October 2001 - Hebeler's new owners build on reputation (By Joe Iannarelli from Business First):

When John Coleman purchased Hebeler Corporation, he knew he had something good.

The manufacturing company with headquarters on Military Road in Tonawanda, NY came with a long-standing commitment to excellence instilled by founder Donald Hebeler.

" Don has a personal work ethic of not accepting finished products until they are perfect," Coleman said. "He walked that floor every day and knew everyone's first name. We had a firm foundation on which to build. We just brought in the tools. It became obvious to us by day one that Don had good workers".

The company was recently sold to Coleman, its CEO, and Kenneth Snyder, the president. Hebeler performs engineering solutions and manufacturing for the power generation and petrochemicals industries. In addition to the Military Road facility, founded in 1929, Hebeler has plants on Riverview Blvd. In Tonawanda and in Vicksburg, MS. The company employs 375; of those, 200 are in WNY.

Hebeler retained Coleman and Snyder in 1998 to provide management direction to exploit growth opportunities.

A continuous improvement program was implemented which translated to increased capacity, sales and profitability. These improvements resulted in a 45 percent increase in sales through 2000.

"We were very fortunate that the power generation market was increasing very rapidly concurrent with our involvement," Coleman said. "The company was successful prior to us getting there. They were having problems with taking care of that increase."

By introducing techniques like material requirement planning and the use of the Internet, Hebeler netted more than $60 million in sales this year.

"Small companies do things one way. Large companies require different tools," Coleman said. "We are doing more and more business electronically. Pieces of paper are virtually eliminated. Things look very strong through 2005. We are going to diversify our customer and product base."

That diversification relates to pursuing innovative products with identified markets.

"We can offer the floor space and engineering talents to put out a good product," Coleman said. "The inventor usually doesn't have these things. We will serve as the incubator to flesh out these products."

Hebeler Corporation
2000 Military Road
Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
Phone : 716.873.9300
Fax: 716.873.7538
E-mail: info@hebeler.com

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