SRC Holdings Honored with Missouri Association of Manufacturers Hall of Fame Award
The inaugural award validates the role of remanufacturing in driving sustainable economic development.
The manufacturing sector continues to drive the Missouri economy. The nearly 7,000 companies spread throughout the state account for some $38 billion worth of annual gross product for the state. Just as importantly, these same companies, which operate in sectors that range from aerospace and automobiles to food and beverage and pharmaceuticals, have created more than 266,000 good-paying jobs for Missouri residents.
To help celebrate the individuals and companies that continue to power the state’s economy, the Missouri Association of Manufacturers (MAM) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2023 by inducting its inaugural Hall of Fame class.
One notable aspect of this cohort is that a remanufacturing company, SRC Holdings, was honored alongside globally known manufacturing brands like Coca-Cola and Boeing.
The Importance of Remanufacturing
While it can sometimes be overlooked in the world of manufacturing, the remanufacturing or “reman” industry has long served as a valuable complement to original equipment manufacturers or OEMs.
The reman industry plays an integral role in keeping damaged, broken, or worn-out equipment like electronic components or automobile and truck engines out of scrap yards and landfills by putting those products back to work again—typically with price tags that can be 30% to 60% cheaper than new products.
Reman companies also continue to push and find new and innovative methods to work efficiently, saving energy and recycling materials, while giving customers good-as-new and even better-than-new product alternatives.
That work makes a positive impact on the world.
Reman is also a major employer across the country. There are an estimated 180,000 people currently employed by reman companies—with more than 450,000 employed globally. In sum, the global reman industry earns some $160 billion in revenues per year, according to the Remanufacturing Industries Council, or RIC, an alliance of large and small businesses that operate in a broad range of industry sectors.
A 41-Year Track Record of Success
The remanufacturing operation honored with that induction in the inaugural MAM Hall of Fame class, SRC Holdings in Springfield, has continued a remarkable journey since its founding in 1983 when the single-factory engine remanufacturing operation spun itself out of its parent company, International Harvester, through an employee-led, leveraged buyout. Today, SRC Holdings is a growing conglomerate of 10 companies, including several joint ventures, which collectively employ more than 2,000 associates. The company is also 100% owned by its associates.
One of the reasons SRC’s story stands out is its culture, which is built on financial transparency and the education and engagement of its employee-owners through the leadership system they call The Great Game of Business.
Another standout element of SRC is that it has become one of the leading remanufacturing companies in the country serving customers in agricultural, industrial, construction, truck, marine, and automotive markets. The SRC family of companies’ expertise has also expanded into sectors complementary to reman such as warehousing, logistics, core management, kitting and packaging, and material salvaging.
SRC is also leading the way in bringing more awareness to employment opportunities in the reman industry to a new generation of workers through partnerships with local educational institutions like Ozarks Technical Community College.
“We are now running and have classrooms inside our factory that are available to high school juniors and seniors who want to understand manufacturing and remanufacturing,” says Jack Stack, the president and CEO of SRC Holdings, who accepted the MAM award on behalf of SRC’s employee-owners. “We are building bridges between kids that at one time thought a factory was a place they did not want to be. We are showing them that a factory of today isn’t a factory of the industrial revolution.”
An Industry Worth Celebrating
What’s exciting is that by recognizing the reman industry through SRC’s hall-of-fame induction, MAM, and other manufacturing associations like it, are helping to recognize and validate an essential industry that sometimes goes overlooked.
That’s a cause worth celebrating on April 11, 2024, with Global Reman Day, which was established to celebrate the reman industry through a series of remanufacturer-hosted events and workforce development initiatives held around the world.