New Products:
Safety Guard for Toggle Switches CLICK

Rubber boots for Toggle switches CLICK

Plastic Ignition Switches CLICK

News:
Cole Hersee website is one of
America's 200 best websites! CLICK 

Cole Hersee becomes 
certified supplier to Mack Truck CLICK

Cole Hersee hosts MIT seminar 
on Lean Manufacturing CLICK

Cole Hersee becomes 
certified supplier to CAT CLICK

Cole Hersee becomes certified supplier to Mack Truck

The bulldog is the proud hood ornament that graces some of America's finest trucks. Mack Truck is a long time Cole Hersee customer.

"Mack believes the following about trucking. Change is coming. It's headed our way. A technological tidal wave is washing away the old way of working. We are driven by software as much as horsepower. Times are changing. Why shouldn't trucks?"  
So reads published material from Mack, underscoring the quantum leap in the way business is being done today.

As part of their move to increasingly close partnerships with vendors, Mack is putting their suppliers under the magnifying glass. They have thinned the number of their vendors down to only about 400, and of that number they have a select list of Certified Suppliers of only 11. they have now added the name of another company to that rarefied list: that company is Cole Hersee.

How did Cole Hersee achieve that status?
The certification process took about three months. Mack looked at our recent performance. They examined on-time delivery, EDI compliance (electronic data interchange), expedited delivery, number of reject parts, maintaining open lines of communication and other exacting indicators of our performance. They visited our plant and checked some more.

As a result of all this enquiry, we have become one of their Certified Suppliers.

What are some of the standards 
Cole Hersee must meet?
Mack operates on a JIT (just-in-time) basis for supplied parts. This means that they will no longer warehouse components that they need to use in the next six months to a year. For Mack Truck the advantages are many. For example, they don't have to maintain a large stockpile, and they don't have to lock up their capital in that excess inventory. They can easily specify a different part without having to use up old inventory and there are many other advantages.

What's a supplier like Cole Hersee to do?
We could stockpile our product in anticipation of orders, but we don't want to do that and for exactly the same reasons! The best way out of the impasse is to be able to turn on a dime, to ramp up production on any part, after we receive the order. Thus the concept of JIT gets pushed down the supply chain, for these are the very requirements which we in turn exact on the companies who supply us with raw materials.

Mack requires EDI compliance. Amongst other procedures, they place orders electronically (computer to computer); we tell them electronically that their order shipped; we invoice them electronically, and they send payment electronically to our bank. This is the way of doing business today and into the future. We will continue to make more and more connections with our customers, so that we eliminate office paperwork, and in a spirit of honesty and openness, we provide more information so that our business partner can learn to rely on us more and more.

Everyone at Cole Hersee is proud of the significant achievement of becoming a Certified Supplier, but we understand that it is part of an ongoing commitment to maintain - and improve - our level of service to Mack Truck.

Cole Hersee named 
Certified Supplier to CAT

We have for some time enjoyed the accolade of Certified Supplier that has been awarded us by Caterpillar, Inc (or "Cat" as everyone calls them.) Cat manufactures heavy off-road vehicles that you're likely to see on construction sites, mining operations and the like, and their equipment is known the world over for its reliability and ruggedness.

Their people visited us recently for three weeks while they conducted an audit. They sat in on many QC meetings, including some of our regular classes. In fact, one of Cat's engineering purchasing specialists for joined in Cell Team 7I4 meetings and has become part of that group!

We're pleased to report that Cat's purchasing specialist says he's very impressed with the people in Cole Hersee's team and the depth of their participation and involvement.

New Products:
Safety Guard 
for Toggle Switches

A useful item to protect important switches from accidental actuation.

They're used on emergency switches, alarms, cut-offs...important switches that don't get much use.

They're used in situations where actuation could cause a hazardous or unwanted situation... hoists, tailgates, hose rewind on oil delivery trucks...and a host of other uses.

