Whatley says one area where he’s really benefitted is though his long-time commitment to LEAN Manufacturing, a process based on the Toyota Production System that reduces process variations while keeping costs down and production up.

Even though his volume grew by 30 percent in 2011, thanks mainly to one large project, he was able to do the work with the same 15-16 people he’s employed for several years.

“We actually had about 20-percent-fewer man hours than the year before,” he says. “The experience with what we had started back before the recession kicked in, and we did it without a lot of overtime.”

Looking ahead, Whatley believes he can keep his 2012 volume at the 2011 figure. He’s confident enough in that number and the value of the euro that he’s thinking this year may be the time to buy a new CNC machine.

“We just hit 10,000 hours on our current CNC machine,” he says. “The machine is still good, but we’re starting to have higher repair bills. The speed and features on the new ones are actually kind of exciting. We may even get a double table.”

And, he says he’ll devote more time to figuring out what people are doing on the Internet and where Morningstar should fit in that mix.

“I don’t want to get into a price war with people, but we need to make it more interactive and measure the results,” he says. “We’ve never done that before, but it’s a pretty important thing to pay attention to.”

Read the original Stone People profile of Morningstar (February 2008)

IMPROVING THE FLOW

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – At first glance, it’d be easy to question David Motyl’s sanity.

Click photo to enlargeThere aren’t a lot of other good reasons to explain buying a business in a new industry in a recession, but Motyl did just that, taking over the Cortland, N.Y.-based Wilbedone Inc., from previous owner Tom Beames three years ago. It hasn’t been easy, but now with a new plant, new products and more people, the renamed Stone Central seems to be thriving.

Motyl’s initial knowledge of Wilbedone came from his wife, who was impressed with the company’s fabrication equipment when she bought countertops for the couple’s new home. Then, when Motyl sold his previous business (in flooring materials), he found himself at loose ends.

“I decided golf wasn’t a good thing, and I hated the little boat I’d bought,” he says. “I went down to see this guy and saw the equipment and wandered around and to cut a long story short, I made Tom an offer and bought the business.”

Motyl says what initially attracted him to Wilbedone, besides the equipment, was the large margins countertops can produce.

“I hadn’t realized what a difficult business it is, and what a complicated business it is, and how tough it can be to survive in today’s market,” he admits. “It’s a seriously tough business and there are so many moving parts that to do things right is quite difficult.”

The business he bought produced Silestone® countertops – along with some solid-surfaces products – for designers, kitchen and bath shops, as well as Home Depot stores in upstate New York. Wilbedone did it all from a 10,000 ft2 shop running two shifts working six and seven days a week. ]

One of the first things the new owner did was take the company back to fabricating natural stone, a product Beames had abandoned when quartz surfaces came on the market.

“Tom and I talked about granite even before I bought the business, and it was clearly one of the opportunities sitting there,” says Motyl. “We started doing granite shortly after I arrived, and it was definitely a market opportunity for us.”

Helping drive the opportunity: Lowe’s Inc. Along with providing granite countertops to several of its Silestone customers, Stone Central was able to lock up the Lowe’s account for a number of stores in its area, and today about a third of the company’s output is in granite.

However, if nothing else it highlighted the physical shortcomings of Motyl’s purchase. Along with the limited space, the new owner learned that a lot of the output still required hand-finishing. and the building’s ceilings weren’t high enough to allow the use of a crane system to move material.

“As the volume built, we were having more and more problems actually moving things around safely,” he says.