MOUNTAIN PERFORMANCE
Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Scorpion Performance , Inc., manufacturer of precision parts for high performance motors, intends to more than double existing output by opening a second plant late this year in Ocala, FL. Scorpion founder, Robert Stopanio, attributes the increased demand to the company’s ability and determination to outperform China and its Asian counterparts on both price and quality levels – and certainly faster delivery.
Scorpion takes particular pride, Stopanio states, in being an industry leader in its use of
the most sophisticated robotically operated U.S. machine tools. “The robots run around the clock, seven days a week,” he adds. “When you can operate three shifts per day, you
inevitably achieve dramatic cost efficiencies.”
A few months ago, Scorpion was capable of producing a single Roller Rocker Arm from raw aluminum stock to a finished product in three minutes. Now, the newest generation of
multi-spindle lathes – further tweaked by Scorpion’s engineers and reconfigured to work with a single robot – produce a finished rocker arm every minute – a 200% increase in
out-put!
Since early in the year, Scorpion has been positioning the company as the manufacturer whose products are “Made in America & Proud of It” – calling the attention of U.S. private label distributors of performance auto parts now out-sourced to Asia. The response has been so positive, Stopanio says, that we have to expand our capacity to meet the demand.
“We are maxed-out at our Ft. Lauderdale facility and needed a building that will enable us to configure our robotic ‘families of lathes’ for utmost efficiency. The Ocala site will be ideal for what we expect to accomplish. Both plants are in the 30,000 sq. ft. range, but the Ocala building provides the height for an overhead crane system that we lack in Ft. Lauderdale.”
The Scorpion brand leads the industry with its principal product, rocker arms, that account for greater horsepower by regulating the intake and exhaust valves on high performance engines. At the same time, the company is looking to recapture that portion of the precision auto parts business that has wandered off-shore – whatever brand they
market under.
Just how great are the overseas expenditures by automotive manufacturers? According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. automotive industry is far and away the greatest “consumer” of imported products. This, of course, doubtless reflects the impact of Far Eastern and European auto companies that do final assembly of their cars and trucks in U.S. plants. In 2005, motor vehicles imported $142 billion, which represented 39% of automotive expenditures for that year.
In addition, Motor Vehicle Parts at $71 billion – a separate category — ranks No. 3 among some 50 industry categories in the import derby. And that represents almost half of sales of parts in the U.S.)
Stopanio acknowledges that Scorpion represents but a microcosm of the business being “lost” to overseas sources, yet he feels just as strongly as multi-billion-dollar companies that U.S. manufacturers have to innovate and fight back on world-market terms.
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