Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401280285
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: EC-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Crouse-Hinds, a maker of electrical products, announced in September that it was bringing its distribution center to the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology.
Now the company, based in Syracuse, N.Y., already has 55 employees on the job and plans to add 100 more by the end of the year.
In addition to opening the distribution center, Crouse-Hinds announced in November it would bring some assembly jobs to Roanoke from plants in Syracuse and Chicago.
The company moved into a 326,000-square-foot building that formerly was occupied by Gardner-Denver, a maker of heavy construction equipment.
Both companies were divisions of Cooper Industries, a Houston-based manufacturer of electrical products, power equipment, automotive products and petroleum and industrial equipment.
Cooper sold its Gardner-Denver unit in 1992 to Redrill Inc., which moved the Roanoke operation to Sherman, Texas. Cooper had planned to sell the Roanoke building, the first built in the industrial park, before Crouse-Hinds decided to move its operations there.
About half of the Roanoke building is being used for warehousing and shipping. It should be fully occupied when assembly operations are transferred, said Steve Liedtke, manager of the Roanoke operation.
The building can handle products from the division's various factories, with room for expansion, Liedtke said.
The company plans to install automated equipment and computer technology by June.
The distribution center will use bar codes and computer-controlled warehouse management systems that will provide greater benefits to Crouse-Hinds distributors already profiting from electronic data interchange with the company, Liedtke said.
The company centralized its distribution and warehousing operations in Roanoke because the city's location near transportation hubs will cut delivery time to customers by one to three days.
The Roanoke facility offers the company's distributors a "one-stop shop" for the division's products, reducing the distributors' handling and transaction costs in addition to cutting delivery times, Liedtke said.
"In today's competitive market, we must reduce the overall costs of our products to our customers and improve our delivery response time," Crouse-Hinds President Bill Tuck said when announcing the move to Roanoke.
Crouse-Hinds manufactures electrical fittings, receptacles, industrial lighting, controls and molded electrical products designed for use in harsh industrial and construction environments.
The company designs, makes and sells more than 100,000 electrical products for secondary power distribution and lighting systems worldwide.
Crouse-Hinds has manufacturing facilities in six U.S. states and four foreign countries, with approximately 3,500 employees worldwide.
The company does not report its revenues separate from those of its parent Cooper Industries, which had 1993 sales of $6.2 billion.
\ COOPER INDUSTRIES INC.\ A NEW NAME\ \ The company: Cooper is a diversified maker of electrical products, electrical power equipment, tools and hardware, automotive products and equipment for industry and petroleum exploration.
\ Headquarters: Houston.
\ Roanoke Valley operations: Last September Cooper decided to relocate to a building in the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology a warehousing and manufacturing operation of its Syracuse, N.Y.-based Crouse-Hinds division. The building had housed the Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction division, which Cooper sold. Crouse-Hinds makes industrial lighting and switches.
by CNB