Pioneer Motor Bearing Co. Appoints Ray Harrington President
Industry Veteran to Lead Company Growth

San Mateo, CA—January 3, 2012—Today, Pioneer Motor Bearing Company appointed Ray Harrington, a 30-year veteran in the bearing and power transmission industry, its fourth President in the company’s 91-year history. A consultant to the company for several years, Harrington was elected to its Board of Directors last May. Gordon P. Bardet, who formerly held the position of President, will remain Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company, which is headquartered in San Mateo, California, but whose operations are based in Kings Mountain in Cleveland County, North Carolina, where Harrington will work.

Ray Harrington has held significant management and executive positions within the bearing industry, focusing on planning and implementing change, as well as new international market development. His experience includes service as the General Manager of the KMC Bearings Division of Cookson America (West Greenwich, Rhode Island), which was previously a client of his successful consulting practice based in Toronto, Canada, and President of Pacific Bearing (Rockford, Illinois). Under Harrington’s leadership, Pacific Bearing’s sales appreciably multiplied and the company established a worldwide presence in the market. In more recent years, Harrington served as the head of international business development for Bishop-Wisecarver, a leading manufacturer of guided motion components and systems, before being elevated to its Board of Directors, on which he continues to serve.

“I am delighted that Ray has joined our team full time as President,” said Gordon Bardet. “I’ve known Ray for 20 years. It’s funny looking back on it now because originally he immediately impressed me when he was consulting with a competitor we were considering acquiring. Since then, I’ve traveled with him in the U.S. and abroad and he’s been consulting with us virtually full time the last two years. I’m more impressed than ever by his interpersonal skills working with all levels of our organization, and his energy and focus on achieving objectives, all the while demonstrating internal and external strategic insight.”

Harrington was born and raised in the United Kingdom and graduated with a degree in metallurgy from Brunel University in London. His distinguished career began with a key management role in a Liverpool startup that successfully built a 1,500 person plant business in under 12 months, after which he joined RHP, at the time the UK’s largest ball bearing company. Early key accomplishments at RHP included reducing work-in-process, increasing productivity and management of programs of rationalization and standardization across five manufacturing plants. It was during this time and part of this process that he gained his first international business development experience, when he implemented a cooperative alliance strategy for bearing companies across Europe, which developed multi-million dollar returns for each of the partners.

RHP later appointed Harrington to a turnaround assignment in Toronto, Canada, as vice president of the central region. Under his strategic direction, sales increased in both OEM and distributor markets. Before heading up KMC Bearings, Newark Electronics appointed him to expand its business in Canada, where he established a seven-branch organization before being transferred to Chicago to head up a $120 million, 40-branch operation in the U.S.

“Ray’s experience in industrial bearings is unusual,” Bardet said, “because it includes both of the two basic bearing industries: mass produced ball or roller bearings; and bearings operating in a film of lubrication, normally oil, of the type Pioneer Motor Bearing Company designs, manufactures and repairs.”

Bardet’s grandfather founded the firm in San Francisco in 1920. Gordon Bardet left his law practice in 1986 to join the business when his father, Bill Bardet, was at its helm, and by 1989 Gordon expanded the company by buying land and building a manufacturing plant in Cleveland County, North Carolina, approximately a half hour west of Charlotte, where he maintains a second residence. His two sons, Adrian and Jeremy, have been working for the company for several years, making it now a 4th-generation family firm.

Bardet said “Pioneer is fortunate to have so many long-term employees, beginning with our Vice President and Chief of Operations, Steve Bonino, now in his 47th year with the company, and our Production Manager, Ralph Martinez, in his 34th year. Ray strengthens our senior management team with his broad international and domestic industry and management experience growing companies and alliances. That’s important for us because we have been facing many challenges as our sales have grown significantly. And, of course, any new manager brings to a mature company a fresh pair of eyes. We are very fortunate to have a professional of his caliber on our team.”

