Nordam to hire 260

[MichaelC]

From Tulsa World

quote: The aerospace industry's recovery following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is nowhere more evident than at the Nordam Group, a privately held diversified Tulsa aviation manufacturer that is combing the country for 260 engineers and skilled assembly workers.

But Nordam isn't just hiring. It is laying the foundation for a new, leaner and more limber company and executive team that its officials say should be able to navigate future opportunities and uncertainties.

In the midst of an aerospace industry growth cycle that analysts believe could last from two to at least six years, Nordam executives have begun a three-year overhaul of computer, financial and product-planning systems to increase efficiencies and reduce costs and turnaround times.

"The primary question our customers ask is, 'How long will it take?' to get the product or component manufactured," said Nordam Chairman and CEO Ken Lackey. "Before, it wasn't easy to tell them. And we're working in a business serving some of the most sophisticated companies in the world."

Nordam's president and chief operating officer, John Uczekaj, said that with the $25 million overhaul of its information, engineering
and operational management systems, Nordam is seizing the future.

"It enables us to make decisions and plan much better than we were doing before," Uczekaj said. "This (new software) measures our capacity, our backlog and enables us to tell customers how soon we can meet their requirements.

"Soon we will have that down to a couple of minutes instead of a few days. Before, we had no way of looking at our capacity and measuring it against the schedule we had."

Lackey said Nordam had instituted lean manufacturing and continuous improvement philosophies at its factories, had consolidated its supply chain and was introducing Six Sigma, an industrial process that removes variability and unnecessary costs from operations.

"Six Sigma is a technique for problem solving and removing variability from various processes so you have constant repetition of high quality," he said. "The Japanese automotive industry has been a huge proponent of it."

Nordam's on-time deliveries averaged 40 percent to 50 percent before the company began using Six Sigma.

"Today, we're at 90 percent of on-time deliveries, and our goal is for 99 percent on-time deliveries," Uczekaj said.

Nordam, which operates several factories at the Cherokee Industrial Park and elsewhere in Tulsa, designs, certifies and manufactures business jet propulsion systems, nacelles and thrust reversers for the U.S. manufacturers Gulfstream and Cessna and the French firm Dassault.

Nordam also builds interior shells, custom cabinetry, radomes, cabin windows and wingtip lenses for commercial airliners as well as providing maintenance, repair and overhaul services to passenger airlines, military air units and air freight companies.

As of June 1, Nordam employed 1,900 people in Tulsa, an 8.4 percent increase in the past year, and 2,456 worldwide, a 9.3 percent increase.

In 2006, five years after the terrorist attacks in the United States and multiple management traumas at Nordam, the company is expected to post record revenues of $550 million, company executives said. Profits are forecast to double this year compared with those of 2005, they said.

Despite this prosperity, Nordam's executives and board members are planning for hard times.

Lackey said he would step down as the CEO at the end of the year, to be succeeded by Uczekaj. Lackey will remain the chairman of the board for the next two years, he said.

"Our board is very conscious of the succession planning process based on the crisis we had losing three key executives within a month in 2001," Lackey said. "Nordam basically was devastated. It had an organizational crisis at the same time we had an economic crisis."

In October 2001, a month after the terrorist attacks began to erode the U.S. aerospace industry, three Nordam executives and their friends flew to northwestern Quebec for a few days of caribou hunting.

One of the group's planes crashed on the return to the base camp, killing Nordam President and Chief Operating Officer Charles Ryan and James Pielsticker, the chairman and founder of Arrow Trucking Co. of Tulsa. Nordam's former co-owner Robin Siegfried was injured.

On the day of Ryan's funeral, Nordam's founder and CEO Ray H. Siegfried II was found to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a nerve disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The progressive, paralyzing neurological disease is usually fatal within five years of diagnosis, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Ray Siegfried, 62, died last October.

"We know the downside by not being prepared properly for succession planning when we lost Ray, Robin and Charlie within a month of each other," Lackey said. "We're trying to maintain a strong management team with management depth to ensure we always have backup for our critical people."

Ray (Tray) H. Siegfried III, Nordam's vice president of strategic growth and the founder's eldest son, said company executives were striving to build breadth and depth in their employees.

He referred to the plan to hire 260 engineers, aerostructures mechanics, tool makers, bonders and cabinet makers -- from entry level pay of $10 to $12 an hour to six-figure salaries -- in a suddenly hot job market.

"A big part of our job is getting the right people here," Tray Siegfried said. "And once you get them, you have to retain them."