General Carbide Corporation Profiled in October 2010 Issue of Metal Powder Report Magazine
Greensburg, PA, October 1, 2010 - General Carbide Corporation, a manufacturer of tungsten
carbide tooling for a variety of industrial applications, was the subject of an item in the February 2010
issue of MetalForming magazine. Text of the article, titled "Reinvesting to catch the wave on the upturn,"
follows.
The PM industry tends to be male-dominated, and the hardmetals sector even more so. So
what's it like to be the female boss of a hardmetals company, particularly in the current
downturn? Liz Nickels talked to Mona Pappafava-Ray, president of General Carbide and
PremaTech Advanced Ceramics, of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, about how her company is
coping with recession and if being a woman has dictated her management style.
What's the background to your involvement in the hardmetals industry?
General Carbide is a family business, inasmuch as my father established it 42 years ago,
when I was five years old. So I grew up in hardmetals! He began working for Firth Sterling and
quickly moved up the ranks, starting out in R&D and ending up as foreign operations manager,
setting up plants in Germany. It was a good job and he could have stayed there, but he had to be
his own boss. He was extremely intelligent; too smart a guy to work for someone else, and he
had to be in charge of his own destiny. He didn't want to work for anyone else, he thought he
always knew best - and he did! The company was incorporated in 1968 and I've been working
here for 24 years and 13 as president.
Did you always want to work in this sector?
In some ways it was inevitable that I would be a part of General Carbide - but in fact it
was not always my intention to work in the hardmetals industry. At college I enjoyed doing lots
of different things, especially anything that involved performing in front of people, such as
singing and drama. I wanted to be a movie star at some point. However, when I was in high
school I went to a summer programme at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, for singing
and dancing, and afterwards I decided it was not something I wanted as a career.
At the same time I was studying industrial management at Carnegie Mellon, and I had
also been working in the company since I was 14, learning how to balance the books and file.
When I was in college I started managing the accounts for the General Carbide South Carolina
plant. This was back in 1981 and the company didn't have a lot of computers, just some data
processing machines. But Carnegie Mellon has always been on the cutting edge of IT and
computer science activities, so I loaded the financials of that company on my computer at
college, and managed them from there. So it was a natural progression. I graduated from college
on Sunday and started working at General Carbide on Monday, and I've been here ever since!
What were your first roles at the company?
Unsurprisingly, one of the first things I did when I got to the company was to put in a computer
system. But before I could do that I decided to work in every part of the industrial process in the
plant and the office - so I worked on the plant floor, I worked on every operation, ran machines,
ran the furnaces, mills, and dryers. I did engineering, I did pricing, quality control, shipping
inspection - everything.
That experience was really useful, because although it's been 24 years since I've actually
worked on the shopfloor, on the machines, there were things I did then that are still in my mind
today when I make decisions - because I understand the flow of the product, how it performs,
what people are doing in the plant. Little by little I began installing computer systems in the
different departments and I learned more about the business. As I did that I made changes and I
took on more and more responsibility.
So then you moved to a more managerial role?
One day I walked in my father's office and he said, "I'm going to make you vice
president." I asked why and he said, "I need to sign some agreements here, so I need a vice
president." So that was how I became vice president! Some time after my father had to go to
hospital for a considerable period, I had to take over his projects, and worked as president during
that time. The company has grown a lot since I've been working here, with a manpower of
around 175 people. Excluding the last 18 months, which was a roller coaster ride, we have been
averaging a growth rate of approximately 7% per year. Currently, the company is running 39%
over last year.
How has the company coped with the recent recession?
It was one of the worst the industry has seen in a long, long time. Companies
have had to handle it in their own way. We decided very early that we were going to maintain
our workforce as much as possible - it was my personal goal not to lay off any direct or indirect
labour employee. In the end we had to lay off a couple of salaried people, but everybody from
the shopfloor was kept on. As far as I know, we are the only carbide company in the US that was
able to do this. I also asked the executive group to take pay cuts at least commensurate with what
the people on the floor would have to take, with hours cut, and every single manager agreed to
do that.
At the same time, we put a million dollars into capital expansion. It has always been
General Carbide's philosophy to reinvest in the business, every year, regardless of economic
conditions, and the last few years were no exception. On a yearly basis, we have placed about
5% of total sales into capital, including upgrades to our machinery, computer systems, control
systems, etc.
The company has been focusing recently on equipment that will help us to compete more
effectively in emerging markets, and products for market segments that require a high degree of
technical expertise and labour. The company is also replacing several older machines with new
equipment to take advantage of recent technological advancements.
