Demand for its world-leading fire resistant fabrics is powering TenCate Southern Mills to record levels of output – and to boost its production capacity and develop strategic partnerships
Written by Ruari McCallion and Produced by Glen White
The TenCate Southern Mills name has been trusted by fire service personnel for years but the company is facing a new challenge – and gaining new fans. US Soldiers on active service are benefiting from the company’s expertise and years of experience in specialized protection fabrics.
“We’ve always had a Nomex fire-resistant product for the military, which has been used by fighter pilots, by personnel refuelling jet planes and others in potential flash-fire environments,” said Joe Glovier, VP of operations of TenCate Southern Mills. “With the military deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers are facing serious risk of death and burns injury from roadside bombs and the government has been under a lot of pressure to provide all military personnel with fire-retardant clothing.” Because of the global shortage Nomex wasn’t the answer, and TenCate came up with the solution.
“We developed a new product that goes by the name of Defender M,” Glovier said. “It’s an all-synthetic fabric, primarily made from fire resistant (FR) rayon, which we source from Lenzing, a company in Austria. We had to compete for the business against all the other major product suppliers in the FR market and won the award as the fabric of choice to equip the soldiers in the field. We began supplies in May 2007 and, through five months, have provided 1.5 million yards of materials for battledress uniforms.”
Protect and serve
It’s a reassurance to America’s soldiers as they go about their business on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. For TenCate, the challenge is to ensure that it does the job of providing what’s needed, on time and in the right quantities.
“Fire service protective textiles remain our major business but military supplies have grown and are now a substantial part of our operations,” he said. Sales have grown in all areas and revenues towards the end of 2007 are approximately double their level of early 2005. Achieving that growth and maintaining control is a task that has been too much for many other companies.
TenCate has been putting a lot of effort into ensuring that it doesn’t become a victim of its own success and an important element is Dutch company TenCate’s acquisition of Southern MIlls, in 2004. It brought with it the resources of a global organization. Not least has been the connection with Lenzing. The expertise available from TenCate’s experience of acquisitions, mergers and integration has helped Southern Mills to improve its own processes - not least, the computer system.
“We had about three different systems and they didn’t talk to each other,” said Glovier. “That makes it difficult to get accurate management information and that has been exacerbated by our business doubling. We’re moving everything onto a single system, supplied by JoMar software house, whose services we have used on the financials side for several years. We’ve rolled out the fully integrated ERP suite to the first of our four operational plants in October; the second roll-out will be completed in November and we hope to have everything in place by the end of the year.
It will make a difference; keeping control while you’re growing more than 25 per cent a year is tough. With the increase in total unit sales and revenues, WIP and inventory have gone up substantially and we’ve experienced apparently huge swings from month to month. Instead of carrying out inventory checks quarterly, we’ve had to carry them out every two weeks. That isn’t my idea of fun and isn’t an effective use of anyone’s time.” With raw material prices ranging from $16 per lb to over $80, depending on the fabric, uncontrolled inventory can be a killer. The new JoMar system should put an end to that.
Looking outwards ?and ahead
Another change in the company’s style of operations has been the use of external production partners. What began as an emergency measure is evolving into core strategy.
“Since we got the military order, we have engaged a printer partner who is now processing 100,000 yards of fabric for us every week,” he explained. “In late 2004, we were working three shifts, five days a week; we quickly moved to convert all facilities to 24-hour working, seven days a week. We expanded our internal capacity to the point where we were able to drop in additional equipment and pretty much filled up our available footprint.
Expansion now isn’t just a case of going out and buying something and dropping it into place; we have to spend millions of dollars on auxiliary support and new buildings.” Realistically, the military market can be volatile. If peace breaks out, military orders reduce to a trickle or maybe dry up completely, so any investment has to be carefully considered – and it’s not just the military market that has grown.
Working with others who have capacity is perfectly sensible. “Maybe outsourcing was originally a short-term fix but we’re now considering it as a long-term strategy.” The emergence of external partnerships also brings the opportunity to develop new markets.
“We’ve long supplied foreign militaries with Nomex products but we will have to go through the US government for approval with the new fabrics because there is the national need to control shared technology,” he continued. “In any case, we’re currently stretched to supply all of our own military’s needs so it would be difficult right now. But we’re laying the groundwork for the future.”
The shared technology restriction doesn’t apply to firefighters’ uniforms, of course, and nor does it apply to TenCate’s other high-profile niche market: race car drivers’ FR suits. “We’ve developed a new line for racing, which is more of a filament type product, which has a shiny appearance, bright colors that appeal to the NASCAR guys and we expect it to grow in 2008, as one of our better niche lines. We’re pretty excited about it.”
TenCate has done a remarkable job of doubling output since 2005 without any increase in headcount – currently standing at 510. That testifies to tremendous increase in productivity.
“We have added equipment – no less than 17 weaving looms and at least five new spinning frames. That has gone a long way to increasing our capacity,” said Glovier. “We recruited an engineer to focus on improvement and he’s recently qualified Six-Sigma black belt and we expect he will be putting his knowledge to good use next year, helping us to improve our output further.
Our people now work twelve hour shifts, three days one week and four the next. We close for two days at Christmas, two at New Year for inventory, one day at Thanksgiving and another at Labor Day. Other than that, we’re working just as hard as we can. We’ve doubled our output with the same people and we’re proud of the lives we’ve helped to save.”