Trostel appoints new leader

WHITEWATER, Wis.—Trostel Ltd. has appointed David Bouton as its new president and CEO.

Bouton takes over for Steve Dyer, who held the position since May 2013. Trostel said Dyer left the firm to pursue other opportunities.

Bouton's return to the rubber industry brings his career to full circle. He began with DuPont in 1980 as a mechanical engineer out of Ohio State University. During his 24-year career with the firm, he held various positions in manufacturing, busi-ness management and ran a business unit in Asia for several years before he moved to Americhem in 2004. He held that post until 2013, serving as managing partner of consulting firm InnovaNet.

In an interview following a tour and continuous improvement presentation provided to members of the Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers at the firm's Whitewater facility, Bouton said he looks to build on what he sees as a solid foundation at Trostel.

“For us to grow, we've got to go out there and find customers where we can add value. You need a lot of specific capability and a lot of good targeting. We have a lot of application-based market development people,” he said.

“Trostel has a great heritage. Being in business for more than 65 years, it has a solid foundation. We're not about to re-invent the wheel.

“My vision and the vision of our team are to build off of that great heritage and solid foundation to solve differentiated problems in the marketplace on both the mixing and molding side of the business.”

Trostel consists of two units—its elastomer compounding division and molding division, which produces seals and other molded parts for a variety of industries.

The firm's Whitewater operation supports its compounding business, while facilities in Reynosa, Mexico; McAllen, Texas; and Lake Geneva, Wis.—also its corporate headquarters—support the molding side.

Trostel focuses on higher end markets, dealing primarily with fluoroelastomers. Whitewater Sales Manager Mike Szymborski said Trostel doesn't want to focus on low-end commodities; rather the company wants to focus strategically on high value materials.

Bouton said Trostel is active in a variety of industries, most notably automotive. The firm also operates in the appliance, building and construction, and oil and gas sectors.

Szymborski said Trostel firewalls its molding and mixing businesses to prevent confidentiality situations, but it still is a challenge at times to convince companies competing with Trostel's molding business to do business with it as a compounder.

“It's been a tough sell over these last three years to get competitors on the molding side to get Trostel to mix their compound,” Szymborski said.

“Their first inclination is "Why would I have you mix my rubber?' It's tough to prove that to somebody because you have to give them a shot, but once we earn the trust we keep it.”

Bouton has noticed growth on the molding side of the business, both from a renewed push from customers who want their products made in the U.S. and from internal productivity enhancements.

“We've found a lot of customers that value the made in the USA aspect, which is giving us a lot of growth with our Lake Geneva business,” Bouton said.

“Traditionally the majority of our volume from our mixing business was used internally. As we continued to focus on productivity and enhancements, we have found capacity to develop an external sales business.

“Part of it was learning about two requirements of our external customer. Our internal molding customer would only have a handful of products.”

One of the ways Trostel has improved is installing a process driven approach. Greg Vassmer, chief technology and quality officer, was one of the driving forces behind this push.

Instead of processing the same part in different ways—especially on the molding side—Trostel standardized its processes throughout its facilities to enhance productivity.

Whitewater Quality Manager Ram Sukumar, who joined the company in 2006, said the Whitewater operation has set a number of goals for 2015. It aims to have non conformances at 158 per year, scrap at 0.5 percent, 83 percent availability and overall equipment efficiency of 81.5 percent.

Sukumar said all metrics are better than the numbers listed.

Customer complaints have been a major focus since 2008, when the firm recorded 122. That number has decreased every year to 56 in 2014. Whitewater stood at 25 through July, which puts it on target to beat its goal of 48. Sales have doubled during that same span.

“The best way to add capacity is to get more out of your existing footprint. We've got the footprint to the point where we can go ahead and add capacity when we need it,” Bouton said.

The firm had already started the process about 18 months ago when it increased the facility at Whitewater to 36,000 square feet and 50 employees with a 9,000-sq.-ft. addition. It also modernized its Lake Geneva plant at the time by installing a 45,000-sq.ft. expansion at the same time.

“Our business has been growing double digits since 2010,” Bouton said. “We've been able to do that with the existing equipment that we have, but the facility expansion allows us to add additional capacity when we need it.

“We've been looking at options within our three-year strategic planning process as far as when would be the right time to add new capacity.”