About Pioneer Motor Bearing Company
Pioneer provides customers, both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and end users, bearing engineering, manufacturing, repair and training expertise to help them design, build, maintain and upgrade large rotating equipment to operate more efficiently and reliably over an extended life. Among other types of bearings, the company designs and builds thrust bearing assemblies that support loads up to and in excess of 1,000,000 pounds. In the “green energy” sector of hydroelectric power generation its customers include virtually all the major hydroelectric OEMs and end users throughout North America. Pioneer is a licensee of Siemens Energy, Inc. (Orlando, FL) and Alstom Power (USA) and is the exclusive American alliance partner of Michell Bearings of the UK (a member of the Rolls-Royce Group). Pioneer’s proprietary designs include the Fluid Pivot® tilting pad journal bearing.

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Actually, Day had already been working for us for over three years as an engineering co-op student while earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. “I was very lucky to have a co-op job in a company where the caliber of mechanical engineering expertise was equal to that of the faculty at Clemson. Lyle has taken me under his wing and inspired me to obtain a Masters degree.”

While serving three successive co-op terms with Pioneer, Day integrated his classroom study with transformative experiential-learning opportunities, which included research to enable him to design various test rigs and test fixtures. He modified our twin bearing rotor dynamics test stand and built a device to test, measure and compare the wear characteristics of tin-based babbitt with TegoStar738®.

Unlike so many others at Pioneer who are from all parts of the country, Day was born 23 years ago in Charlotte, North Carolina. Raised by parents who had established their own engineering business in the textile industry, Day knows what it means to “wear many hats” in a small business. His parents and sister still live in the Charlotte region. While attending Charlotte Latin High School, he excelled in physics and math (while enjoying art and Spanish as well), which influenced his decision to elect an engineering major after entering Clemson in 2006. Day learned to manage his time well, somehow being able to handle the competing demands of his academic schedule, co-op jobs with Pioneer and the party schedule of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity of which he was a member.

In his spare time Day enjoys the outdoor activities of hiking, rock climbing and backpacking in the Appalachian Mountains, which are only 70 minutes from Pioneer’s plant in Kings Mountain. When he’s inside, he enjoys cars, particularly old ones that may need work. With the growth in the demands on our engineering department, we’re not sure he’ll get much time to work on his ’51 in- line six cylinder Chevy, but everyone needs a dream as his or her career takes off on a flying start.

The workshop was attended by close to 30 people, from nearly as many companies, including operating hydroelectric plants and major OEM’s (original equipment manufacturers). Fred Wiesinger (Technical Services Manager, Pioneer Motor Bearing) moderated the event encouraging active participation with several short case histories. Dr. Chris Ettles (Professor Emeritus, RPI, New York) opened with some notes describing the fundamental parameters for thrust bearing sizing. Chuck Wiley (retired Chief Engineer, Hoover Dam, United States Bureau of Reclamation) responded to audience discussion of oil deposits with a description of his previous program for oil sampling and monitoring. During a discussion of emerging technologies related to bearings, Bob Knox (retired Technical Director, Michell Bearings) outlined experience with PTFE as a thrust bearing liner. Dr. Lyle Branagan (Engineering Manager, Pioneer Motor Bearing) illustrated the results of anisotropy on the appearance of thrust bearing surfaces after service. Many participants expressed an interest in a longer workshop on the subject.

Moreover, the molten metal in the Babomatic is constantly agitated to avoid metal segregation and is bottom poured to exclude dross from the bore of the bearing shell. This new machine incorporates safety features not typically available on comparable machines, including a full steel shroud (not pictured here during installation) to enable us to contain the largest bearing, dual emergency shut-off switches, and additional retention rollers. With this increase in capacity, hydroelectric customers can obtain the top quality centrifugal casting on the larger bearings (or bearings with large flanges) currently available to customers with large steam generation bearings.

Click image for larger view of the drive wheel

Tegostar 738 is a registered trade name of Eckagranules

If we are alive, energetic, healthy, pay attention to our world and have an inquisitive mind, there is much to learn in every facet of our existence. This is especially true in our professional careers where a substantial amount of our lifetime is invested and where a constant challenge and a real opportunity are available to improve both our personal and our company’s business performance.

