Thread: Monarch employment level, June 15, 1937

To clarify, Monarch started in 1909 in Sidney Ohio. In 1963 they bought the Edlund Corp, and in 1968 built the new plant in Cortland. In 1973 Monarch bought Dean Smith and Grace, and Sometime in the late '60's bought Stamco. Around 1994 Monarch bought the assets of Lodge and Shipley, and about the same time closed DS&G. The lathe division in Sidney was sold to Lucas and became Monarch Lathe LP. Monarch Machine Tool became Geniuses World Wide, and the Cortland plant being named Monarch Machine Tool, which Geniuses sold off in 2000. Geniuses World Wide then went bankrupt in 2002.

Sidney Machine was never owned by Monarch or Lucas. The rights to Sidney is own by a company in PA.

Confusion was caused by Monarch named thier divisions by their location, thus Monarch Sidney and Monarc Cortland.

Today Monarch Lathe still shows the EE on their web site, but also show selling Eurpean machines on their web site, and Monarch Machine Tool is doing the same. I would like to know the ownership of Monarch Machine tool and where they are located right now, since they have sold their factory to Prytec (sp).

Originally Posted by Joe Michaels

There is a split in the Monarch name. The Monarch plant in Cortland, NY is still in operation in some incarnation. They took over the Edlund corporation, which made drill presses. Now, Monarch in Cortland, NY offers CNC machining centers. I sue the word "offers" as I am unsure whether they actually build them there or get them from offshore OEM's. They note in their own webiste that they got their start in vertical machining centers from the Edlund drill presses which were originally made at the Cortland plant. Monarch (the lathe maker), took over Edlund in the late 1960's. Monarch Machine Tool is the owner/operators of the Cortland, NY plant.

Somewhere in all this, Lucas Precision was formed out of the remains of a number of machine tool manufacturers, Monarch lathe in this mix. Lucas Precision owned the rights and remaining assets of the lathe builders: Monarch, Sidney, and Lodge and Shipley. They also owned the rights and assets of Carlton radial drill and a few other machine tool builders. They were based out of Sidney, OH and had operations there and in a portion of the old Warner and Swasey plant in Cleveland. In the W & S plant, they had a small fraction of the buildings. Lucas precision had set up some machine tools and production machining to make parts for the various machine tools they included in their lineup. Outside, in the yard, they had a number of unmachined raw castings for the various machine tools. These were left from the last days of each machine tool builder when they were in their original incarnations.

Now, if you Google "Monarch Lathe", you find yet another incarnation. Monarch is back in Sidney, and they are marketing Weiler lathes with their name on them. In addition, the include the 10EE in their current lineup. Whether these are used/factory rebuilt 10EE's, or 10EE's made from the remaining stock of castings, or totally new 10EE's is not stated. Monarch, for the most part, appears to be badging lathes made offshore.

It is kind of confusing to keep track of Monarch's various splitups and incarnations.

Monarch was always a big player in Exports. From their early days, they hit the export market hard and developed a world wide network early in their history. This paid huge during the first world war and even more before the second.

Yes,and the Nazi machine shops were full of Pratt & Whitney lathes and other USA stuff,too.

this is on my 1945 Reed Prentice lathe.... with all the talk of the war production board i just thought it was relevant haha

Originally Posted by Marty Feldman

If you're asking how many people are working for Monarch Machine Tool turning out those solid old machines we all love to run, the answer is none. Here, in erratic English, is a thumbnail sketch of the company's march from stardom to oblivion (quoted from wiki.answers.com).

"The Monarch Machine Tool company was founded at 614 Oak St in Sidney Ohio in 1909. It would become a leading producer of engine and toolroom lathes ranging from swings of 10" to 30"+. Monarch was a leader in lathe development by patenting the cone clutches found on all lathe aprons for controlling the longitudinal and cross side feeds. Monarch also pioneer the use of helical gears in the headstock, force lubrication and flame hardening of the bed and other wear items.

