[MUSIC]
I'm Nick Sanazaro, and I'm President and
CEO of Meramec Instrument Transformer Company.
My dad used to work for a company in Washington,
Missouri that made transformers.
Their was company was purchased, and this was back in the 60s.
And they decided to drop a few lines.
So Dad asked them, he said, hey, do you mind if I take a shot at this and
see what I can do?
I've always said and believed that if you don't grow, you die.
So we needed more products to sell.
So, it was time for us to diversify.
>> We were trying to become the leader in the industry, as far as our product.
We needed a leg up, some assistance that would give us that.
And our local economic development director spoke to us about it.
And he said, I think I might have the organization that could help with that.
>> My name is Laura Lee Rose and I am a project manager with Missouri Enterprise.
Missouri Enterprise services the state of Missouri and all the manufacturers.
And I love my job because I get to do something different every single day and
I get to see how stuff is made, and that makes me extraordinarily happy.
>> I can tell you that we are the leader in the industry now, in our product.
I feel like that's a direct reflection of Missouri Enterprise,
because they did so much for us.
>> One project led to the,
I really believe it led to the complete transformation of the company.
Because not only the value stream mapping process we did allowed us to take some of
our processes, one of them which was taken almost two weeks to get through the office
to turn it into a process that 90% of the time took less than 24 hours.
In Missouri Enterprise is responsible for
a complete change in the philosophy of doing business.
The way we think of things, the way we manufacture, how do we do this better?
>> I got to work with Brad for a supply chain,
where we used some STMEP tools, for the total cost of ownership.
The idea was if they wanted to help their suppliers keep buying from them,
instead, they were trying to help them understand
the additional costs from buying internationally or overseas.
And so, we were actually able to help them look at what the costs were, so
that they were able to help their suppliers justify buying from Merrimac,
instead of buying from China or India, or any other overseas companies.
>> What is the price if I buy from supplier A,
versus supplier supplier B, versus Meramec?
And so we really look at it, the cost of not doing business with Meramec.
>> Our sales have grown probably about 300% in the last 10 years, and
we had 85 employees, today we have 170.
Being a company the size we are, we can't have all the expertise that we need.
Missouri Enterprise has become that trusted advisor that we have to have,
and any small business has to have,
in order to be able to grow and do the things that any company needs to do.
They offer so many different areas of expertise that a small
company just can't afford to have our staff continuously.
They can bring any field of expertise and no matter what it is,
they're a great group to work with.
>> One of the things I love about Missouri is they are small towns like this.
I think that manufacturing is the heart of many small towns.
>> I work with a wonderful group of people who are really looking to build for
the future.
We know we have a great responsibility for the community and for the industry.
And we feel that we're fulfilling that and really trying to further that.
It's a lot of fun.
>> Choose a career in manufacturing,
it doesn't have to be just building something.
We have to have accountants, we have to have HR people, we have to have engineers,
we have to have IT people.
We have to have programmers.
We have to have supervisors.
We have to have maintenance people.
There are a lot of jobs involved in manufacturing.
One of the things that I started,
something dad taught me, make sure you do that job the best that you can.
>> We actually make money here.
We build transformers.
There's a real satisfaction that you get from seeing the pieces of raw material
come in and then you see something go out the door and you go, that looks good.
[MUSIC]