Team Mosley

May/June 1993 

Here's how one manufacturer has seen its progressive management style help to produce a flock of scrap processing equipment innovations.

BY JEFF BORSECNIK

Jeff Borsecnik is assistant editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.

Three gorillas just slipped off into the mists, several other critters are milling about (well, being milled), and the safari has begun ...

It's all happening at Mosley Machinery Co. (Waco, Texas), where the Safari Group—a committee of company employees charged with checking out workers' ideas for improving the company—is just one example of the firm's spirited team approach to manufacturing balers, shears, auto crushers, and other scrap processing equipment. The name Safari emerged from Mosley's menagerie of current products, begun two years ago with the Bulldog—a compact high-end two-ram baler for medium-volume processing—and now including the high-tech Gorilla line of balers, as well as the Badger, a small, sturdy baler absent bells and whistles for lower-volume processors on a budget.

The Safari Group was first established to pursue ideas drummed up at an all-employee meeting held last year. Explains Stephen E. Kingeter, Mosley's marketing and service manager: "We went to the employees and listed all their concerns and ideas on how we could make the company better. The Safari Group's job is to take those concerns, work through them, and execute them." The panel consists of several managers, who take turns serving for six months, plus recent employees of the month, each of whom sits on the committee for three months. There's one permanent member: Ray Newsom, Mosley's president. "That really helps because the employees sit right next to the president and they discuss the concerns and the challenges we face in the business," says Kingeter.

Team Management

Mosley's brand of teamwork extends to the company's key decision making as well. "We manage based on team buy-in and consensus," says Kingeter. "We get together daily as a group, all the key managers of the departments, and we make a lot of the strategic decisions of the company." Besides Newsom, this key group includes Vice President Michael Tryon, Chief Financial Officer Steve Darden, Kingeter, and the heads of the engineering, manufacturing, and purchasing departments. At these meetings, "we all get our say and there's a lot of communication," says Kingeter. "It's very hands-on and together rather than top-down." From one such session came the idea for the Safari Group.

Ensuring product quality is also the job of a committee. The Quality Committee, a panel of senior managers charged with establishing a comprehensive quality program for the company, inspects every machine produced. The team's members are held personally responsible for quality—in fact, their names and a toll-free phone number are put on a special plate attached to every machine before it's shipped. The committee also assigns an individual or team to review any procedure questioned by any employee as possibly detrimental to the company and responds with recommendations for change. The group is also pursuing for Mosley "ISO 9000" certification—an international quality standard.

Mosley also has an "Error-Free Committee," a creation of the Safari Group that functions as an internal propaganda ministry, promoting quality among employees. As part of this charge, the committee has begun sponsoring bimonthly slogan contests, posting winning sayings on hats, mugs, and other items it distributes. Kevin Meek, Mosley's service supervisor, composed the first winner—"If you take care of your customers, they will come back. If you take care of the product, it will not." Similar thoughts cheer on Mosley workers from walls all over the office, like "Never forget ... you are building the finest!"

These team programs sound very modern, very '90s, but what have they produced? "We've seen a dramatic improvement in the cycle time for manufacturing our balers and we've instituted several programs that have corrected a lot of drawing errors," says Kingeter. "The workers now have a suggestion form they fill out and we guarantee they will get a response by a certain time. That's helped our overall quality. We've also developed a lot of new design ideas and routines on how to better build the machines and better service them later."

Gorillas That Talk

Mosley's progressive management style is matched by an emphasis on the new and original in its products. The company's official motto is "ideas, innovation, invention," and the firm claims credit for many product innovations, including these

• Triple-compression baling. This baling method, developed decades ago but still used on Mosley's "TC" balers for ferrous and nonferrous materials, uses a lid to shear and compress scrap, determining the bale's first dimension. The main ram then presses from one side, establishing the second. A secondary ram finishes the bale.
• Bale separation and release doors on the same machine. The separation door is said to improve bale structural quality because it provides another complete rigid wall in the chamber to build the bale against and it eliminates contamination when changing materials baled because all scrap is kicked out of the chamber between bales. The patented release or "oversize" door, meanwhile, allows the user to densely pack each bale without fear of constipating the machine, Mosley says, because it can be moved back 7 inches after the bale is made to ease ejection. The company claims this results in consistently dense bales, savings in wire, and freedom from the time-consuming hassle of cutting out impacted bales. And the two features used together improve baler versatility, according to the firm.
• Balers that talk. Mosley's Gorilla baler can not only describe problems it's having through a series of alarms and displays, but can communicate via a modem and the telephone line with Mosley headquarters for more detailed diagnoses.
• "Ultimate" densifiers. The company says it invented the "ultimate" densifier, a specialized minibaler that delivers a 25- to 30-pound "biscuit," The Mosley densifier also boasts the firm's patented "Weigh-Magic" system, which reportedly ensures consistent weight of bales by pre-weighing the scrap.
• "Arc-cut" shears. Mosley's shears feature a bearing-mounted blade that swings to cut, rather than sliding on tracks, resulting in less friction, less wear, and 98-percent efficiency, says the firm, which holds a patent on the machine's arc-cutting geometry.
• Detachable follower plate. This baler feature enables the user to detach the main ram from its cylinder so it can be removed for maintenance and realignment.
• Self-aligning main ram. Kingeter explains: "As the baler rubs steel on steel in continual operation, there's wear points on the floor and on the bottom of the platen. Mosley has designed a self-aligning feature that allows the cylinder to move as the floor wears," resulting in less stress and longer life.

