This article is sponsored by New Standard Corporation, a contract manufacturer with nearly 125 years of multi-industry experience.

Partnering with a contract manufacturer can be a scalable solution to quickly bring products to market. By capitalizing on their knowledge and existing resources, you can save on time, labor, facility space, equipment costs, and the overhead necessary to expand your operations and train your team.

With 471,000 square feet of facility space spread across four locations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, contract manufacturer New Standard Corporation accommodates low- to high-volume metal fabrication projects. The company serves original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), supplying parts, sub-assemblies, and finished goods to commercial and industrial clients in markets ranging from construction and heavy trucks to HVAC and power generation.

"Our product background, process capabilities, and decades of experience are relevant across diverse industries,” explains Bill Dannehl, president of New Standard Corporation. "We focus on the problem each client is trying to solve, what their market needs are, and how we can innovate and best meet those needs. It’s our deep technical expertise, operational excellence and vertical integration as a contract manufacturer that helps us address the challenges our customers face.”

The company strives to offer end-to-end services, starting with global procurement, design for manufacturability (DFM), and prototyping and assisting clients through kitting, packaging, and shipping. New Standard Corporation specializes in metal stamping, fabrication, welding, and assembly. 

Thomas Insights (TI): What can you tell us about your company’s background and capabilities?

Bill Dannehl (BD): Our company was founded back in the early 1900s, but when we talk about New Standard in its current iteration, the Zifferer family has had ownership for 83 years. We’re fourth-generation family-owned. There aren’t many privately held family companies that can make that claim. We take succession and talent development extremely seriously because we see these factors as critical to our sustainability and long-term success.

Our expertise and vertical integration give customers opportunities to take costs out and improve the value of their products. It’s very common for us to get involved in a technical review of a product’s design, bringing our expertise to bear and innovating the manufacturing method. Our extreme focus on operational excellence allows us to meet the highest standards of our customers, many of which are global leaders in their industries. 

Our facilities currently have a press capacity of 50 to 2,600 tons, with all kinds of fabrication, welding, and complex assembly capabilities. New Standard can handle quantities of 50 to 500,000 parts a year. Right now, we have 12 industries we’ve targeted, and we’re making anything from coolers for large mining equipment to legs for sofas going to retail customers.

For the most part, we’re dealing in a variety of sheet or coil steel for the foundation, but we do aluminum and stainless, and we purchase significant amounts of copper tubing every year. We’re also procuring items like motors and fan blades. For a lot of our complex assemblies, we get into some pretty sophisticated products that we’re sourcing for our customers.

TI: How is New Standard Corporation different than other contract manufacturers in your market?

BD: Several things elevate New Standard’s competitive position across the variety of industries that make up our customer base. First and foremost is our vertical integration in stamping, fabrication, and complex assemblies, as well as the depth of expertise we have in each of those areas. That integration, that synergy, translates into value for our customers and gives us a chance to take the stress of managing a Tier Two supply environment off their plate. We create supplier resiliency for them.

We also put a lot of rigor into our new product introduction process, helping us achieve our customers’ expectations. A lot of our customers are large, global OEMs that have very exacting standards. The new product introduction process we use is probably one of the most thorough in the industry and, according to feedback I’ve received from customers, that really sets us apart.

Then there’s our commitment to day-to-day operational excellence, delivering products on time and providing high-quality, turnkey solutions. We have world-class performance in both on-time delivery and product quality.

The last piece is something we take a lot of pride in, and that’s the collaborative and transparent relationships we have with our customers. We see both aspects as critical parts of our business value. The strength of those relationships and the value we’ve created are what have sustained us over time. For example, we’ve worked with our two largest customers for over half a century.

TI: Would you share a few examples of times New Standard Corporation has been able to help customers?

BD: One collaboration we’re very proud of touches on how much disruption the pandemic caused. In 2021 and 2022, the supply base across almost every industry was fragmented and fragile. One of our best customers in heavy construction fell behind, developing a backlog on production because of supply chain disruptions.

We brought new Tier Two suppliers on board, and New Standard made a significant investment in capacity over a period of about nine months to help our customer recover and maintain production volume. We had to be really innovative and agile in continuing to work through that. We were one of the few suppliers able to respond as quickly as we did with that customer.

Another time we helped change the trajectory for one of our clients, a customer was growing rapidly and their products were being purchased through a fabricator. As volumes grew, we were able to take that product line and do a number of really innovative things for them. 

We took the product into large-scale presses, started stamping those parts, moved them into fabrication, and then did complex assembly. This took approximately 30% out of the cost of their product, and they’ve now been enjoying this benefit for over 10 years. Our vertical integration essentially resulted in millions of dollars of value for this client.

TI: What does the future look like for New Standard?

BD: We’re very proud of what we do here and we’re excited about the future. New Standard is very much a growth company. Our business has doubled over the last six years, with most of that growth being with our current customers. We continue to solve more and more problems, finding value in addressing those challenges with our existing customers.

Our big focus now is to continue to grow, expanding our portfolio, getting into new companies, and bringing new logos to bear. We have enough capacity that we could double the size of the business again in the next three years without investing in any additional facilities. We think that the key to growth is being relevant in overcoming challenges for current and new customers — not through false promises, but by delivering what they need day in and day out.

What’s most vital to us is our agility and our energy to continue reinvesting in the company. We’ve done a lot of things in the last four years that have propelled us, coming out of the pandemic. We took the opportunity to innovate, bringing in new technologies. In some cases, we’re investing in technology that’s directly related to our customers’ programs on their behalf. For example, we recently made significant investments in cobot welding to meet a customer’s needs. 

Whatever our current footprint and equipment assets, they’re going to change a year from now because we’re going to go solve new problems for new companies. Our philosophy is, if there’s a need, we’ll go figure it out. New Standard is always looking at what we can do to drive client success and our competitiveness in the marketplace.