COLUMBUS — Products made at John Crane Orion are used across the globe to run high-speed machinery.
The bearings engineered and produced at the local company can be found in a variety of places, from naval ships to power plants.
“Anything that produces power, we make bearings for,” said general manager Casey Scholl.
The plant has been operating in Columbus for 40 years, first under the name Orion until John Crane, a manufacturer of mechanical seals, purchased the corporation seven years ago.
The 3300 E. Eighth St. plant employs 60 people, most of whom are machinists who work in a climate-controlled shop area where they use CNC machine tools and other equipment to create bearings from variety of materials, including steel, copper, bronze and aluminum. There are also four engineers on staff.
“They deal with processes that we have to do constantly like new drawings, new routings, new parts,” said operations manager Rob Spitz.
Inside the shop is where the production, inspection and assembly of the bearings take place.
Scholl said about 60 percent of the products made at John Crane Orion are shipped to other countries. The bearings are used in everything from hydroelectric and nuclear power plants to air compressors and locomotives.
“We are a made-to-order business. We don’t make any bearings unless we have an order for it,” Scholl said. “We design and engineer a bearing where a customer comes to us and says, ‘We’re building this, can you design a bearing for it?’ We will design an entire bearing for them.”
The bearings range in size from 2 inches to 3 feet in diameter and can cost thousands of dollars.
“Some are very intricate and take months to make,” Scholl said.
The number of bearings produced varies from week to week, depending on the schedule and orders.
“We may ship hundreds of smaller ones in a week. The larger ones, we may only ship three to four parts a week,” Spitz said.
Most of the plant's employees have been there for years and the majority live in Columbus or within a 15-mile radius. Even with a low turnover rate, the search for workers can be difficult because of the skills required.
“We do have a difficult time finding machinists because we are pretty selective in who we hire. We try to pay a little bit more and offer good benefits to keep them and attract them,” Scholl said.
The kind of workers they seek have at least some experience utilizing the CNC equipment.
“We prefer an associate degree in machining, but most of our employees have just on-the-job training. I don’t think there are many degrees. It’s easier for them to break into the job with the degree and the education,” Scholl said.
Company officials hope the STEM Academy at the new Columbus High School will be produce the skilled workers John Crane Orion and other local manufacturers need.
Spitz said they have been supportive of the academy and provided feedback when manufacturers were asked how it could best impact the work force here.
“We had some input on that as far as what kind of classes would help us keep these kids at home when they get out of high school and college,” he said.
Scholl credits the longer-tenured employees with making John Crane Orion a leader in manufacturing.
“This location is a success because of the talent pool in the area and the amount of labor that we get. Our machinists aren’t basic machinists. They are very skilled,” he said.
Scholl said there could be changes on the horizon for the company, with a customer base moving to different energy sources. But, he added, they are prepared to handle the shift.
“We don’t foresee it changing much in the next 10 to 20 years, but eventually as energy changes we will have to change along with it because a lot of our customers are gas turbine power-generation facilities or coal power-generation facilities. So we are going to have to change with the market,” he said. “I don’t foresee a problem making that transition because of that engineering ability, whether it is for nuclear or whatever kind of technology.”
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