During my early professional and developmental employment years when I was advancing my career in sales management for a small manufacturer’s rep company, I came across perhaps the single greatest 20th century management consultant, Peter Drucker. His articles frequently showed up in all the business trade magazines including The Harvard Business Review. He made a profound impact because of his easy and simple to understand concepts. Nearly 20 years before the founding of Microsoft, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” to describe the ever growing cadre of employees who now labored more with their brains, rather than their hands. Later in his life, he considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management!

My 45-year long odyssey and business career began after graduating from Drexel University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a mechanical engineering degree and thereafter with initial positions of responsibility in engineering design, manufacturing engineering, long term production planning and production scheduling control management. However, it was not until 1974, when I accidently discovered a new technical sales position working for a growing manufacturer’s rep company supporting the sale of fluid film bearings, vibration monitoring tools, diagnostic equipment and high speed couplings to the power generation and refining industries, that my lifework drastically changed even to this day.

In these formative years of learning the various products and their applications to large pumps, motors, steam and gas turbines, high speed gear boxes and other and critical rotating machinery, my company owner said one of the best and more meaningful ways to be successful is to “learn most” from your customers, by carefully listening to their needs and the problems they need to resolve. How true a statement at that time!

I did not realize how profound this advice would become over my extended business career. We need to pose thoughtful questions to our customers, carefully listen to their answers, take notes and then to further clarify and refine our understanding. Actually, it’s quite a simple technique. Even in today’s world of small niche companies, including a high degree of specialization and where it is often thought that we “know everything”, we still frequently learn from our customers every single day. Sometimes it is just the smallest detail, but it can drastically change the outcome or the solution to a bearing problem or an operating condition of a critical machine at a power plant.

In 1984, I had the great fortune to participate in a small company sales conference (in Hawaii of all places) to hear Robert Waterman, co-author with Tom Peters, of one the classic business books, “In Search of Excellence”, published by Harper & Row in 1982. Mr. Waterman gave a two hour summary of the key concepts of this best-seller. At the time, it was the “industry standard” and still remains one of the biggest selling and mostly widely read business management books ever published.

A few of the classic comments from this business management masterpiece of the best run companies about listening are:

• “The excellent companies are better listeners.”
• “The best companies are pushed around by their customers and they love it.”
• “So the better companies are not only better on service, quality, reliability and finding a niche. They are better listeners.”

Today, more than ever, customers depend on Pioneer Motor Bearing as a niche fluid film bearing company with very specialized and customized services to help them enhance and extend the reliability of their rotating machinery. And in this capacity, we are and must continue to be dedicated to listening to our customers’ concerns and requirements so that we can act together with them to make them an even more competitive and respected force in the marketplace, in their “search for excellence.”

To improve machinery operations and maintenance over the long term, we train maintenance personnel on bearing fundamentals and bearing damage, using a syllabus Pioneer created to help identify a variety of bearing damage mechanisms. We also train end user and OEM maintenance engineers on advanced topics, such as rotordynamics and specific guide and thrust bearing issues.

We tailor courses to fit the customer’s allotted time and subjects of interest, from half-day to two full days. We also offer industry wide workshops. In addition, our engineers are often lead speakers at conferences.

If you are interested in learning more about bearings commonly in operation in hydroelectric power plants and are planning to attend the “HydroVision International 2010” this summer in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A., don’t miss the pre-conference Hydroelectric Thrust and Guide Bearing Workshop on Monday, July 26, organized and hosted by Pioneer Motor Bearing Company. (PUT THE WEB LINK HERE)

This will be an interactive discussion among attendees and a distinguished panel of fluid film bearing experts from the U.S. and the U.K. who specialize in the analysis, design, application and maintenance of bearings in hydroelectric turbines and generators. For more information contact us at (PUT THE WEB LINK HERE)