Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 21, 1995 TAG: 9506210089
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
The prevailing wisdom has been that high-tech machinery increases efficiency but means fewer workers are needed.
Well, that's true even at Jefferson Mills, up to a point. Fewer employees would be needed, if the company didn't keep increasing its customers and production.
But it has. And that's why employment keeps going up, even as the plant adds more sophisticated technology to its production line.
Since six Jefferson Mills employees got together in 1991 and bought the Pulaski facility from its former owners, they have added $3.6 million worth of new equipment to stay competitive in the yarn-processing business.
But they also have added employees, some 70 in the last three years for a total of about 400 working in three, eight-hour shifts that keep production going around-the-clock.
The company has no employee turnover problem.
Forty percent of the workers have been at Jefferson Mills for more than 20 years, and occasionally there will be celebrations for employees who hit the 50-year mark.
Recently, President David Spangler showed visiting state Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo, R-Fincastle, around one of the company's three block-size buildings. "We put these four in last fall. These two we put in last week," he said, pointing to the plant's new yarn processing machines. "We've got four more going in here. ... Then we're going to have to start taking something out."
Mechanical breakdowns are avoided through a program of scheduled maintenance.
"Any time you come in this plant, you'll never see all the machines working," said Denny Pace, vice president for manufacturing, technological sales and quality control.
"Any time you run a continuous operation with machines, you've got two choices," he said. "You let them come down when they want to come down, or you bring them down when you want them down. ... What you're really talking about is planning."
Jefferson Mills opened in 1938, and occupies 350,000 square feet of building space on 7.4 acres in downtown Pulaski. It processes yarn so that the material can be used by other manufacturers of hosiery.
It keeps an inventory of about two weeks worth of material, Pace said. "You talk about living on the edge." Its warehouse space covers about 52,000 square feet.
"And if it gets too full," Spangler said, "we sell some more."
The company has more than 300 customers for its processed yarn, not only in the United States but places such as China, Mexico and Europe. But no single customer gets more than 8 percent of the company's production, so the fortunes of one customer have little effect on Jefferson Mills as the supplier.
The new processing machines are coming from France and other sources outside this country. "The United States gave up the textile machine industry," Pace said. "They lulled themselves to sleep and the world passed them by."
Modernizing the equipment and expanding the customers have kept the company making a profit each year, something it had not done for a decade before the new owners took over.
"And it's going to be here another 50 years," Spangler declared.
by CNB