Transformers of Merced: On the cutting edge of industry

On three acres just off south Highway 59 sits a business that hires locally, competes globally and is all set to explode. Its giant machines are welded and molded by 55 workers any Japanese company would be proud to put on its own assembly line. Slabs and plates and bars of steel become dynamic engines in the ag food chain.

Laird Manufacturing has been around since 1937, founded as a welding and repair shop. In 1989, with new blood in its ranks, it began making, selling and distributing equipment for the cattle feeding industry -- beef and dairy.

Today, Laird has become one of the major players in its field -- not just in the United States, but worldwide. Aside from a hiccup in 2009, sales have grown 15 percent to 20 percent a year for the company now owned by Isaac Isakow and Lee Cansler.

Isakow, a transplanted South African who still looks like the rugby player he once was, handles marketing. Cansler, who with three others bought in 1989 what was called Laird Welding and Manufacturing Works, handles the production side.

The energy that courses through the sales and parts office and the factory behind it sparks like the ice-blue flame of the welding torches wielded by dozens of craftsmen at work. What they make has wound up in Mexico, Canada, Japan, Holland, South Africa and all across the American West.

With neighbor and rival Kirby Mfg. Inc., founded in 1946, also performing well, Merced benefits from two strong manufacturing firms within city limits.

And the best part? Laird is expanding. The company has acquired 30-plus acres just down the highway and hopes to break ground on a 36,000-square-foot factory within a year or so. "It will give us even more efficiencies to give us greater control of our costs," Isakow said.

He and Cansler thought about other sites out of state but decided to stay in Merced. "This is home," said Isakow, who met his wife here; they have three children.

For a company that caters to mankind's oldest industry -- agriculture -- Laird operates on principles straight out of 21st century Nagoya. Take kanban, the fabled just-in-time inventory system that Toyota popularized and exported along with millions of vehicles. The theory is that the less space and time taken up by your stockpile, the faster you can make widgets without paying as much to store the parts.

At Laird, the widgets form the steel frames of vehicles that resemble huge Conestoga wagons from frontier days. These boxes -- some on trucks, some as trailers -- will be filled with cattle feed for ranchers and dairymen. It's no coincidence that as both beef ranches and dairy farms have grown fewer and larger, Laird has pivoted to provide more efficient vehicles to feed all those cows.

In recent years, Laird has turned upside down -- to about 90 percent vertical feed mixers and 10 percent horizontal -- from just the opposite a decade ago. That's because feed is the single-most expensive part of raising a cow. And the closer eye the rancher or dairyman can keep on the feed supply, the better it is for his bottom line. Unlike manure spreaders or combines, feed mixers must work 24/7 because that's when cows eat. A cattleman can use a feeder up to 7,000 hours a year.

As with Al Davis' Oakland Raiders in the '70s, vertical dominates. The name of the game today is vertical augers with cutting knives bolted to them to dice silage, hay and other feed -- up to 50,000 pounds in one load. The augers, which resemble giant screws with razor edges, used to lie parallel to the ground as they sliced up feed. Now, they stand upright in the rig.

Today, many of Laird's mixers contain an electronic probe that lets the driver know how much feed is left in the huge box. The inside of one of Laird's feed mixers looks like a jet cockpit, but all the bells and whistles simplify the operator's job.

"It gives you a very accurate feeling," said Isakow. "Now it's a state-of-the-art joystick."

Laird's customers include Harris Feeding Co., with 100,000 head in its lots west of here; Cargill, the giant food producer; and JBS' operations in Arizona (JBS, based in Brazil, is the world's largest meat company). Valley customers include cattlemen with 4,000 to 5,000 head and some of the largest family-owned dairy operations.

Turmoil in global currency markets has given Laird a distinct cost advantage against foreign competitors, whose products are denominated in euros or other appreciating currencies. That gives an American company an export advantage and makes it tougher for them to compete in the United States. "We're now pursuing export markets because the exchange rate has turned in our favor," Isakow said.

As impressive as the machines may be, what's more so are the men making them -- on two shifts. Laird has also imported Japan's obsession for quality control, and an individual worker is encouraged to submit his ideas. "One guy from the line asked, 'Why don't we just engineer these holes in the (steel-plated) floor?'" Isakow recalled. So they started doing that and saved a step in the process. Their computer-aided designer used to be a welder.

"Everything is labor-saving," said Cansler. "Everything has its own time allowance. It's all a matter of working together and doing things right the first time."

Laird features two mottos on its website (www.tradephiladelphiajerseys.com): "Your Cows Deserve the Best." "We Will Feed Your Cows."

Both fit Laird.