Employees of Stoneridge, Inc. and their families enjoyed the company’s first open house in approximately 10 years on Sunday celebrating their successes and highlighting their work. The company’s most recent innovation is a soot sensor for diesel engines.
“Our customers expect no defects: We have only three to four defects per million. We’re right there in being world class,” stated Operations Manager Mark Monus.
Stoneridge has produced electrical and electronic components for automotive and heavy trucks for more than 40 years and employs approximately 750 people.
“We make control devices here at this location: most of your dashboard components, your emission sensors. We make sensor switches. We pretty much serve all of the automotive industry with the exception of Honda,” stated Human Resources Manager Christina Simpkins.
“One thing that is unique about our facility,” she continued, “is that we’re not just a manufacturing facility. A lot of places just have manufacturing; we have our design center here. A lot of the jobs here are highly technical. ”
“The majority of people, if you ask them what Stoneridge is, they have no idea. We’re known in the community as Hi-Stat; and we are one of the larger employers in the area. We are very innovative. And we’ve had very good sales in October. This is kind of to reward our employees,” stated Simpkins.
Plant Manager Tom Morrell and has been with the company for more than 25 years. Morrell added, “Stoneridge makes sensor switches, actuators and celanoid switches at this division. Everything is under one roof: design, development, engineering; and we do have some simpler jobs, but some very high skilled jobs as well. A lot of the purpose of this [open house] is to try to get more of that out in the community. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much we do reach out globally. We ship to Asia and elsewhere overseas.”
Engineer Jeremy Barlow spent time showing visitors the production area of the new soot senor that Stoneridge developed. “Marketing saw that the government mandated limiting the level of soot in the exhaust steam. The sensor has been two to three years in development here.”
John Hart in Advanced Development said, “All of the different countries have their own tail pipe regulations,” he explained, “North America is EPA, Europe is the EU, Japan has their own, the other countries usually adopt one of those three.
“But they’re all being rolled out differently. For diesel engines, the new standard that is going to be rolled out will actually be in the United States first in January 2016. They have to meet certain emissions standards for soot, which are going to make most of the OEMs require a soot senor because you have to verify that you’re not breaking the law, more or less. So it’s a new technology. Basically, the only things that measures soot are $50,000 to $100,000. So we had to build a sensor that met automotive costs that actually measures soot.”
Line Leader Becky Kochert of Lexington has worked for Stoneridge for a total of 32 years. “When I started here in 1982 there were only 7 people on third shift,” she observed, “Now there are over 100.”
“I love it here,” she added, “I like what I do. I worked retail for seven years; I’d never go back.”
Reggie Blubaugh of Bellville has worked for the company for 20 years. He noted, “We’ve got a lot of good people; it makes your job easier.”
Stoneridge, Inc. was founded in Warren, Ohio in 1965 by D.M. Draime to serve the automotive industry, and Draime remained on the board of directors until his death in 2006. In the following decades, Stoneridge acquired several automotive parts producers but the company’s 1992 acquisition of the Transportation Electronics Division of General Instruments was a marked starting parting point for their electronics specializaton.
After a number of strategic acquisitions, advancements, and completing its IPO on the New York Stock exchange, the company acquired Hi-Stat Manufacturing Co., Inc. in 1998. With plants in Lexington, Ohio and Sarasota, Florida, the supplier of vehicle sensor and switch products was the largest acquisition in Stoneridge’s history and crowned its electrical systems capabilities. Acquisitions and extended business relationships continued and reached Brazil, India, Scotland and most recently Germany, and placed a subsidiary in China.
“Everything is under one roof: design, development, engineering… I don’t think a lot of people realize how much we do reach out globally, stated Plant Manager Tom Morrell.