Such innovation is important in Mosley's business, says Kingeter, because customers are always "striving for better and more efficient ways to handle their operations. If you stand still the market will pass you by." To keep up with the market Mosley calls on its customer team to direct inventiveness by providing ideas for new products (such as the "shortfill processor"—a specialized machine that cuts, drains, and cleans partially filled aluminum and plastic containers in preparation for recycling, as well as additional features for and new versions of existing equipment. "The company's founder got started working off suggestions of customers, building products to suit them—and that's still the story today," says Kingeter. "Our customers told us we needed a smaller premium baler and we made the Bulldog. Then we were told we needed a larger baler with a little larger hopper, so we made the Gorilla. Now we need an even smaller low-end baler, so we're introducing the Badger."

A Jungle out There

The Mosley story officially began on June 1, 1939, when Fred Mosley, capitalized to the tune of $538.15, opened his manufacturing company with no employees and one order for a baler. Mosley, formerly a "helper" at a Waco scrap processing operation, had begun experimenting in building balers a few year earlier as a way to improve the transport and handling of scrap metal. As word spread of his tinkering, scrap processors began to show interest, and Mosley opened up a shop to manufacture his balers. The company eventually branched out into other products, and, to date, has produced more than 1,300 machines—75 percent of which are said to still be in operation.

Although the scrap industry has long been the backbone of Mosley's customer list, the 1980s brought new demand for Mosley balers as landfill space in the Northeast grew scarce and expensive, prompting expanded use of baling to save on tipping fees and transport costs as waste was moved farther. This led to the development of Mosley's giant two-ram waste balers—the industry's largest and highest-volume machines, according to the company—some of which operate 24 hours a day. (The company recently finished an order for five of these monsters, which will process the municipal solid waste generated by Pusan, Korea, a city of more than 3 million people.) The 1980s also saw explosive growth in processing of household recyclables, which led the firm to further vary its product line, developing smaller specialty balers with a penetrating main ram to handle these "new" materials.

Today, the waste and postconsumer recycling markets represent about half of the company's sales, and have helped even out Mosley's business in recent years, as orders for large shears and balers for scrap metal and paper have slackened.

Still, Kingeter points out, these newer markets are not as vast as one might think, considering the public's demand for waste management and recycling solutions. Furthermore, the public sector—which frequently controls household waste and recycling operations—tends to be a particularly price-conscious buyer, excluding many of Mosley's top-of-the-line products. As part of its response, the company has continued to develop new products, such as the Badger baler, which represents a bit of a shift for Mosley. The new machine is designed to take on low-priced competitors head-on in the small two-ram baler market—while still maintaining Mosley's traditional emphasis on premium equipment.

With this kind of willingness to evolve, added to its team successes, the company has remained financially healthy in recent years. In fact, Kingeter notes, "Our statistics show that we grew in market share during the recession." But, he adds, "that's not to say we didn't feel the pain. Last year was a difficult year for the industry—and several of our competitors are experiencing the pains of the marketplace. We've been fortunate in that we have a very strong parent company that helps us through those times." (In 1975, Mosley Machinery was purchased by Elcor Corp. [Dallas], a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange and known for its Elk fiberglass shingles and its stable of promising industrial subsidiaries.)

On the Verge

Mosley has begun 1993 "with a good bang," says Kingeter, adding, "I feel that the economic conditions will favor our industry, especially with the new presidential administration." He explains: "I think the market is on the verge of exploding because a lot of the factors that define it are driven by legislation, and environmental legislation as a whole will increase under the Clinton administration," stimulating businesses that serve environmental needs. Kingeter also sees promise in Clinton 's announced intentions to restore the investment tax credit and ease banking regulations stiffened following the savings and loan crisis that made it tougher for buyers to qualify for credit.

Looking even beyond this positive prognosis, Kingeter predicts that "the environmental industry as a whole will became a mainstay of the U.S. and world economy," and suggests that a growing public "awareness that the time we have is finite really helps this industry." And Team Mosley plans to be positioned to take advantage of those growing opportunities. "I think Mosley has a lot of interesting projects on our `R&D' list and I think they are really going to be big bangs to come in the next two or three years—products that we're going to introduce that are going to really continue to set the industry standard for what we do."