Celebrating
Hespeler business marks century of cutting-edge manufacturing
CAMBRIDGE — A Hespeler business is celebrating a century of manufacturing cutting-edge products.
It’s true that technology is playing an ever-increasing role in the ways in which Taylor Tool does business. But the company, formally named J.A.M. Taylor Tool Co. Ltd., has literally been in the cutting-edge business since its inception in 1918 as a distributor and manufacturer of cutting tools like taps, reamers and dies.
Much of the work is customized and engineered specifically for clients in a variety of industries ranging from automotive and plumbing to aerospace and defence.
“We’re really broad-ranging,” says vice-president Todd Hinde. “We’re not necessarily tied into one manufacturing core group. It’s paid off for us to be extremely diverse.”
The Goebel Avenue business does have a sizeable inventory of products on hand to meet customer demand, but it’s moved more toward customization over the years, Hinde says.
He represents the fourth generation to carry on the family business started by his great-grandfather a century ago and headed today by his father, John. “I think it’s quite incredible,” Hinde says. “I feel very honoured and privileged to be part of a company that’s 100 years old.”
His own association with the business began as a summer job. “I would have started working on the machines when I was probably 13 or 14,” he says. After attending Wilfrid Laurier University and working elsewhere, he returned to Taylor Tool about 20 years ago.
Back in 1918, his great-grandfather, J.A.M. Taylor, resigned from a cutting tool distributor in Toronto to establish his own eponymous business in the city, distributing and selling cutting tools as an agent for companies in Britain and the United States.
In 1940, the company began manufacturing tools and expanded its operations to Preston. Demand for the Canadian war effort helped prompt a move to a larger facility in Galt just a year later. By the 1960s, Taylor Tool had added metric sizes to the traditional imperial, and purchased the Goebel Avenue lot to
build a new home.
In 1986, the company relocated its head office in Toronto to the Hespeler site, bringing everything under one roof. A series of expansions in recent decades grew the facility to about 30,000 square feet.
“If somebody had a crystal ball, they couldn’t have picked a better location,” Hinde says. They’re close to a lot of key markets, and have excellent logistical support in the area.
The manufacturing floor speaks to the ways in which technology has changed the way the company works. Older workhorse machines share space with computerized equipment that has enhanced precision and accuracy. Powerful, and at times proprietary, software oversees company financials, manages its bar coded inventory and provides real-time quotations to customers. Research and development fuels constant improvement.
“I couldn’t imagine the routing and processes and procedures my grandfather and great-grandfather would have had in place,” Hinde says. “Technology has leaped forward in tremendous ways.”
Staffing levels fluctuate, but tend to run around 25 to 30 people, Hinde says. While the company has worked with co-op students from local post-secondary institutions like Conestoga College, Hinde says it’s been a challenge in general to find available skilled trades.
“We’ve got to find some more youthful associates to bring in,” he says, adding they tend to approach things in more of an innovative way. “It’s that injection of different perspectives.”
As Taylor Tool heads into its second century in business, the company has set its sights on expanding its reach.
Most of its products today are destined for North American clients, under the Taylor Tool brand and through private label manufacturing. American customers represent about 40 per cent of the business, and that figure is growing, Hinde says.
But he’d like to see a greater global presence as well. “It’s very important to be diverse, especially in today’s global economy,” he says. “We certainly have to be reactive to whatever occurs in the global environment.”