Decrease font Decrease font
Decrease font Decrease font
Enlarge font Enlarge font
Enlarge font Enlarge font

CEO Bob Cremin builds Esterline from the bottom upCremin started Esterline's turnaround in 1997 by selling off noncore holdings and shrinking the company by more than half.

“We want to stay in niches,” Cremin told an audience of about 100 international students, faculty and staff at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We know what we’re good at, and we know what we should not venture into.”

Cremin approached plant workers after the selloffs and asked them to slash other things in half — the cycle time to process an order, the floor space needed to work, the amount of paperwork employees had to fill out and even the size and weight of components manufactured for prize customers such as Airbus, Boeing, the U.S. Department of Defense and the British Ministry of Defense.

While Cremin slashed some things, he poured money into other endeavors — starting with research and development. From 1997 to 2008, Esterline’s R&D budget more than quintupled from $20 million to $105 million.

The result? Annual sales at Esterline have soared by almost tenfold since the selloffs, from $155 million in 1997 to more than $1.5 billion today. About half of the sales originate outside or are exported from the United States to places such as Canada, the United Kingdom and France.

The ledgers look good, but Cremin told the Thunderbird audience that he doesn’t spend much time fretting over numbers. Instead, he makes people his top priority.

“If you do the right things, the numbers in your life will follow,” he said.

Visit the Thunderbird Knowledge Network for audio, video and a longer version of this story.