See a better copy of the informational sheet.
CLICK HERE

Cole Hersee plant hosts Lean Manufacturing MIT seminar

"Lean Production System Design"

Cole Hersee was one of the sponsors of a recent seminar. On this three-day Massachusetts Institute of Technology course, attendees spent one whole day at the Cole Hersee plant, studying the techniques which have been implemented, and those improvements which will be introduced.

Because of the radical changes that Cole Hersee has been making, and the palpable enthusiasm for change that comes from both management and the individual workers in the cells, the facility has become a 'benchmarking' location. In the past, managers from other companies, both local and national, have visited Cole Hersee to see how to implement comparable improvements.

"We also use their suggestions and input to see where we can make added refinements," said Dick Kuzmitski, Cole Hersee VP of Operations, "We had some interesting visitors at the university seminar. It was a real hands-on course in Lean Production. The leader, Prof. David Cochran of MIT won the 1990 Shingo Prize, and he's quite a star, you know."

The course is part of the knowledge-sharing that is a key element in self-improvement at Cole Hersee.

The course was sponsored by Cole Hersee and...
The Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership www.gbmp.org

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence, AME

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
http://psd.mit.edu

Cole Hersee website acclaimed one of the 200 Best B2B websites

It's a great honor for Cole Hersee to be listed in the Advertising Age magazine Top 200 Business to Business websites, announced late in 2000.

The list is an annual rating of BtoB sites compiled by a group of business analysts for Crain Communications, publishers of the industry-leading Advertising Age. The list includes the websites of many large corporations, such as IBM, Monsanto, FedEx, Merrill Lynch, and Merck.

The Cole Hersee site was rated No. 1 of the Automotive sites in the US.

The site has been active in its current format since mid-2000. Since it was launched several features have been added, and there are plans to add training modules, and online ordering for established customers. Like many of the best websites, the Cole Hersee site is never static; news and features are added on a weekly basis, and progress is being made to enrich the whole site with a deeper level of information. We hope that users will find the site to be highly useful, and that they will bookmark it, so that they can easily return.

Web editor Graeme Marsden comments, "We're all thrilled to be listed as one of America's best business websites. However, people I've surveyed disagree with the opinion that the design is 'garish'. It's simply a matter of taste… but I'll tell you this: we must have scored really high on functionality to offset their objection!"

Visit more pages in our website… and give us your opinion as to its ease of use, functionality, design. What else would you find useful in the website? Info@colehersee.com

Check out the Advertising Age B2B listings.www.netb2b.com

New Product:
Colorful Boots 
for Toggle Switches

Boot covers protect the handle against infiltration of dirt, moisture, salt spray into the switch. They also add a colorful element that can be used for color coding...red for emergency, for example.

Ours are made from high quality silicone rubber bonded to a 15/32" -32 thread nickel-plated hex nut. When the nut is snugged down to the panel, the rubber creates an O-ring seal.

These items are not at the moment in our interactive catalog, so here are the details...

Gray   No. 81264
Black   No. 81264-01
Blue   No. 81264-02
Clear   No. 81264-03
Green  No. 81264-04
Red   No. 81264-05
Brown   No. 81264-06
Yellow   No. 81264-07
Orange   No. 81264-08

Download informational sheet D-584
on this product.

New Product:
Plastic Ignition Switches

M-832
Cole Hersee is best known for our range of switches made from metals like brass that will stand up to the elements. However, we have two new switches that are made from a rugged plastic, and have lower price tags.

The M-850 is an Off-Run-start with a short bushing (fits panels up to 7/8")
M-850
The M-832 is an Off-Run-Start with Push-to-Choke

These switches primarily have application in boats. they'll replace many switches in many marques of boat. However, you can use them on land vehicles as well.

Similar items in brass are:
M-932 (compare with M-832 plastic)
M-550 (compare with M-850 plastic)

Download informational sheet D-583
on this product.

Printable document Back to top