This Is What US Manufacturing Excellence Actually Looks Like
- Tony Gunn
- May 22
- 5 min read
By Tony Gunn | The WorldWide Machinist
Everyone loves to talk about the future of manufacturing.
AI. Automation. Lights-out facilities. Digital twins. The next big thing is always around the corner, and the headlines can't get enough of it.
But this week, I went in the opposite direction.
I spent time inside two American shops that don't care about headlines. They care about showing up — every single day — for decades. One has been doing it since 1893. The other turned their entire workforce into owners. Both of them reminded me what US manufacturing excellence actually looks like when the cameras aren't rolling and nobody's watching.
These aren't viral moments. These are legacies.
Let me take you through it.
Stop 1
Oster Manufacturing: 130 Years of Showing Up
Oster Manufacturing was founded in 1893.
Let that sink in for a second.
This company existed before the Wright brothers flew an airplane. Before Ford started mass-producing cars. Before most of the modern world even understood what industrial manufacturing would eventually become. While the rest of the world was still figuring out electricity, Oster was already on the shop floor building things.
Surviving in manufacturing for over 130 years is not an accident. It's not a marketing strategy. It's generations of people waking up early, solving problems, and refusing to quit when things got hard. Wars. Recessions. Market crashes. Outsourcing waves. Technological revolutions. Every economic rollercoaster imaginable — and Oster rode every single one of them without blinking.
Think about what that actually means. The Great Depression hit — Oster kept going. World War II changed everything about American industry — Oster adapted. The outsourcing wave of the 1980s gutted manufacturing communities across the country — Oster stayed. The 2008 financial crisis — still there. Every single time the world tried to shake them, they planted their feet deeper.
Their reputation was built around industrial threading equipment that became known across manufacturing. Every shop has that one ancient machine sitting in the corner that looks like it weighs as much as a submarine anchor. The kind of machine that's been there longer than anyone working the floor can remember. Chances are, it has Oster's DNA in it somewhere.
Walking through the facility today felt like walking through living manufacturing history.
Not a museum. Not a monument. A working, breathing shop floor that has been producing real parts for real customers through every chapter of American history. The machines have stories. The walls have stories. The people have stories. And every single one of them is worth telling.
We were joined by the incredible teams at Merrifield Machinery Solutions, Hurco Companies, and CMZ for what turned into one of the most memorable days of filming we've had in a long time. Huge thank you to the entire Oster team for opening the doors and sharing this story with us.
The videos coming from this visit are going to be special. Stay close — you won't want to miss them.
Stop 2 — Ideal Fabricators & Statewide Boring & Machine: Blue Collar Still Builds the Future
Ideal Fabricators, Inc. & Statewide Boring & Machine is proof that blue collar still builds the future.
Founded in 1984 in Belleville, Michigan, Statewide Boring & Machine built its reputation doing the jobs nobody else wants to touch. Giant machines. Hard jobs. Tight tolerances. We're talking cranes shaking the floor, steel plates the size of studio apartments, and machining centers capable of handling parts up to 30 feet long and 80 tons.
Eighty tons. Just sit with that for a moment.
This isn't a shop for the faint of heart. This is heavy industry in the truest sense of the word — where the work is physically demanding, the tolerances are completely unforgiving, and the team doesn't go home until the job is done right. No shortcuts. No excuses. Just production.
But here's the part of the story that deserves way more attention than it typically gets:
In 2022, Ideal Fabricators and Statewide Boring became 100% employee owned.
Read that again.
One hundred percent. Every person sweeping the floors, programming the machines, welding the fabrications, inspecting the tolerances, and shipping the parts — they all own a piece of this business. And when that happens, everything changes. The culture changes. The pride changes. The accountability changes. The way people show up on a Monday morning changes.
That's the difference between renting a house and building a home.
Employee ownership isn't just a feel-good story. It's a competitive advantage that shows up on the shop floor every single day. When the people doing the work have a real stake in the outcome, quality means something different. Attention to detail means something different. Customer relationships mean something different. You're not working for a paycheck — you're working for your own business.
That energy is impossible to fake. And customers feel it.
The Partner Who Never Left
Now here's the next part of this story — and it's one that every shop owner needs to hear.
Most people think machine tool distributors only show up when there's a shiny new machine involved. New purchase. New install. New commission. New invoice. And then you don't hear from them again until the next sales cycle rolls around.
Not Merrifield Machinery Solutions.
Standing right beside Ideal Fabricators and Statewide Boring for well over a decade has been the Merrifield team. Here's what makes this remarkable: there aren't even machines inside the shop that Merrifield sold. Not a single one.
Year after year, they still show up. Service calls? They're there. Machine issues? They're there. Support needed at the worst possible moment? They're there. Because for Merrifield, service isn't a department you call after the sale — it's the entire foundation of how they operate.
Anybody can be your best friend when a purchase order is getting signed. That's easy. The real character of a company shows up at 6:30 in the morning when a spindle alarm shuts production down, everybody's stressed, parts need to be shipped, and somebody has to answer the phone.
That's where reputations are built. That's where partnerships are forged.
That's Merrifield.
What Merrifield understands is something many companies in this industry forgot a long time ago: the machine sale is not the finish line. It's the beginning of the responsibility. And that philosophy — that the relationship matters more than the transaction — is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps a shop like Statewide Boring trusting the same partner for over a decade.
What These Two Shops Taught Me This Week
Two stops. Two completely different chapters of American manufacturing history. One truth running through both of them.
US manufacturing excellence isn't built in a single moment. It doesn't come from one great product launch or one record-breaking quarter. It's built the same way Oster built 130 years of reputation — one day at a time, one part at a time, one generation passing the torch to the next and saying don't drop it.
It's built the way Statewide Boring built a workforce so committed to quality that they became owners. The way Merrifield built a relationship so genuine and so consistent that they keep showing up for machines they never even sold.
The future of American manufacturing isn't just about the next technology or the next innovation. It's about the shops, the people, and the partnerships that refuse to cut corners — no matter how many decades pass, no matter how many economic storms roll through, no matter how loud the noise gets.
These are the stories that don't make the headlines often enough.
That's exactly why we tell them.
Full videos are dropping soon on The WorldWide Machinist channels.
Subscribe, follow, and stay close — these ones are going to remind you why American manufacturing still matters.
Tags: #USManufacturingExcellence #Manufacturing #AmericanManufacturing #CNC #MachineShop #EmployeeOwned #OsterManufacturing #IdealFabricators #StatewideBoringAndMachine #MerrifieldMachinery #Hurco #CMZ #TheWorldWideMachinist #TonyGunn #BlueCollar #PrecisionMachining
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