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Karway-Cottman Discovers New Business Opportunity with TCRS
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Know how to get Jim Hoey excited?
Ask him about the impact his Torque Converter Rebuilding System (TCRS) has had on his Mesa, Arizona transmission remanufacturing and repair business.
Six years ago, as General Manager of Karway-Cottman Remanufacturing, Jim signed up to tour the TCRS Reno facility before it was relocated to Des Moines, Iowa. "I was out there for the APRA Show and decided to do the tour. That's when I first saw what TCRS had to offer," said Jim.
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Karway-Cottman's Wayne Martella and Jim Hoey
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Karway-Cottman owned a couple of SuperFlow's Axiline dynos, but they always outsourced their converter work for their four transmission repair shops in Phoenix's East Valley. However, after the tour wheels started turning, and that's when everything changed for Hoey and Karway-Cottman.
"I never realized the potential of this system until we talked to several people in the industry and finally decided to make the investment. Financially, it was a pretty good chunk of change. So when the owner, Wayne Martella, and I originally discussed spending over $100,000 for the system, we were understandably apprehensive. But after projecting the return on investment, it was a no-brainer. We set it up as a totally separate and distinct operation within our main Cottman facility. We purchased everything new-the lathes, cleaning machine, balancer, the entire works-strictly to support our transmission rebuilding operation. At that time we were outsourcing around 100 torque converters a week," adds Jim.
"The return on investment? Incredible! But that's just half of it. When we outsourced our converters, we were always waiting and wondering, because we'd never get any feedback on our warranties from suppliers. Now we're building what we need when we need it. We have total control over the process and quality of our work. We're finding problems before they surface, and we have a much better understanding about our little 'mystery donut'-that's what I used to call our converters-because invariably they were the crutch we'd always lean on when we were looking around for someone or something else to blame.
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TCRS Auto Weld Unit in Action
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"Now, it's much easier when you can cut that converter open and see where the issues are. That's the beauty of this thing; and I never fully appreciated it until now, because it has had a tremendous impact on our overall performance.
"Like anything else, there's a tremendous investment in time, money, and resources up front; basically, it's like learning a whole new business from the ground up. And yet, within one month, we were building 10 converters a day with just one guy. The thing that really helped was the support we got in finding the right tools and accessing the right information. The folks at SuperFlow and Sonnax were extremely supportive in this area. SuperFlow has been out here 2 or 3 times to help train our people. We also spend a lot of time on the phone with the Sonnax people whenever we have problems we can't solve on this end. In fact, I'm a member of the Sonnax Task Force.
"Today, our guys are more conscious and knowledgeable about the process than ever before. It has definitely shown up in the quality of the work we do and overall customer satisfaction in transmission rebuilds."
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