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It was a decision point that would determine the rest of his career. Curt Howell spent two days in the office of a Chrysler Corp. manufacturing executive during college that changed his life. “After two days of interviews back in the 1980s when they were looking to put more people with higher education and higher degrees into manufacturing, he told me if I wasn’t mining or farming or manufacturing, I was going to be non-value-added and that I needed to consider my life’s purpose, and I believed that,” Howell recalls.

“I thought to myself, ‘I do want to be part of the solution and make America stronger,’ so I entered manufacturing out of an MBA program, and I have never regretted it a single day,” he insists, although he admits he had to work in some of the tougher automotive plants in Detroit. “It’s a great profession, it’s an important part of our country, and it makes us stronger.”

Howell now is president and CEO of Stant Corp., which designs and manufactures vapor and fluid control components such as radiator, oil filler and fuel caps, thermostats, onboard refueling vapor recovery valves, carbon canisters, water outlets, and testers for fuel, cooling systems and automotive pressure. He joined the company in October 2010 from American Axle, where he ran a $2 billion profit-and-loss drive line division.

“I thought Stant was an additional opportunity to be a CEO and to look at entering a new technology and phase of my career,” Howell says. “I’m very pleased with the people, technology and attitude of the team here. We have a great drive to win, and I’m very happy to be here.”

Engineering Solutions

Stant Corp. has an extensive product design and manufacturing engineering staff besides its manufacturing capability. “I like to say we’re an engineering solutions company that manufactures our product, as well,” explains Mark Smith, vice president of global operations. The company designs and manufactures original equipment products for new cars as well as for the aftermarket.

“The design engineers are working on future products for 2015 and later models,” points out Becky Blakley, director of aftermarket.

“Our caps are designed in such a way to make sure the fuel lights don’t go off and we don’t have permeation into the atmosphere and the environment,” Smith explains. “The technology we designed in for safety has quite a few elements that other folks don’t have.” The company’s original equipment gas cap designs are used for the aftermarket product.

“We are experts in fuel systems - not just the cap, the entire system side,” Smith emphasizes. 

“We understand vapor management and all types of fuel products - from valves to tanks to pipes to caps - so all that knowledge is incorporated into the design side. That allows us to have the absolute best cap on the market. We don’t compete on price - we win on quality and being the best at what we do.”

Manufacturing Expertise

On the manufacturing side, Stant Corp. has achieved ISO 14001/TS16949 certification. “It’s a very stringent quality process or system audit that takes place that assures we are in compliance with the highest standards,” Smith says.

Howell points out that the company’s defect rate is 10 parts per million across the board, which is at a level close to what is specified for pharmaceutical products.

 The company has problem-solving groups and internal programs for continuous improvement, such as Six Sigma, and practices lean principles, Smith notes. One example he cites of technical improvement is physically moving and completely streamlining the layout of the calibration unit for the company’s thermostat business. 

“We’ve taken 40 different assembly processes and restructured this in such a way to create a better flow and more fluid material processing through that department,” Howell describes. 

“We’ve connected processes that were disconnected. We’re taking out what we consider waste in our continuous improvement in that operation.” Robotics are used along with a high level of technology in the product design of the element itself, he says.

“It is unlike anything anybody else has in the world,” Smith declares. “It’s a magnitude of five to 10 times more accurate than the rest of the industry out there is doing.” Former tolerances of 50 or 60 thousandths of an inch have been reduced to 1 or 2 thousandths of an inch, according to Smith.

Different Operations

Among the manufacturing operations Stant Corp. performs at its seven facilities worldwide are plastics injection molding, blow-molding, metal forming, stamping and bending, plating and assembly. “We actually build the majority of all our assembly equipment that goes through our platform on the design side,” Smith points out.

Stant Corp.’s manufacturing plants range in size from 40,000 square feet up to 250,000 square feet. One each is in China, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. The largest of these is in Pine Bluff, Ark. Approximately 85 percent of the company’s aftermarket products are manufactured in the United States.