Viking West is dedicated to the engineering and manufacturing of attachments, guarding and aftermarket parts for Hitachi Construction Machinery. In this interview with Mike Schlender, President of Viking West, we’ll find out why.
Viking West:
A lot has happened at Viking West in the last year. Can you tell me about the experience you’ve had — the highlights and the low lights if you want. We’d like to hear your perspective on the many changes over this past year.
Mike Schlender:
This past year has been another super exciting year for Viking West. We certainly have not been exempted from the havoc that the CoVID pandemic caused, but overall, we have faired pretty well. We’re still struggling with supply chain stability and inflation; but, we’ve seen pretty steady growth on the demand side, and we have managed to strengthen our customer relationships.
We added a distribution center in Mississauga so that is a milestone for the business; but, as you would expect, this has required some changes in how we work. Happy to say that all in all, things are going very well.
The highlights would be the growth and the chance to add some new personalities and skill sets to the team. The low lights would be challenges with supply.
Viking West:
Let’s talk about the people at Viking West. I know that your growth has necessitated some changes and obviously you brought some new people on. Let’s start with the Mississauga location. How did you staff that?
Mike Schlender:
From a strategy perspective, we prefer a walk before we run approach to growing the business, so this is what we will do in Mississauga. We are starting small and making it a priority to have the right people and processes in place before we stretch our wings. We were fortunate to have one of our most senior employees express an interest to relocate and assume a lead role in getting this new location up and running. Borys had been doing an outstanding job for us in Vancouver so we were sad to see him go, but he has a lot of experience with our products, and understands customer service, so he was a great fit for this new challenge. We then hired some local talent who was a referral from our Regional Operations Manager in BC. Mark is a first class gentlemen with a deep resume of operations experience. We feel very fortunate to have these two guys as the backbone for this new location.
Viking West:
Great. In terms of new staff at the head office, you’ve had some new people come in there as well. Are you able to give us some insight on some of those folks?
Mike Schlender:
Sure can, we are really proud of the success we have had on the recruiting front. Of course, it is never easy to find talent, and this is especially true now, but our track record of converting top prospects to new team members has been exceptional. We added a seasoned Logistics Manager to our Supply Management group and an experienced and delightful Account Rep in BC to backfill for Borys. We added a Manufacturing Manager who has more than 25 years experience working with Hitachi excavators and a Design Engineer with industry experience in excavator attachment design. We added two Mechanical Engineering Undergrad students for the summer to give them some exposure to the industry we love, and added a Marketing Manager to help us share our story with the world. So, there’s been a lot of new hires.
Viking West:
Viking West has been growing a lot and that’s great. You mentioned that you had strategic planning session earlier this year. What can you share about what came out of those sessions?
Mike Schlender:
We came out of that event with a focus on operational excellence, customer service, culture and growth which we call our pillars. To support these pillars, we either launched or doubled down on a number of projects that we call foundation projects. The result is a short list of priorities around ERP optimization, lean manufacturing, product and customer support, new product development and Health & Safety and each having a clear and realistic execution plan.
Viking West:
That’s big! So out of those strategic discussions, a business strategy around target markets and product development was under consideration, is that correct?
Mike Schlender:
Well, yes. We reaffirmed our commitment to Hitachi construction machinery and Hitachi construction machinery dealers, for our construction and forestry business. So our entire product development process is structured to ensure that the products we’re providing are exactly what owners of Hitachi equipment need.
Viking West:
Now it may not have been a complete turnabout of what you had been doing previously; but, did you make that decision after attending CONEXPO this year? Or had you already made the decision to be hyper-focus on authorized Hitachi dealers prior to CONEXPO? In other words, did Con Expo have any influence, or was it just a comfort knowing that you had made the right decision?
Mike Schlender:
More of a comfort thing that we made the right decision. It has been our strategy from the start to develop a product line for Hitachi construction machinery. We know that this differentiates us from a lot of the competition in our space. The typical approach is to try and serve multiple competing dealers and try to be experts on multiple construction machinery brands. We knew that strategy was not right for us; but, when we went to CONEXPO and saw Hitachi’s booths, and met more of the Hitachi Construction Machinery America team, it absolutely reaffirmed our commitment. We knew we made the right choice. It’s a great team to work with.
Viking West:
Yeah for sure. Just tracking social media for Viking West, and seeing some of the interaction, was pretty awesome to see.
Now that your business strategy is coming to the forefront, in terms of focusing on authorized Hitachi dealers and Hitachi Construction machinery, what makes Viking West stand out against your competition because there are other companies that produce and manufacture attachments for Hitachi equipment. Why is Viking West the better option?
