Riding The Rising Tide In Hudson | Lincoln Tool takes a step into a brave new world
Just a couple of weeks ago, heavy rain and rising floodwaters threatened the Lincoln Tool & Machine Corp. building in Hudson.
James Ferrecchia, who founded the company 30 years ago, said water was within six inches of the facility’s main transformer as it wreaked havoc upon the neighborhood just east of downtown Hudson.
Ferrecchia said a submerged transformer would have brought Lincoln to a standstill. That would’ve been a real shame, because I wouldn’t have been able to see one of the most forward-thinking and innovative shops I’ve ever visited.
Capital Investment
Not only is Lincoln a family owned and operated machine shop, it can introduce other companies to the brave, really brave, new world that entrepreneurial manufacturers are exploring.
When Ferrecchia started the company, he had one machine and made components used in bottle handling systems.
But he was and is committed to changing with the times and opportunity and Lincoln now is a large job shop with clients in the defense industry, the medical device industry and even the recreation industry, for which it makes mountain bike components.
Like any manufacturer, Lincoln struggled with how to make enough parts to be profitable and how to deal with the heavy overhead involved with making all those parts.
A year and a half ago, the company put $1.1 million where its mouth is and bought a high production Mazak Palletech system that can be programmed to machine an infinite variety of parts at night, unsupervised. The robotic system is connected to two machines at Lincoln, but can be expanded at will, almost like a Lego set.
The robots can determine which machine is available and can run the next job on that machine, ad infinitum.
Working Together
The system is a marvel, and one of only two or three currently in use in Massachusetts, Scott Ferrecchia, the company’s vice president and James’ son, said.
And Lincoln gets some much appreciated help in the endeavor from the Pitbull Clamp Co. Inc. in Boylston. The Phillips family, which owns Pitbull and Phillips Precision, are cousins of the Ferrecchias.
With Pitbull clamps, Lincoln can maximize the amount of work it asks the Palletech system to do.
And that huge quantity of parts must be inspected, and a system developed by Steve Phillips at Pitbull makes the inspection system used by Lincoln completely modular, allowing a greater number of various parts to be inspected more quickly in order to keep up with all the work coming off the Palletech system.
The system has made Lincoln so efficient that it runs on 30 employees, six fewer than before the purchase of the system. It also allows the company to approach work differently.
“All of this,” Scott said, pointing to the older machines on one side of the facility, “is a breeding ground for this,” he said pointing to the new system.
In other words, the existing shop does development work for the new shop. It allows Lincoln to produce large volumes of parts “lights out, unattended, no cars in the parking lot,” Scott said.
All of this allows Lincoln to make exactly what it knows it can sell and to keep inventory, which Scott called “the bank that doesn’t pay you interest,” to a bare minimum.
“That’s truly the Toyota factor,” he said. “Now, I can give (customers) a high-quantity pricing at a low-quantity rate.”
Got news for our Industrial Strength column? E-mail WBJ Managing Editor Matthew L. Brown at mbrown@wbjournal.com
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