Enefco, A cut above the rest

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Enefco has changed its market focus and used its expertise to build a reputation as an innovator and market leader. Ruari McCallion finds out how

A few weeks ago, Peter Klein went to Las Vegas and hit the jackpot. He and his team at Enefco, Inc., had been over to Nevada to demonstrate the company’s new Waffletechnology cleaning cards and had dared submit it to the gaming machine industry’s sternest guru.

“Randy Fromm, the editor and owner of Slot Tech magazine, the technical journal for the gaming machine industry, has consistently refused to accept advertisements and wouldn’t endorse any cash slot cleaning cards because, he said, they didn’t work,” Product Manager Debra Ross says. “We gave him our Waffletechnology card to try. He did something I didn’t expect: He opened up a cash machine and used a marker pen to black out the machine’s sensors. Then he closed it up and put our card through the slot. I was sweating on that one—but the card cleaned everything, including the sensors, just like we said it would.” Cards have saved a lot of time in cleaning gaming machines, ATMs, vending equipment, and automated ticket dispensers. Rather than having to get inside every bill validator, the cleaner simply drops a little solvent onto the dollar bill-sized cards, slips it in the slot, and picks it out when it’s refused. Think of the time saved in just one Las Vegas or Jersey City casino: How many machines are there? And what about vending machines in the average mall or workplace? Or automated payment systems in metro and rapid transit systems? Great concept: The only problem is, they didn’t work on high-denomination machines. They use optical sensors, which have to be recessed; if they touch the money repeatedly, they’ll get scratched.

Fromm has described flat-card cleaning as on a par with putting magnets on entry and pop up when they encounter a void, either above or below, just the location for the sensor heads. Fromm is a convert and the people at Enefco are very happy that they invested in a product development team.

Significant steps forward, like Waffletechnology, usually take some years to get all the way through development, from the original idea to marketed product. But Enefco established its product development department less than a year ago, and here it is with a killer app already. The department may be new but innovation and thinking outside the box are embedded in the company’s culture.

“We recognized we needed a strong product team and we established it as a new department, with Glen Bailey a 23-year employee heading it up,” says Klein. “But we couldn’t have developed the technology without toolmaking in-house, and rapid prototyping to take us through various iterations until we came up with the right solution.”

Enefco is based in a 78,000-square-foot facility in Auburn, ME. It was originally established 30 years ago, in Canada, by Norman Farrar, as a supplier of molded shoe counters: the structural element that sits under your heel. The business moved to Auburn in 1992, when Farrar bought a local company. The trend to outsource footwear to the Far East led him to diversify. Ten years ago, he added foam making capabilities and acquired Waterjet capacity for rapid prototyping and short-run production.

With Waterjet, Preco, and CNC roll stock machines, Enefco performs a wide variety of die cutting and assembly work. Its factory produces lamp bottoms, chair glides, stamp pad inserts, packaging materials, EVA foam products, and manufactures extremely fine-grade non-latex polyurethane foam, for use in poly bags and blister packs, and shipped to other producers for medical, cosmetic, and packaging uses. The company also makes a range of dies and impression markers.

“It sounds pretty diverse but the commonality is cutting,” says Klein. Brad Yount, the financial architecht and biggest shareholder, and Peter Klein acquired Enefco in a leveraged acquisition a year ago, when the founder decided to retire. “We have a legacy business in footwear and, as we acquired our sole North American competitor a year ago, we’re now the only manufacturer in the US.” That unique status means that Enefco is the only company able to supply molded counters for military boots: All military equipment has to be sourced in the US. It’s now making 70,000 counters a day, primarily for the US armed forces, but also for custom footwear manufacturers. The daily output includes 60 different sizes, and the rapid changeovers involved are something the low-cost, high-volume producers aren’t equipped for. One of the growing areas is GlobalDie, which, as its name suggests, makes dies.

“The die-making industry is very fragmented and it’s difficult to make money if you’re making less than a million. We’re undertaking a roll-up; we’ve acquired two companies in the last three months and are about to acquire another,” says Scott Wherry, business unit manager for GolbalDie.

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