In a world of cutting emissions and designing sustainable machines, it’s often the shiny new innovations that get all the headlines. But one aspect of fluid power that’s often overlooked is its part in the circular economy. Legacy components still have a place in the mobile and industrial machines that may be running for decades.
One such company that specializes in this is QCC, which helps get stranded machines back up and running with parts that might be obsolete otherwise. Based just outside of Chicago, QCC (formerly Quality Control Corp.) is a provider of product lifecycle continuity services. That means they work closely with tier one manufacturers and OEMs to support growth or legacy product lines that still power equipment in the field — sometimes decades after the original release. QCC will either private-label manufacture or license these products, or in some cases, acquire those lines, depending upon how strategic or non-strategic they are to the customer’s overall product basket, said Jon Goreham, CEO.
QCC supports OEMs and end users by manufacturing support growth or legacy product lines that still power equipment in the field.
“What that means is we work with Parker Hannifin, Bosch Rexroth, Danfoss, Woodward, and others in that space, to private label or contract manufacture top level assemblies. We also do some core manufacturing, but most of our manufacturing in terms of machining, is for the products that we manage in one of those three channels,” Goreham said.
“We can best describe ourselves as a tier one-and-a-half, we do everything that a tier one does, with the exception being we don’t create intellectual property. We don’t create new designs or look for new applications. We manage the existing IP and support the installed base of our customers’ customers’ customers,” Goreham said.
The goal is to keep older equipment from the OEMs and the remanufacturers running. This type of equipment is measured in decades, Goreham said, so QCC helps customers sustain their brand promise and allow the end user to keep machines running.
QCC works with fluid power manufacturers to continue manufacturing legacy lines, like this Parker Hannifin valve line.
QCC employs about 200 people, including 14 engineers, most of whom live within 3 miles of their five manufacturing facilities. The company, which was founded in 1952, has doubled in the last three years. That growth comes from three macro-trends: reshoring of manufacturing that’s creating a need for capacity of growth products; consolidation in the industry which is causing a reduction of footprint; and product line simplification.
This includes everything from orbital steering valves used in mining trucks to electronics supporting stationary diesel engines in critical applications — including the power units for Patriot missile launchers.
For instance, the orbital steering valve was purchased from Parker Hannifin. It was originally designed in the late 1970s, and it goes into main steering systems for the largest diesel mining trucks in the world. There are 40,000 of these mining trucks in existence and these steering valves are an integral part. QCC bought the product line from Parker in 2018 and has been building and supporting that product line so those trucks continue to run.
David Price, VP of Sales and Marketing, added that when Parker decided to focus on newer technologies, throughput was impacted by the lack of investment. Purchasing the line allowed QCC to revitalize it and ensure the steering operations on these mining vehicles stayed safely in operation.
Here, a QCC employee runs a line manufacturing Danfoss legacy products.
Overall, QCC has about between 40 and 45 brands that it either manages for itself or for its customers of older products.
Goreham noted that QCC’s sustainability impact isn’t just environmental. It’s economic and deeply personal.
This mission is especially relevant as sustainability discussions increasingly focus on circularity. By providing OE-quality components for decades-old equipment, QCC is helping to reduce waste, avoid premature scrapping, and minimize the environmental cost of manufacturing replacement machinery.
“If we’re not here to make some of these parts, it’s pretty hard to keep some of this older equipment running,” Goreham added. “Even though some of our older products don’t have the latest and greatest carbon footprint when they’re operating, the carbon footprint required to make a new one is more than just keeping the old one going.”
QCC’s gear pump line
From revitalizing older manufacturing equipment to partnering with high schools on internships and career development, QCC’s “We Sustain” mantra reflects a company built to serve both industry and community for the long haul.
“What we say, is we sustain a lot of things. We sustain our community, we sustain our people, we sustain our investors, we sustain our customers, we sustain their customers, we sustain the install base. So that’s how we ended up with the ‘We Sustain’ as our moniker,” Goreham said. “That’s really who we are.”
QCC
qccorp.com
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