Mike Schlender:
I think we have a unique back story. If I lead with myself, my journey with Hitachi started in 1999 when I joined a Hitachi Joint Venture company at a factory in Canada. I started as a young engineer, a welding engineer, and in my 15 years there I progressed through manufacturing, engineering, production, supervision and ultimately Factory General Manager. So, I worked with the Hitachi product and many Hitachi engineers, managers and executives throughout that time. I had the opportunity to travel to Hitachi factories and all over the world. I became very familiar with the product and how Hitachi does business.
That factory served North, Central, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Russia and our products were distributed in all those countries through authorized dealers. I have experience and networks with the people in those dealerships. I understand to a degree how those dealerships work, how they like to interact with customers and suppliers, and above all, I know they’re all really good people. It was kind of natural for me to want to continue that when I started Viking West.
But our experience extends far beyond me. For example, a cornerstone of our design engineering group is a brilliant engineer that I worked with at the Hitachi Joint Venture company since 1999. Prior to that he worked for Hitachi Construction Machinery in Japan for seven years as a Design Engineer. Which means he has been working with Hitachi since 1992. Our Manufacturing Manager also worked at the Hitachi JV since 2001 and our Strategic Supply Chain Manager came from a company that has supplied Hitachi with heavy fabrications since 2006. I think we are unique from our competitors in the depth and breadth of experience we have in working with Hitachi, and Hitachi dealers.
Viking West:
Viking West has had tremendous success in Canada serving Wajax, which is Hitachi Construction Machineries only Authorized Dealer and whose territory is the entire country, and you have recently started working with a number of authorized Hitachi dealers in the US. In terms of your growth strategy, can you elaborate a little bit about the US market and what you’ll focus on first? Can you tell us about that a little bit, Mike?
Mike Schlender:
Right. First off, it is a very interesting time for the Hitachi dealer network in the US with the dissolution of the Hitachi and John Deere Joint Venture for the Americas. So Hitachi Construction Machinery America has been aggressively growing their presence in North America: they’ve been networking with existing dealers, and onboarding new dealers, in a way they haven’t in the past. They are spending more time focusing on their product offering in North America then maybe they have in the past. That makes this a unique time for us to be right there with HCMA as they grow and improve their footprint in North America. We can be right there with some of the new Hitachi dealers that have come on board to join this opportunity that has been created for them. In the US, we know who Hitachi selects and authorizes as a dealer, so our strategy is really just to try to befriend and support those dealers. We can let them know what we can do, tell them what we’re good at, and try to find ways that we can help them. That may mean we help them with our current products, or to understand their pain points to develop unique requirements for their business, unique to how they do business, or unique to the market they operate in. I think geographically there’s no real priority. The dealers we’re working with so far, are geographically closest to us, closer to the border and in Alaska; but, we’re reaching out to dealers all across the US.
Viking West:
Now getting back to Con Expo, obviously Hitachi had an awesome display, both indoors and outdoors, but is there anything that you can share in terms of their new products? I know that you mentioned the Dash-7. Is there anything that you want to share about what they are bringing out and how Viking West is going to accommodate those new products?
Mike Schlender:
Right. It’s super exciting! I mean they’ve got a complete new lineup of Zaxis-7 and ZW-7, the latest generation of Excavator and Wheel Loaders. Yeah, it’s a fabulous product. We learned a lot about it at the show. Super excited to get those out and serving customers. But there will be some changes to the products that we supply so we are working with Hitachi to collect the information we need to make sure we’re ready with our products for when these new generation machines launch in North America.
I was just in the UK, where they’ve been selling Dash-7’s for about a year now, so I got to spend some time with the machines there, that are being delivered to customers, or being outfitted with the kind of accessories that we supply, so I had a chance to see how that’s working and get some insight from the Hitachi dealer in the UK, which was very helpful.
Viking West:
Awesome! So, going back to your plans for expansion, you’ve been doing a lot of traveling this year. You mentioned that you’ve been to the US and elsewhere around the world. Are there any other things that you want to mention about your expansion plans for markets outside of Canada ?
Mike Schlender:
We won’t be reckless. We know we have limitations for how fast we can grow. We don’t want to disappoint customers along the way. We will focus on the US — that’s closest to us — and the UK is a market we’ve done business in for more than 10 years as well (on the renewable energy side of things) so we have infrastructure in place in the UK, which makes it a relatively easy market to also focus on; but, that will be the limit of our appetite for the near future.
Viking West:
A lot of great information here and great insight from you. Thanks for your time today, Mike.
So now you know why Viking West is dedicated to the engineering and manufacturing of attachments, guarding and aftermarket parts for Hitachi Construction Machinery. Watch our video to find out more.
