CBJ's Largest Privately Held Companies 2018

World Class Industries
7
After hitting a soft patch during the downturn in the
farm economy, World Class Industries in Hiawatha is
getting back to the kind of growth that has made it
one of the Corridor’s largest privately held companies.
The Hiawatha-based supply chain specialist provides
contract management and supply chain consolidation
services to leading equipment manufacturers including
Deere & Co., Caterpillar, CNH and Bobcat. It’s been focused on
providing more value and services to existing customers, a strategy
that has allowed it to tap the trend toward manufacturers
building deeper relationships
with fewer suppliers.
“Parts in – assemblies out,”
is a simple shorthand for what
World Class Industries (WCI)
does, President Brent Cobb
said. The company’s business
peaked in 2013, then slowed
as the decline in ag commodity
prices cut deeply into farm
incomes, resulting in fewer
orders from customers like
Deere and CNH. That spurred
the company to pursue other
sectors for growth, including
BRENT COBB
PRESIDENT
the aviation and aerospace
industries.
Mr. Cobb said the decline
hit a bottom in 2016, and
finally showed a rebound effect this year. Employment is up
about 50 full-time equivalent positions from the market bottom
and revenue has risen to $172.2 million.
World Class Industries is building its eighth facility next to
a factory where Deere builds Family Compact Utility Tractors
in Grovetown, Georgia, and is also moving to improved facilities
in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and Des Moines. The new
50,000-square-foot facility in Grovetown, expected to open this
year, will place WCI in an entirely new region, and allow the
company to better service equipment manufacturers located in
the southeast.
“This year, we’re half market-driven and half new projects,”
Mr. Cobb said.
A major undercurrent
in the manufacturing
industry that
drives WCI’s business
is product complexity.
Customer preferences
are driving more complex
assemblies and
systems. As a result,
manufacturers prefer
to have certain components
preassembled
to avoid bogging down
lines at their main assembly
plants.
The rebounding ag
market has also helped
drive demand. Mr.
Cobb said agricultural
THE TEAM
EXECUTIVE TEAM
Brent Cobb, President
Sandy Kaloupek, Vice President
Patrick Patterson, Director of
Operations
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Brent Cobb
Michael Rosberg
James Schrempf
Kevin Code
SUPPORT TEAM
Bradley & Riley PC
Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust
CliftonLarsonAllen
producers continued
to expand the size of
their operations even during the downturn, and appear to be
buying new equipment because reliability is even more critical
during key harvest and planting seasons due to the acreage at
stake. Deere and Caterpillar have both issued upbeat sales forecasts
for 2018, which bodes well for WCI.
Adding customer value is always key for the roughly 140
WCI employees and about 25 temporary employees. The company’s
investments in its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
purchasing system in particular have helped drive down procurement
prices for clients, as the company can look for advantageous
price breaks and buy certain commodities in bulk.
“So instead of having someone go part by part and deciding
what we want to do, we’re having that be more algorithm-driven,
and having those orders go out automatically and using some of
those same resources,” Mr. Cobb previously told the CBJ.
Although the company’s work is anything but simple, the
work it does makes things easier for equipment manufacturers.
“We like to say, ‘We simplify supply chain,’” Mr. Cobb said.
- Dave DeWitte
“This year, we’re half
market-driven and half
new projects.”
- BRENT COBB
18 CBJ’S LARGEST PRIVATELY HELD COMPANIES 2018