MultiSource Manufacturing has become a force in precision machine work for a variety of industries since its start in 1998. The ISO and AS certified company has grown substantially over the years, in part by acquisitions of other companies. It now boasts three facilities in Minnesota and one Colorado, with more than 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and employing a total of approximately 300 people among the four locations. They are NIST 800-171 compliant, and follow DFARS, ITAR, and cybersecurity protocols.
The aerospace and defense area is a major focus for the company. Both Matt Galuska, the CEO, and Gabe Fleck, the Business Development Manager for Aerospace and Defense, use their extensive backgrounds in the industry to make MultiSource Manufacturing a valuable partner for their customers in both military and civilian settings. Even though both have only been with MultiSource for less than a year, they are successfully steering the company into stronger relationships with clients. Fleck says, “We have shifted focus and really been able to help a lot of companies get their feet off the ground when it comes to developing new and upcoming technologies, providing a lot of engineering and manufacturability support. We’re not just making a piece for them, but we’re giving them the support they need to understand if a part can be done better, or be run for less expense, based upon our feedback. It’s a full-blown effort to partner that we can bring somebody all the way through that design phase, all the way through the prototype and development stage, and be able to help them out all the way through production, whether it’s a hundred parts a year, or all the way up to a hundred thousand a year.”
“What differentiates us is our ability to team. Everybody’s got machines, but not everybody has the willingness and ability to engage very early on technically, to understand the intent of the design, and to really help. What we aim to be is a manufacturing service provider. Cutting metal is kind of the last step in the process, but the first part is making sure we can allow our customers to be successful. They are the experts in whatever process they’re trying to achieve, whether it’s commercial aviation, space satellites, or surgery. What we are the experts in is making sure that they can realize their vision. We have another level of expertise that we’ve developed over the years that’s specific to manufacturing and production.”
Fleck adds, “We’re a great balance of old school mentality when it comes to machining, but also new school efforts in technologies. There’s a reason we have evolved the way we have, and it’s because we’ve kept up with the technologies that are in demand for these products to be developed.”
The medical device industry is also an important part of MultiSource Manufacturing’s customer base, and here again, the partnership with clients for product development plays a large role in client satisfaction.
For processes that the company needs to outsource, they maintain a strong network of partners able to meet the quality, as well as turnaround, necessary to provide customers with the high standards expected from MultiSource Manufacturing. As the CEO says, “Speed is important. I haven’t found a customer yet who says, ‘yeah, take as much time as you need to get this done.'”
With customers located all across the country, the company’s traditional marketing efforts, like phone calls, emails, and trade show exposure, have proven successful, and allowed them to maintain steady growth. Efficiency, by “doing more with less” through adoption of automated processes, has allowed that growth with a fairly stable employee count. While MultiSource has very strong employee retention, when they do need to hire, they generally find a sizable skilled workforce in both the Minneapolis and Denver areas, with both aerospace and medical backgrounds.
In addition to the wide size range of production runs, Multisource also works with a very wide range of materials, although steel and aluminum are dominant, with the overwhelming majority being domestically sourced. The company has found both supply and pricing to be stable, and neither has caused many issues for them.
Looking toward the future, the company feels the outlook for aerospace and defense is strong, and advanced medical and surgical equipment is a huge and growing area. Continued implementation of automation will allow large scale production efficiency, with advanced levels of technical capability, eliminating the need for people loading and unloading parts on machines.
Galuska says, “We are trying really hard to be a customer’s ‘go to’ when they have hard manufacturing problems to solve. If we can become that, the growth will happen. Pretty much every single time where we can engage technically with a customer, and consult, and iterate with them, it leads to a lasting customer relationship.” Whereas the work that comes to them out of low bids or fast turnaround doesn’t yield the same kind of loyalty and long-term relationships.
He continues, “The last five years or so have been scaling up through process and innovation. We’ve actually been consolidating a lot of things. Instead of having five or six businesses essentially running independently, we’re acting like one business, and putting a lot of our management attention into best in class processes, engineering processes, new product introduction processes, and business development processes, and we’re acting as one, more integrated team. There are more opportunities than challenges that we see. The markets are growing. Our customers are some of the best businesses in the world, so we’re looking forward to the future.”
