* Stanley Rolleder is a slight man of 73 with silvery hair, impeccable manners, and courtly old-world charm. He was an attorney in Poland before World War II, but for the past 36 years he has been employed by Intermatic. When he tried to retire in 1978, Miller sat him down for a friendly chat, saying Rolleder was welcome to stay and work as long as he'd like.
"Honestly speaking, I would like to work on a part-time basis," Rolleder remembers saying. "I would even like to suggest what my job is supposed to be." For years, Rolleder had noticed good things -- pieces of wire, plastic spools, wooden skids -- going to waste. Now he wanted to do something about it. Miller bought the notion. Today, as a retired employee, Rolleder, with his inspired recycling, has come up with measures that save Intermatic more than $200,000 a year.
* Ray Neil, of Tri-Pack, is not, strictly speaking, a member of the Intermatic family. But try telling him that. Each year, he attends Vendor Appreciation Day, at which Miller discusses the company's standing in detail. Last October, he was accorded a rare distinction: membership in the company's Quarter Century Club, an honor ordinarily reserved for 25-year employees. "It was exciting," he remembers, "a complete surprise."
"Our employee-relations policies and programs have been the key to our growth and profitability," Miller wrote in a company handbook. "No other single factor is as important to our continued survival and success." At Intermatic, the list of employee benefits and perks sounds like a high-tech "workstyle" company gone wild. There are programs that pay workers to shed pounds, as well as free eye exams and glasses, aerobics classes, and golf lessons.There is an outdoor exercise course, an indoor track, and tennis courts. Employees can belong to an arts-and-culture club, can take classes in cash management at the plant or be reimbursed for college courses, and can shop at a company-subsidized store that carries such items as jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps.
News of such programs gets around. "I remember calling on a buyer for W.T. Grant Co. in New York," says Ferguson, of marketing. "He says, 'Intermatic? Is your president's name Miller?' I said, 'Yep.' He said, 'I was just reading about his smoking program in The New York Times." Miller regularly bets smokers up to $100 that they can't quit -- and is happy to pay off if they do.
Production workers, who operate on an incentive system, average 135% of their base pay, with some making as much as 180%. Total hourly compensation averages $7.80, with benefits averaging another $2.73 an hour -- making Intermatic employees among the best paid in McHenry County. Not surprisingly, Intermatic is a popular place to work. Annual turnover, the company says, is only 3% as compared with an average for other manufacturing companies of about 5%.
Miller has made an occasional major mistake, and despite his success, his company still faces some unanswered questions. Among the mistakes was Intermatic's acquisition, in 1978, of W.R. Brown Inc., a Chicago maker of paint-spraying equipment. That stretched the company's resources too far. "For five years, the results were terrible," says Kinney. "We lost about $2.5 million pretax during that period." In August 1984, members of Brown's management -- convinced that they could not survive under Intermatic -- executed a leveraged buyout of the company. "I guess we weren't as smart as we thought," muses Miller.
In a move with more modest ambitions, Intermatic helped finance the leveraged buyout of Paragon Electric Co., of Two Rivers, Wis., one of its domestic adversaries. Intermatic made the $800,000 investment, Miller says, not because it had plans for the company but because it was leery of plans hatched overseas. "We like a marketplace," he explains, "where each of the players has particular strengths, is healthy, and isn't forced to do stupid things." Like sell out to someone named Sankyo or Mitsubishi.
The threat of electronic products -- which, though they aren't yet competitive may nonetheless supplant electromechanical devices one day -- obviously remains a primary concern. Intermatic hired its first electronics engineer just eight years ago; today it has an electronics department and is fielding its own electronic products, a line recently acquired from a U.S. company. Intermatic designs electrical timers and has them made in the Orient. "I'm dedicated to bringing the electronics back to Spring Grove," Miller asserts; "We'll reduce the labor content to the point where we'll be able to do it here."
In the long run, of course, the biggest unanswered question is how well this unusual company will do without its unusual leader. Two year ago, Intermatic hired Vinyard, the former president of Culligan Water Conditioning Inc., as Miller's designated heir. For a year, the two men felt one another out, assessing weaknesses, strengths, and compatibility. Last year, Vinyard, age 51, took over the presidency and responsibility for daily operations. But Miller, only five years older, remains as chairman and chief executive officer.
For now, the company's revenues keep growing 15% or so each year, and potential foreign competitors are kept at bay. And Miller, after 16 years, is nothing if not confident about the future. "We've got a system here that works, and that will perpetuate itself," he avers.
Then, thinking about the foreign competitors who have brought so many American companies like Intermatic to their knees, he adds, "Let's not forget we can compete with these people. "We're going to beat them. We're going to win."
