Sitting in a conference room seemingly smaller than an interrogation room on Law & Order, Gary Swanson (pictured at left) drags his hands across his face, obviously distressed by the memory of the challenges his company has faced.
A few years ago, Thermotion was at a crossroads. It had lost a vast majority of its business, and the competition was beating the pistons out of the Mentor-based company Swanson had been president of since 1987.
But Swanson never gave up. He and other company executives interviewed current, past and potential customers to figure out why Thermotion’s finger-long actuators, which open and close products such as refrigerator door ice dispensers, were not measuring up.
What they discovered was an evil trinity of shortcomings: Thermotion’s products consumed more power, didn’t last as long and recovered much slower than competitive devices.
“Our customers found that to be unacceptable,” Swanson says.
To solve these problems, Thermotion met with MAGNET, Cleveland’s 25-year-old Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network. The nonprofit’s product design and development team served as part of Thermotion’s engineering team and added a new set of eyes.
After a daylong brainstorming session, they came up with several ideas. And for the next year, Thermotion experimented with combinations of components, spoke with vendors and suppliers about costs, and consulted customers again for feedback.
The result? A new thermal magnetic actuator that has fewer parts and requires less space than competitive devices, according to MAGNET engineer Mike Pintz, who’s been with the nonprofit for 20 years.
“Our efficiency has gone from drawing 18 to 20 watts down to less than one watt, so we’ve taken a lot of energy out of this thing,” Swanson says. “Our life expectancy has gone up tenfold.”
A problem with slow response times when the device is turned off and on was fixed as well. “Instead of taking several minutes to come back, it essentially comes back instantaneously.”
Thermotion had made all the fixes its customers had asked for and is nearing full production of the new product.
That’s good news for customers like Walton Hills’ Young Regulator Co., an 80-year-old company that installs Thermotion’s actuators in its HVAC systems in schools, condos, prisons, casinos and hotels.
Young Regulator president Michael McGuigan has been buying Thermotion’s products for years and supported Swanson even during his slump. Thermotion is local, he says, and Swanson dons different hats — including engineering and customer service — to keep customers happy. “They make a nice product,” McGuigan says.
Swanson, who started with Thermotion as its sales and marketing director, has been out visiting customers to tout his new product. “Engineers find it intriguing,” he says. “It’s a little bit of a toy for them to play with.”
That’s made his sales pitch pretty simple. “It’s really easy to call a guy that you haven’t talked to in five years and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got some new developments, would you like to take a look at them?’ ”
That interest has helped Thermotion reclaim “probably a third” of the customers it had at its peak. But, adds Swanson, “obviously, we’re trying to rebuild that now.”