Laying the Foundation for Long Term Prosperity
BACKGROUND
From their historic American roots, founded by Roy Shumaker with welding skills learned in shipmaking for the Navy in World War II, to today, with the third generation of the family active in the business, Shumaker Industries maintains a strong sense of the past while continuously looking to the future by exploring new markets and applying new technology to their business practices. Shumaker Industries has been fabricating quality replacement drums and parts for concrete mixers since 1953, longer than any other company in the United States. However, today’s slowed housing and construction industry poses serious challenges to their survival. To combat this challenge, they actively seek to apply their specialized fabrication skills to new markets.
SBDC ASSISTANCE
When an international engineering firm solicited a bid for a new specialty concrete mixing system, Shumaker knew it would need assistance in order to submit a proposal in a timely, accurate fashion. They turned to the Engineering Development Services (EDS) available to them at Bucknell University’s SBDC. Having worked with the staff, students, and faculty at Bucknell on several projects since 2004, design engineer Allen Thomas, himself an alumnus of mechanical engineering at Bucknell, knew he could rely on the SBDC. He brought his preliminary structural designs to EDS, where, with staff and a graduate student consultant, they performed sophisticated Finite Element Analysis (FEA) calculations to verify key areas of the design.
IMPACT
With this analysis in-hand and the confidence it placed in the design, Shumaker submitted a proposal and was awarded the contract for the design and fabrication of the first unit, resulting in $83,000 of new sales and a new product for the company. Purchasing the high-end engineering software available at the college of engineering would have been prohibitive for a small business like Shumaker, but having access to it and the skilled consultants at EDS has had a rapid positive impact. In the next year, they hope to have orders for at least two more units from the same customer.
Having become knowledgeable of the specialty services of the PASBDC, Shumaker has also engaged the services of EMAP. They also have been expanding the sales and distribution of their mixer replacement parts into Central and South America and will be seeking assistance from the International Trade specialists in the PASBDC network.
