CHURUBUSCO - When Dick Conrow started his machine tooling business in his garage in 1969, he was hard pressed to find anyone who shared his vision of someday employing 500 people.
“They all laughed,” remembers Conrow, owner of C & A Tool Engineering.
But Conrow had the last laugh — his company recently reported an annual payoll in excess of $20 million.
C & A Tool Engineering occupies a dozen buildings and employs 450 people in Churubusco. But that was last week. They are still hiring, Conrow said.
In April, Conrow announced he will expand his multimillion-dollar business to Auburn, operating out of the 105,000 square-foot former Kimball Electronics building at 1015 W. Fifteenth Street. Conrow expects to initially employ about 50 people and to be up and running by the end of the month.
“This thing is growing and happening so fast, most people wouldn’t believe it,” Conrow said of the explosive growth his company has seen in recent years.
And it’s only going to get better, according to Conrow.

Aerospace Division

Auburn’s Kimball building was built according to government specifications and there are few preparations needed in order to move into the facility, according to Conrow. The secure building and 30-acre site offer room for future growth, he said, and the company initially will invest about $10 million in the Auburn plant.
Conrow has gained international attention for his creative approach to precision machining in the fields of automotive, medical and aerospace. He will house the company’s Aerospace Division at the Auburn plant, he said.
 “We received the aerospace AS-9100B quality certification about six months ago,” Conrow said. The certification is the dominant quality standard for aircraft and aerospace suppliers. The company also is ISO and QS certified, which means that each production facility, process and operation meets stringent standards for the highest quality possible.
C & A Tool Engineering was named Best in Class by BAE Systems of Fort Wayne, a top manufacturer of defense and aerospace products.

Auburn excited

People in Auburn are thrilled that Conrow has chosen their city.
Auburn has seen more than its share of layoffs and closings in the past 36 months due to the depressed automotive industry and the effect it has had on the manufacturing base in Auburn.
“We are delighted,” Auburn Mayor Norm Yoder said. “C&A has a reputation as a solid, growing company and is a welcome addition to our business community.”
Conrow, along with partner, Rob Marr, and junior partner, Todd Rehrer, take a lot of pride in their employees. “No time clocks. No supervisors. Only empowered technicians and specialists,” is the claim made in the C & A Tool brochure.
“We operate on an honor system with minimal supervision through three shifts,” Conrow said. Employee participation in company decisions is encouraged, which contributes to the overall pride and success experienced by employees, and in turn, by the company, Conrow said.

Always expanding

One of the first people to ask what he had in mind in 1969 was a neighbor kid who was in Conrow’s garage watching them move in the first piece of machinery, Conrow remembers with a smile. He not only told the boy what he had in mind, but later hired him. That neighbor kid — now a skilled machining technician — is still employed at C & A Tool.
Conrow designed the tooling division for Precision Plastics and worked as a general foreman in charge of component parts for Dana before starting his own company. He served on the Churubusco Town Council and is involved with Economic Development Commission of Whitley County and Indiana Northeast Development.
Conrow bought his first building in Churubusco — a two story brick building at the corner of U.S. 33 and S.R. 205 — which is in operation today — housing lathe and mill operations.
As Conrow’s business grew, he and his partners acquired more and more buildings in the downtown area of Churubusco. Conrow revamped the buildings, and his wife, Sarah, decorated each in the company’s trademark Swiss chalet theme.
“Sarah is the only woman in town who gets a new building every year on her birthday,” Conrow said.

Not your mama’s tool and die

The newest building — the company headquarters on U.S. 33 south of downtown Churubusco — was built in an H-shape on 46 acres with eight unique manufacturing “pods” made to extend outward for future expansion. Two pods already have been expanded to accommodate growth.
Each pod provides an essential manufacturing link to the overall C & A Tool system: raw materials, aerospace, automotive, medical, grinding, multi-spindle, milling, lathe and inspection. The company uses 7 million pounds of steel a year.
Almost every visitor — some local, some as far away as China, Mexico or Switzerland — expresses the same astonishment over the non-traditional exteriors, immaculate interiors, glistening concrete floors and high-tech atmosphere of the C & A buildings. Multimillion-dollar lathe, milling and grinding machines are surrounded by wood carvings, a glass-walled elevator and leather furniture.
Last year the company grew by 25 percent. This year the projection for growth is 50 percent — and that doesn’t include Auburn, Conrow said.
What’s the key to his success? Precision work by precision craftsmen. “We just do the job,” Conrow said.

A visionary

Because of its reputation, C & A Tool Engineering has managed to experience growth when other companies are experiencing losses and layoffs. And, because Conrow, a visionary, knew years ago “before the bottom fell out of the automotive industry” that diversifying his company’s products would yield more growth in the long run.
Conrow constantly talks in terms of the future — more customers looking for cutting edge technology and innovation; growth in Churubusco and in Auburn; a possible partnership with Ivy Tech; and new metal laser sintering machines that create and “grow” components with no machining necessary — so high-tech it’s right out of a Star Trek movie. Even highly complex geometries are created directly from 3D CAD data, fully automatically, in just a few hours and without any tooling.
“You can’t even imagine the significance of that,” Conrow said of the laser machines. “To have this happening here (Churubusco) and now, in Auburn, wow. It’s mind-boggling.”