In 1955 Monarch was the first U.S. machine builder to build and demonstrate a NC lathe. Monarch would be a major NC and CNC lathe builder into the early 1980's. In 1963 Monarch purchased the Eudlane (sp) Machine company, builder of drilling machines, in Cortland, NY, and renamed it Monarch Cortland. In 1968, Monarch bought Stamco in New Bremen, OH. In 1973 Monarch bought the English lathe maker Dean, Smith and Grace.

By the beginning of the 1980's Monarch was seeing record profits from all divisions, but by the end of the decade Monarch was hard hit (along with the rest of the U.S. machine tool industry). Monarch try to regain market share in the CNC lathe market by introducing the Ultra-Center with its patent tool turret changer which allowed the lathe to change 24 tools in less than 30 seconds, and to do complete change over in less than 6 minutes. It also introduced the smaller Predator CNC lathe that was originally designed by Dean, Smith and Grace, just before Monarch closed this division in 1993. These lathes help win market share but it was not enough to keep the lathe division profitable and it was sold to the Lucas group in 1997, which continued operations under the name Monarch Lathe LP.

Monarch Machine Tool change it name to Genesis World Wide and concentrated on the Stamco coil processing equipment. Genesis sold off the Cortland division in 2000 which keep the name Monarch Machine Tool Co. In 2002 Genesis World Wide went into bankruptcy."

Hmm..that's weird about Genesis World Wide. I just worked at Herr Voss Stamco in Callery, PA for a brief stint last year, producing the industrial rolls, and the company that owns Herr Voss Stamco is Genesis World Wide

Originally Posted by Zonko

Well, selling Weilers they are at least offering the finest toolroom lathes made in Germany

Those Weiler's are the bee's knees! I ran one in Texas for a while making oil drilling equipment (API threads and such). I have never run such a user-friendly conversationally programmed CNC lathe before that was so easy to create complex geometry or just run like a manual

Originally Posted by Putch

Hmm..that's weird about Genesis World Wide. I just worked at Herr Voss Stamco in Callery, PA for a brief stint last year, producing the industrial rolls, and the company that owns Herr Voss Stamco is Genesis World Wide

That would be Genesis Worldwide II, Inc. - the reorganized version of Genesis World Wide that emerged out of banktruptcy. Genesis Worldwide reorganization of the Monarch Machine Tool company, and with Monarch Cortland as the March Machine tool division, Stamco, Stamco UK, and couple German companies. Genesis bought Herr Voss around 2000 just before the market tanked, which created too high of a debt load and sank them. On the way down they sold off everything expect the coil processing companies (which was their man focuse), but they did not generate enough cash to stop their slide into Bankrutpcy. On a side note, the president of Genesis was forced out, and he went to Bridgeport Machine, as president and rode that ship into bankruptcy.

I wonder how many lathes those 483 employees would make in a year, and how many guys it would take to make the same number of machine tools today.
I know that Haas is making something like 100 machines a month in Oxnard, in a million square foot factory that has 300 CNC machines making parts for machine tools in it. I wonder if they have more or less than 483 employees?
I know they have something like 40 job openings posted right now. So they are expanding, and hiring.
My guess is that the number of employees per machine is less than monarch in the 30's, and the complexity of the machines is higher as well.

I wonder if the complexity of a CNC machine is higher than a manual Monarch lathe. The CNC machine has fewer gears, fewer mechanism parts (as in the quick change gear box, and apron). Monarch made the parts in house, using production machine tools with human operators. A manual Monarch lathe had a lot more smaller parts, a lot more castings, and a lot more individual production machining operations done using jigs and fixtures. Something like a Haas CNC machine would use a lot of off-the-shelf components like motors for feed drives, ball screws and nuts, scales and readers, etc. What Monarch did with changes of gears (as in a headstock or QCG box), Haas likely does with various motor drives and CNC.

