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November 8-9, 2011

Ontario Convention Center

Ontario, California

ADDITIONAL EVENTS:

November 8 2011  COPSWEST Annual Charity BBQ
Ontario Convention Center

November 10, 2011  COPSWEST Annual LA County
Sheriff’s Police Vehicle Test Day
Auto Club Speedway, Fontana

Whelen Engineering’s John Olson shows how U.S. manufacturing can thrive

http://www.nhbr.com/news/933493-395/whelen-engineerings-john-olson-shows-how-u.s..html

By Jeff Woodburn

Friday, September 23, 2011

‘The low-wage argument doesn’t fly,’ says John Olson, CEO of Whelen Engineering on how the U.S. can compete with offshore manufacturers. ‘Canada and Europe are succeeding at manufacturing.’ (Photo by Annie Card)

Two things make John Olson angry — questions about retirement and the passive acceptance that U.S. manufacturing is dying.

Olson, the president and CEO of Whelen Engineering Company, of Charlestown, N.H., and Chester, Conn. — one of the state’s most successful, innovative manufacturing companies, with over 1,200 employees — scoffs at both suggestions with equal gruffness.

At first glance, the 72-year-old Olson seems more like a relic than a revolutionary. He’s worked at the same company for 53 years and has seen many of his fellow manufacturers go under or move offshore. But Whelen Engineering has not merely survived, it has dramatically expanded while staying true to its niche as a provider of emergency lighting to the aircraft industry and public safety sector.

Whelen Engineering is the only major U.S. manufacturer of emergency warning equipment that still makes its products entirely in the United States.

"He is rabid about making things in the USA," said George Bald, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development. "(It’s) amazing. He refuses to buy any components offshore. If he can’t find a U.S. supplier, he makes it himself."

When Olson left the University of New Hampshire in 1958, armed with a mechanical engineering degree, U.S. manufacturing ruled — and he was, like his college roommate, Wendell Jesseman, CEO of New England Wire Technologies, destined to make things.

Back then, the majority of New Hampshire’s workforce was employed in manufacturing industries.

"I lived through World War II," he said. "Our ability to win the war was (based) on our capacity to manufacture. Everything we needed we manufactured."

Ambulance lights

After college, Olson went to work for George Whelen III, who in 1952 began developing the earliest rotating strobe lighting for anti-collision aircraft beacons.