Company Visit -- Mountain Precision Tools

On Thursday afternoon we visited a small, local company producing high precision tools in aluminum, copper, stainless steel and brass. The company is being led by Mr. Steve Drummerhill who is very proud of its profitable and steady progress. Eight years ago he started his company and since then his regional market has spread from Georgia to New Jersey. He isn't interested in letting his company grow too big, but has a loyal customer base that expands mostly by word of mouth and advertisements in trade magazines. Therefore its size of about 15 employees is just right for the business situation he is in. He also avoids producing a great number of the same piece; instead making parts to fill custom orders placed by his clients.
Steve Drumheller, President of Mountain Precision Tools

An Introduction to our ECOSYS Group

Before our group was formed, the SITP participants spent some days in various activities to talk with one another, explore ideas about the different stakeholders--Government, Companies, Households, and the Media--, and get to know one another a bit.
But, after a few days we did learn our group and team assignments to begin our venture into saving Ecoland. In other blogs you will learn more about the pre-Ecosys activities but I will focus in this writing on our group members; coming up with our company name, logo, and goal statement; and assigning roles.




Company Formation:
Our group representing 50 of the companies in Ecoland is comprised of Helmut Wyss, Sanele Sangweni, Sonja Frischknecht, and Andrea Langston. Read more about our first team activity--the tower building challenge; and then our visit to Mountain Precision Tools to interview a local company.





Company Identification:
One important task we had was to decide on our company's product, name, logo, and vision. The facilitators recommended that we think about shoes or clothing. With that information, our group decided to make shoes. In discussing our team name, we wanted to distinguish ourselves both environmentally and in our design. As we brainstormed, we threw out ideas of adjectives that would describe these goals--we came up with fashion, function, and foot-friendly. Next, our artistic Helmut began designing a logo that would communicate our vision and ideas.