WireCo Expansion Creates Need for More Workers

WireCo WorldGroup’s recent expansion has generated a need to hire an additional 15 employees at its Sedalia plant, located at 24160 Oak Grove Lane.

“We’re looking for 15 qualified machine operators,” said Plant Manager Rob Nezdoba, who has worked for WireCo for two year and specifically at the Sedalia wire rope facility since January.

Other WireCo facilities are located at Chillicothe and Kirksville. Chillicothe is where the Sedalia plant gets most of its raw product.

“And we have our distribution center just up the road here,” Nezdoba said of the WireCo facility in the Thomson Meadows Industrial Park. “We share a building with Stanley Black & Decker.”

Nezboda noted that “We’ve installed a bunch of new equipment here in the plant, multiple machines. What’s kind of exciting about it for me from the plant manager perspective is that this is the first plant where we’ve actually designed for flow. We’ve built machines that feed the machines next to them. So it’s really all about cutting lead time for our customers, and improving our on-time delivery. Manufacturing in cells is a big improvement over how we’ve been doing it traditionally.”

Nezboda noted that one of the biggest time wasters is moving materials from one area of the plant to another. “And the farther you have to move it, the longer it takes and the more expensive it is. So having machines that are set up to feed one another is a huge improvement,” he said.

WireCo has a huge footprint on American construction projects. One in particular is the George Washington Bridge which WireCo supplied bridge strand for in New York.

“We actually manufactured all the cables that hold it up,” Nezdoba said proudly, adding that “we’re in hundreds, if not thousands of bridges across the US.”

Nezboda went on to point out that WireCo is manufacturing the cables for Arizona’s Diamondback Stadium. The one with the retractable dome. “We just finished making the (wire) rope for that. So we do a lot of custom work, but also standard stuff they use in mining and drilling across different end markets,” he said.

The plant manger said that about 99 percent of what is manufactured goes to the local WireCo distribution facility. It is then shipped out across the USA through various trucking companies.

NASA's Orion spacecraft uses 3/8 inch wire rope for its capsule parachutes made by WireCo right here in Sedalia. It has the highest strength-to-weight ratio that stainless steel rope can provide, it was noted.

In addition to the 15 to 20 new hires expected to be added to the payroll soon, Nezdoba said that WireCo has already hired about 40 workers since January.

“We’re looking for people who are dedicated, of course, but also technically savvy,” he stated.

To that point, VP of Marketing and Communications Director Dan Burch said that WireCo has created a new training center in the past couple of months so that new employees don’t have to necessarily know how to make wire rope when they walk in the door for the first time. The training center has a smaller version of a wire stranding machine that they will be operating on the main floor that they can work with until they get proficient and comfortable with it.

“It’s helped with retention and morale a lot and make it a really good place to work,” Nezdoba stressed.

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WireCo currently runs three shifts. Nezdoba explained that  there is a day shift and night shift Monday though Thursday, and a 12-hour shift on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. “So there’s no night shift on the weekends,” he noted, adding that future plans may necessitate adding another shift as production increases even more.

“For the team members who do work on the weekend, they’re basically working a 36-hour week, and getting paid for 40 hours of work,” Nezdoba stated.

To apply for a job at WireCo, simply go here and learn about current openings here in Sedalia and elsewhere. Also Indeed and LinkedIn are good places to look for employment.