Barthelmes Manufacturing has been a family owned Rochester business since 1921. To stay profitable and position itself for future growth the company recently went through a major transition.

“Traditionally, the company was only a contract manufacturer," said Larry Lehning, CEO Barthelmes Manufacturing.

For nine decades this specialized manufacturing company has stayed true to its core. Lehning says Barthelmes Manufacturing still makes the parts customers draw on paper into tangible products.

"We do some replacement components for Carrier out of Syracuse and we also do some business with Carrier in North Carolina, provide them with some specialty components for their current products models," says Lehning.

In an attempt to position itself for growth and to expand its customer base, Barthelmes recently underwent a major transformation.

"We're making a concerted effort to redesign the entire culture of the company,” Lehning explains. “Originally it was a traditional command and control type of a company, where the owners would say this is what we want you to do and do it now and why isn't done. Now we've inculcated a team based process."

In addition to the challenges of culture shock, Barthelmes has diversified and decided to grow two new businesses.

"One is, we're calling it an incubator product where we work with other local companies that are small and have what we consider to be interesting ideas and we help them to develop that product and design it for manufacturing and help them bring it to market," says Lehning.

The other new part of this decades-old business involves designing and building patented products of its own.

Despite initial growing pains, Lehning says Barthelmes Manufacturing's plan is working. "It's working out great. Our productivity increased, just over the last year it has increased 20%. We're expecting another 50% improvement this year."

Even in a down economy Lehning believes local manufacturers have room to grow. "I believe part of that is just taking the right perspective."


Barthelmes Manufacturing