How one metal fabricator in New England offers sense of place, purpose

With its new building in Middleton, Mass., Salem Metal Inc. finally has room to grow. SMI

In 2007 I walked the halls of a massive software conference that had a broad (or “horizontal,” in business-speak) focus, everything from supply chain management and trucking to retail to manufacturing. I was there for the manufacturing track. Looking around, I noticed the screens—the BlackBerries everywhere (this was pre-iPhone) and, especially, laptops. I’m betting some spent more time looking at screens than talking with each other. You didn’t see that back then, outside certain circles. Now, well, you know what happened.

All those screens gave me an odd feeling. People were there but not there. Yes, all those screens represented a triumph of efficiency. People could do their jobs from anywhere. But what was happening to the sense of place?

That unique sense of place sets a manufacturer apart from just about any other business in our modern economy. When I walk into a healthy fabricator, I feel this sense of engaged, friendly urgency. Other businesses occur in physical spaces: agriculture, warehousing, server farms, and the remaining brick-and-mortar retailers. But manufacturers make things. We hear about the digital manufacturing revolution, but no matter how “digital” manufacturing becomes, metal cannot be made out of ones and zeros. Fabricators require space, and the nature and location of that space can define a company’s culture.

Consider Salem Metal Inc. (SMI), a custom fabricator that recently moved from a small building in an older part of Middleton, Mass., to a sleek facility in a new industrial park nearby.

“I was approached in August 2016 by a local developer,” said Jason Vining, company president. That developer had toured SMI’s plant and witnessed some of the company’s challenges. It operated out of 30,000 square feet and in another 8,000 sq. ft. at a facility across the street, which it had purchased in 2014. “It was really a Band-Aid solution,” Vining recalled. Parts and people traversed back and forth for welding, inspection, and other manufacturing steps.

“The developer and I were joking around, and he asked me when I was going to move out of our older building and find a bigger place,” Vining said. “My initial reaction was, ‘You’re crazy. Do you know what it would take to move all the equipment, the air lines, and electrical work?’”

But then he was shown the plans for the new industrial park, and it didn’t take long for Vining to realize that the time was right. The company had grown steadily since the Great Recession. Its customer mix included a number of medical device customers that aren’t as sensitive to economic cycles. All that provided a steady foundation for future growth—but that growth required a new place. In his early 40s, Vining has at least two more decades to take the company to the next level, and he needed the right place to make that happen.

Earlier this year SMI completed its move into an expansive building where it uses 70,000 sq.-ft. of manufacturing space and a 6,500-sq. ft. second story, overlooking the floor, plus another 18,000 sq. ft. it’s leasing to another company.

The place has the hallmarks of modern manufacturing. It’s well-lit. It has ceilings high enough for material towers and large, open spaces with no walls. Even new employees can see where work is coming from and where it’s going. Raw stock flows to cutting, which flows to bending and other downstream processes, all in a classic U shape; no more scurrying across the street to get a part welded or inspected. The place also has a large machine shop that feeds work to sheet metal assemblies, though it also does a fair amount of machining-exclusive work.

Being part of a new industrial park, Vining and his team have met their neighbors, including an upholstery manufacturer, one so similar to SMI that they could have been cut from the same cloth (pun intended). They just happened to process different materials.

Earlier this year SMI completed its move into an expansive building where it uses 70,000 sq.-ft. of manufacturing space and a 6,500-sq. ft. second story, overlooking the floor, plus another 18,000 sq. ft. it’s leasing to another company. SMI

“It’s a family business like ours,” Vining said. “They almost seem to be running parallel to us.”

Like SMI, the fabric manufacturer moved from an older part of Middleton because it needed space to expand. Vining recalled touring his neighbor’s factory and seeing shelving not unlike their material handling towers, but for fabric instead of sheet metal. And the two companies have space to grow.

On SMI’s shop floor, you’ll see spaces left empty for a strategic reason, both in the office and in the shop. “If we look five, 10 years down the line, and we need space for another press brake, a robotic welding machine, or a punch/laser combo, whatever it might be, we can drop those machines right in place without having to reconfigure everything.”

On another level, those empty spaces imply forward-thinking. SMI has 70 employees, up from 45 in 2011. When it hires more people, managers will show them the plant, its layout, and those empty spaces that represent expansion and future changes. Those prospective employees might get a sense of the company’s culture, one that looks forward and not backward, and doesn’t shy away from change.

In manufacturing, a place tells everyone—employees, customers, prospects, the community—so much. Manufacturing places aren’t for vacant screen-staring, like coffee shops or conferences full of people who are there but really aren’t. They’re places where people don’t problem-solve with email or texts. They work together, face to face, to get the job done.