Rogan Corp. is now in its 11th incarnation as a manufacturer.

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In our world of rapidly evolving technology, manufacturers everywhere are challenged to simply keep up with the times. As consumers continue to look to the newest machinery, trinkets and appliances to streamline their lives, businesses benefit by creating their parts. Similarly, as we move toward new technology and phase out the old, there are manufacturers that are finding themselves in dying markets.   

Northbrook, Ill.-based Rogan Corp. refuses to be one of those manufacturers. Now in its 75th year, the company’s ability to take on new capabilities is its greatest asset. When demand waned for plastic knobs – the product Rogan has manufactured since the 1950s – it leveraged its core competencies and added gas-assist-injection molding.    

“We recognize that not all products have a 50-year life expectancy, so we’ve always been a company that looks ahead through strategic planning to see new developments in our marketplace,” Engineering Manager Jim Ritzema says. “We’ve always tried to stay ahead of our competition through strategic planning and process innovation.”   

Rogan continues to evolve and innovate with changing markets, recognizing that the strategy behind how the company is run is just as important as what Rogan actually makes. This has everything to do with the company’s determination and the loyalty of its people, Chairman Ed Rogan stresses, which fits with Rogan’s history of doing whatever it takes to survive.“We were born in the Great Depression and I am most proud of the fact that we have reinvented ourselves [11] times over the past 75 years,” he says. “Our people are loyal overachievers who have embraced the…company culture of making changes for organizational survival, especially in this current recession.”   

Rogan’s current line of build-to-order plastic knobs “lets you cost-effectively adapt the size, color, studs and inserts of our knobs to fit your need,” it says.  

Industry Insight
Rogan is not impervious to the economy, and its proprietary product line sales are down, President David Schoessow notes. “However, the latest process that we’ve implemented, liquid silicone rubber – is really starting to take off for us right now,” he says. This is a development Rogan Corp. introduced in 2006.   

Schoessow says he sees “tremendous potential” in the bondable silicone rubber arena, and the company has recently purchased a local custom molding company to expand its capabilities. “We foresee the proprietary line basically as lower growth and our capital expenditures will be in the custom, two-shot and bondable silicon rubber markets,” he says.    

Rogan’s success is partly driven by customers’ needs, “and some is driven by our own planning and knowledge of the marketplace,” Schoessow notes. For instance, the company recently helped a medical manufacturer of drainage catheters redesign one of its new products.

“We worked with them and helped them design components for the drainage catheter that greatly enhanced the performance of their product and resulted in component consolidation, which eliminated some SKU numbers for their assembly,” Engineering Manager Jim Ritzema says. “That was such a success that two weeks ago they came to us with another opportunity to improve the design of one of their new products, and we are currently building another bondable silicone part for them to improve the performance of this new product.”

Supplier Bonds
Rogan has consistently provided unmatched quality and has been a market leader in terms of design, the company says. Part of its secret is to listen to feedback – or seek it outright – from its suppliers. One supplier with which Rogan has a particularly productive relationship is Unique Assembly & Decorating, a pad printing company. “We’ve worked with them on various custom plastic products that needed unique markings, and they had the quality and cost-effective capability to perform some subcontracting work,” Ritzema explains.