was a merger in the truest sense. He says this was not a case of a stronger company taking over a weaker com- pany or a purchase in any way. So how did the new organization decide to go with the Grede name over the Citation name? The short answer, accord-


ing to Grimm, was that it was the better of the two names for where the com- pany was headed. “We are taking the best of the best in people, technology and assets,” he said. The long answer is that Grede was a better name because


“I have an appreciation for the wide variety of products we offer the marketplace. We have pretty much any casting customers are looking for, from lost foam to large castings to high production.”—Randy Priem, legacy Grede general manager


to identify synergies between them. Corporate level policies and systems were the first to be selected—the company name, website, administrative and sales systems, enterprise resource planning system, etc. According to Anthony


Lovell, vice president of sales and marketing, the goal of the integration teams was not only to select systems and metrics from


each legacy company but to continually challenge and improve those metrics. “Integrating people and process is the first step,” Gimm


the company was founded half a century earlier than Cita- tion and therefore had more history, as well as a stronger market association with ferrous castings of the type the company now offers. But selecting the name was only the first step in the long


process of literally selecting one-by-one the best attributes of each of the legacy companies. Integration teams, composed of three to five senior managers from several company functions (e.g. sales, human resources, finance, operations, purchasing), were created with representatives from both companies. The teams’ directive was to recommend structure from each legacy organization and


said. “The [metalcasting] technologies will take longer (1-3 years).”


Load Bearing Facilities


LeCroy said one of the biggest changes has been stan- dardizing legacy Citation’s decentralization across the Grede plants. Where the former operated each of its facilities as a separate business, legacy Grede was primarily managed from the corporate level. “When you’re decentralized, you operate with a smaller corporate cost,” LeCroy said. “You’re closer to the customer and more flexible.”


The legacy Grede plant in Kingsford, Mich., known as Iron Mountain, is a sand casting plant known for its excellent safety record and ability to cast complicated castings with extensive coring.


MODERN CASTING / August 2010 21


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