result, they were able to secure
customers that many competitors could not service.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Arrow’s workforce slowly grew and the company
began to gain a reputation as the specialist of precision spiral bevel gears
for commercial and aerospace applications.
Foreign Competition
As entrepreneurs, Cervinka and Pielsticker understood the need for ongoing
growth and expansion of equipment and capabilities.
“If you’re not moving forward, you’re actually falling behind – you never
stand still. In our business, dormancy is the first stage of decline,”
states Cervinka.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arrow Gear had become an established
enterprise – employing a significant workforce and performing work for some
of the most demanding customers in the industry. However, Arrow began to see
a change in the industrial environment as American Manufacturing’s golden
age of the 50s and 60s was coming to an end.
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Slowly, almost like a hushed whisper at first, competition with Japanese
manufacturers began causing the reduction of orders for American suppliers.
In the years just after the war, Japanese manufacturing capabilities were
relatively primitive and ineffective. In fact, the phrase “made in Japan”
was almost a synonym for poor quality. However, this was quietly changing as
the Japanese manufacturing sector was quickly gaining momentum.
Competition was not the only rapidly changing component to manufacturing in
the 1970s. This era also saw a dramatic change in the technology of
manufacturing with the introduction of CNC machine tools. Arrow identified
that embracing this technological advancement would be essential for
remaining competitive in the years to come. As a result, Arrow began its
tradition of heavily reinvesting in technology. And this trait - perhaps
more than anything else - has been the key to Arrow’s survival.
Arrow Gear president Joe Arvin recounts this technological transition of the
manufacturing industry.
“I visited Warner & Swasey in the late 70s and found that they were building
new CNC machine tools with 50 year old equipment. Shortly after that time,
perhaps in 1981, I visited Mazak and Toyoda in Japan. By sharp contrast,
they were producing CNC machine tools using the latest CNC state-of-the-art
equipment. This really stuck with me – and convinced me that Arrow was on
the right track, with the ongoing improvement of our technology. Notably,
Warner & Swasey, which was a clear leader in machine tool production, was a
shell of its former self by the late 1980s,” stated Arvin.
Sure enough, this first wave of competition meant the end to many companies
that were not prepared. However, looking back over the past 25 years, the
continual onslaught of competition has never ceased. After Japan came the
general Pacific Rim, then Eastern Europe and finally China.
Over this period of time, Arrow has continually redefined itself to maintain
market share – not only in terms of capabilities, but also in its product
offerings.
The first major change to Arrow’s product mix came in the mid 1970s as Arrow
added the capability for cutting and grinding spur and helical gears.
Later, in the early 1980s, came expansion of the aerospace customer base,
and by the mid 1980s, Arrow began aggressively pursuing the European market.
As commercial work was moving offshore, the more specialized aerospace work
remained a viable sector for Arrow, with its established expertise.
In the mid 1970s, Arrow had purchased its Johnson Gear division. Johnson
Gear produced right angle drive gearboxes for the agricultural market, so
Arrow was very familiar with gearbox production. However, by the late 1980s,
Arrow saw the opportunity to move into complete gearboxes for the aerospace
market and began producing prototype and production units.
A key aspect of Arrow’s success has been the high degree of technology in
its production facility. During the mid 1990s, Arrow introduced the world’s
first fully integrated Closed Loop System for design, manufacturing and
inspection. This involved the direct linking with design computers with
machine tools and inspection systems. The increase in efficiency and
productivity was dramatic.
By the late 1990s, Arrow began to see that OEMs were getting away from doing
their own gear design. As a result Arrow implemented advanced design and
development capabilities and began performing this work for its clients.
Finally, in the early 2000s, Arrow started pursuing overhaul and repair work
and later, spare and replacement parts for military and commercial aircraft.
Poised for the Future
In all, Arrow Gear today is very different than it was in the early 1970s.
And had Arrow not made these changes to adapt to a changing world, most
likely it too would have closed its doors many years ago.
The ongoing redefining of the company has been instrumental in the ability
to survive the onslaught of foreign competition. And based on the fact that
the US gear industry is now a third of what it was in the 1970s, this
formula for success is clearly demonstrated.
Now, as a gear industry veteran, Arrow is a case study for the methods
required to succeed in manufacturing. The company is going strong and now
looks to the future armed with the strategic traditions that have served it
well during its 60 year history.
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2) New equipment updates
Arrow has taken delivery of a new
CNC Inspection System which will be used for the inspection of spur and
helical gears.
Located in Arrow’s spur and helical lab, the new Sigma 5 system is produced
by Gleason-M&M Precision. Notably, Arrow’s facility is equipped with a total
of 5 CNC inspection systems.
Arrow has also added a new computer-based Vickers Micro Hardness Tester to
its Metallurgical Department. This tester offers highly accurate results.
Ongoing upgrades to inspection technology is essential for Arrow to insure
that demanding quality requirements are met.
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3) Ad series feature Arrow anniversary
In conjunction with Arrow’s 60th anniversary, a series of print ads
referencing this milestone will appear in several trade publications during
2007.