Monarch had things figured out in their plant, and there was probably a high productivity rate amongst the employees. As onerous as sitting at a gang drill running parts thru with a drill jig, or feeding parts thru a production mill sounds, people did it day in and day out and did the job well. No sitting with a Disc Man or similar, no air conditioned shops. Just work, get the work out, and punch the clock with a production ticket. Different times, different work ethic. Maybe a piecework rate or bonus, maybe a good union contract in the shop and a company ethic. It was different era, and people were members of unions in a lot of the machine tool plants. They worked at jobs the modern generations would consider boring, in conditions the modern generation would not tolerate. They bought homes, sent their kids on to college, paid their bills, went on union picnics and company picnics or bowled on company teams. If the management set up a pedestal fan in summer to blow a breeze down the aisle in the shop, this was big doings. A guy might move up from the production machine tools to something a little better. Plenty more people stayed where they were, running production machine tools doing one specific operation. Something like putting a part into a drill jig took care, get the part put in with a chip against it and the hole locations would be off.... If a drill dulled and walked off center, despite the jig, these were the kinds of things that caused a job to be rejected by the inspector. People worked at hand scraping, and they used to brag about getting the chips to come off smoking when they rough scraped machine ways. People worked hard, did not know any different conditions or lesser ethic, and the lathes got built well. Look at the pictures taken in the Hendey plant.

Haas has a new plant, probably air conditioned. CNC machine tools used in making the new Haas CNC machining centers. Are the employees as "involved" or having the same sort of stick-to-it or pride or company loyalty or ethic as the people at Monarch ? Maybe not. An employee with a Disc Man in his/her ear is not going to have the same ways of making the job happen and time pass as someone who was sitting in an un airconditioned shop with a pedestal fan blasting air down the aisle and the mist of soluble oil in the air, savoring a few moments leaned against the shop wall at break and joking with other employees or talking about simple things like a vegetable garden or fishing vs what s--t they bought at the mall or the latest big screen TV they just have to have. SOme of Monarch's employees were on union committees, and dealt with management "accross the table" and agreed on contracts. They had a stake in things, and there was respect on both sides of the aisle. In today's world, that kind of respect and loyalty simply do not exist. Listen to a disc on the Disc Man, punch a button on the CNC machining center, and don;t give a s--t about the company or the job.

Sorry if I am cynical. I come from the breed who had the fans blasting in the shop in summer, and the noise, heat and mist of cutting oils in the air permeating our clothing and skin. If the foreman handed us a quart of beer at afternoon break, told me I was doing a good job at break time in front of the older hands, and the shop steward joked with the foreman and we all shared a laugh, it was something we all felt good about. Simpler and different times, but that is going back about 45 years.

My guess is Haas takes care of their employees, and the productivity HAS to be higher given the use of CNC machining centers. Haas machine tools are probably NOT as complex as Monarch's lathes, and probably do NOT require anywhere near the degree of hand fitting and assembly that Monarch required. Different times, different breed of employee, different class of work. A light-year of difference, Apples and Oranges, IMO.

It must have been real sad at the end. I have an 1968 Ingersoll planer mill that came out of Monarch in Sidney. Originally it was at Fairbanks Morse, so Monarch bought it used. It was filthy and not maintained, definitely not in a condition one would expect form a machine tool builder. I was truly amazed at some of the things I found. I bought it already apart but it was obvious Monarch put it right on the floor with no foundation from how it was wired, and it is 100' long! I did get a bunch of photos showing castings set up on it. They appear to be taken for reference. Probably some of the last photos ever taken from in the plant. The photo is the mill new at Ingersoll in 1968.

This country has lost more industry than most ever had.

I'll bet Monarch had a modern (for the day) facility, very serious, built w/o compromise. Can't imagine them cranking out the machines they did in with a drafty ill-lit shop- American Tool built a snazzy building in 1917 to up their game (note bottom of page), unclear if it was climate controlled back then but it was by WW2- or at least the "important" parts were.