Business View Magazine | July 2019

391 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 Assurance, Human Resources, and financial requirements centrally controlled. “We don’t have any sales or marketing,” he notes. “We have very few customers, and each manufacturing division is either industry or customer-focused. Each section manager is almost like a president of that division, and they focus, typically, on one or two customers. So, we have one person who looks after power generation for our nuclear customers; one looks after injection molds; one looks after aerospace, etc.. They’re very focused on their customers’ needs, specifically, and not worried about the other industries. The nuclear industry contracts take years; it’s probably a ten-year opportunity between our facility and Bruce Power. For injection molding, the contracts are days; so it’s a whole different dynamic. So, our growth is solely dependent on the customer’s growth. Our strategy has always been to try to look for an industry leader and then partner with them. For injection molding, we have one main customer for over forty years. In medical, we’ve done work with one company for almost 20 years, and that’s allowed that section to grow - just out of that one customer.” BC Instruments has a global footprint for its products, shipping them as far away as Europe and China. It also has a sister company in India. “BC Instruments, Private Ltd. just celebrated its 15th anniversary,” Roger states. “We started with just three people in India and now we have another 100 people in that location. That’s run as a separate company and it’s a similar strategy, mission, and vision – very focused on meeting customer needs. The reason we started that was because a number of our customers had become international and it was becoming difficult to support them from this location, when we considered shipping delays, and so on.” Regarding the competition, Roger admits there’s a lot, but adds that BC Instruments has certain advantages over the rest of the industry. “It’s not that difficult to get into machining,” he says. “Equipment is readily available and it’s easy to get financing. So, we have competitors who have small shops with a couple of people and we have competitors, our size, with 150-200 people. But, we try to make life a bit easier for the customer. We aren’t just the standard milling and turning; we do higher complexity with difficult materials. We do laser welding; we do electron beam welding in-house; we’ve added a clean room; we’ve added an ultrasonic machine for fired ceramics; we put a 3D printer in to do model prove-outs and tooling; we’ve added robotic cells to some of our equipment to increase efficiency; we’ve tried to stay current with vision systems for inspection; and we’re trying to make ourselves a more efficient supplier for some of our customers who would have needed to go to multiple locations, to come to our shop. On site, we have a sister company that does non-destructive testing, processing, anodizing, Chem Film, plating, Tie Cad - things like that. So, on our main campus here in Schomberg, it makes it easier for the customer BC INSTRUMENTS