I felt that even during a recession we needed to invest in our company, because we had to
prepare ourselves for the future, and become a better, stronger workforce, so that when the work
came back we would be ready to take it on. And that's exactly what we did - we bought
machinery, we put money into manufacturing, and we spent the same on sales, marketing and
advertising. Why would you cut back on these things when you most need them? Now, as the
U.S. economy recovered, we saw an upturn in orders and about September 2009 we
started getting the feeling that it was moving again. Orders have continued to increase every
month since then.
Most people in much larger companies than ours are beholden to the stock market and
shareholders, so they have to make decisions in three-month increments, because the quarterly
results come out and everybody reacts accordingly. In our company we can think more long
term. In the last 15 months, if I had to make decisions based on three month projections, we
would have had to do things completely differently. Because we just have the board that we
report to, I tell them what we plan to do, long term, and that we're going to come out of the
recession successfully, even though it's very likely we might post a loss for one or two years.
Do you think being a woman has influenced your management style?
I don't think so. I often get asked the question, "What's it like to be a woman in the
hardmetals industry?" and I always say, "I don't realize I'm a woman in the industry!" I never
think about it, maybe because I look out and I see male faces and so it doesn't occur to me that
I'm different, because I always look out and see the same thing. I've been in the industry all my
life, and I don't know what it's like to be a man, so I don't know the difference.
However, I do believe there are things that I do differently because I'm a woman - or that
women tend to do more than men. I don't want to stereotype either gender here, but I think that
women tend to be more empathetic towards people and a little more concerned about their
employees' personal lives. Women also tend to look more for buy-in on ideas - they are not so
single minded. When I'm pitching an idea I do try and look for buy-in from most people before I
move forward with it. That doesn't mean I won't move forward unless everybody's on board, but
I do try to find a way to work together as a team. I know my father didn't do that - so that's
unique to me, or that's what other women tend to do!
It's also perhaps harder being a mum, and a wife, and a business owner and a president
all at the same time. My father, on the other hand, didn't have those worries - if he had to go
somewhere he told my mother he was leaving, he came home, his bags were packed, she had
washed, ironed and packed the clothes - all he had to worry about was picking up the luggage
and getting on the plane. For me that would be a luxury.
.
What do you think are the trends affecting the hardmetal industry in the future?
We are continuously looking for trends in our current industries and opportunities to
participate in new technology. One interesting development is the use of electrical discharge
machining (EDM), which has increased significantly over the past 10+ years. This has resulted in
the need for corrosion-resistant grades of tungsten carbide. The carbide blanks may sit in an
EDM unit anywhere from 5 to 50 hours, and the water in the EDM tank during this time period
will deplete the cobalt binder, a process known as electrolytic attack. We've recently launched a
new series of corrosion-resistant grades that will resist electrolytic attack, even up to 100
continuous hours in an EDM tank. The world is obviously becoming greener. As a result, we've
found that many of our customers are using water-based lubricants, instead of the oil based
variety. This presents a unique problem for those using carbide, because water-based lubricants
leach the cobalt binder in tungsten carbide, which results in decreased tool life. Our corrosionresistant
grades can resist this leaching.
In the future, the oil and gas industry will face new challenges. Oil and gas producers are
searching for new reserves, but the operating conditions can be severe and require valve trims
manufactured from tungsten carbide instead of stainless steel to offset the severe wear factor
experienced. To match this new demand we offer over 50 grades of carbide, 100% of which
are sinter-HIPped for a wide range of applications.
About General Carbide
General Carbide manufactures more than 50 grades of tungsten carbide tooling for a
variety of cutting and metal forming applications, including: ammunition manufacturing tooling,
blanks for boring bars, can-making, electronic stamping die manufacturing, fastener tooling and
powder metal/compaction, steel and wire manufacturing, general industrial wear parts for
industries such as concrete and roof tile, metalforming, oil and gas components, rotary cutting
dies, and tooling for stamping. The company was established more than 40 years ago and is
headquartered in the United States in western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
General Carbide sells its products throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe
and Asia. The company employs more than 100 highly-skilled professionals in its production
operations. Those individuals produce metallurgical powders, as well as shape, sinter and finishgrind
tungsten carbide. As a woman-owned business, General Carbide achieved certification in
2008 from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).
For more information, contact Tom Shearer at 724.836.3000, x113 or
724.493.2436 (mobile). E-mail trshearer@generalcarbide.com or visit
www.generalcarbide.com
