Hours spent fishing the waters of Western Australia, the Northern Territory or Queensland is not a bad way to spend a work day, but that’s what awaits Ben Patrick, CEO of Halco Tackle Company, and his father, Neil, each morning.
Hours spent fishing the waters of Western Australia, the Northern Territory or Queensland is not a bad way to spend a work day, but that’s what awaits Ben Patrick, CEO of Halco Tackle Company, and his father, Neil, each morning.
Their commitment to continually testing, developing and improving their extensive product range has paid handsome dividends, with the family company experiencing significant growth in recent years in both domestic and international markets.
Halco is now the biggest lure manufacturer in Australia after its acquisition of RMG Lures in 1996 and Tilsan lures in 2000, exporting to almost 70 countries.
Halco Tackle Company began in 1950, when engineer Hal Cooper started making lures and fishing rigs in his garage in Mosman Park.
In 1980, Neil Patrick purchased the company and began a process of expanding the business and product range, establishing its manufacturing premises in Fremantle.
In late 2001, Ben Patrick took over as CEO of Halco, carrying on the family business and guiding the company through a new era of growth.
He recalls that the company’s growth presented a major challenge for the business and manufacturing processes, with its systems based around running a small company, highly dependent on individuals rather than standardised processes.
“About three years ago we went from a small company to a not-so-small company,” Mr Patrick told WA Business News.
“Our systems just could not cope with the growth in demand.”
With demand outstripping supply, and business processes “kept in three or four key people’s heads”, Mr Patrick set out to streamline the business to cope with growing demand, and refine business practices to align them with a larger manufacturing base.
On the advice of Halco’s software company, Mr Patrick employed a new manufacturing process designed to reduce costs, shorten production runs, limit waste and efficiently control stock by reducing excess inventories.
He implemented the Kanban system, a widely-used Japanese manufacturing process, to re-structure the manufacturing process to cope with increasing demand.
The introduction of this new, self-managed system required a transition period of about 12 months, a process that involved a large cultural change within the company.
“The concepts and theories, on first glance, looked like the opposite of what should be done,” Mr Patrick said.
“Getting people’s heads around it was a challenge.”
Three years on, the system is tracking very well. On-time supply (day ordered) went from, at worst, between 50 and 60 per cent, to 98 to 100 per cent consistently for two years after implementation.
The system also established a more centralised manufacturing process, so when one of the key members of staff is not at work the system continues without disruption.
Mr Patrick said the automised system safeguarded against the over-production of low selling product lines by triggering a small production run as soon as supply became low, which made production bottlenecks more visible than before.
“The days of big production runs, and making a lot of things people don’t want, is gone,” Mr Patrick said.
The next challenge is to address a well-known curse of prolonged growth – labour shortages.
The company is experiencing difficulty finding full-time staff, which is upsetting the manufacturing process and increasing capital costs.
“Our on-time supply rate has slipped back now due to labour constraints,” Mr Patrick said.
Allowing staff flexibility is one strategy the company has put in place to attract and retain full-time staff, in an effort to make Halco an attractive place to work.
The company has also opened a second factory in Indonesia to take care of the more basic manufacturing requirements, while retaining production of the more complex, high-tech products from its factory in Fremantle.
