so many other industries don’t have as much room to grow and be successful. 
inning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit,” said Vince Lombardi, Super Bowl winning coach of the Green Bay Packers. so many other industries don’t have as much room to grow and be successful. inning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit,” said Vince Lombardi, Super Bowl winning coach of the Green Bay Packers.“I pictured the dirty environment of Pittsburgh. I was afraid to come out with black lung disease. But Pacesetter is immaculate and modern. So my first impression was wow, this is not what I expected.”
He started with Kennesaw, Georgia-based Pacesetter in a talent management position, moved up to head the HR department and, along the way, “fell in love with the metals industry.” Philipp eventually entered sales and when Pacesetter sought a leader for the NSPS Metals joint venture, he threw his hat in the ring.
“So many other industries don’t have as much room to grow and be successful,” he says, but metals offers “unlimited potential for someone with abilities.”
The facility will house two Red Bud Industries multi-blanking lines, one relocated from Pacesetter’s suburban Chicago service center, very near a Ford stamping plant, and the second from its existing Houston plant. The Red Bud multi-blanking lines can take in coils up to 25 tons, gauges up to 0.135 inch, and widths up to 75 inches. The blanking line from Chicago has been completely overhauled, according to Philipp. “It will purr like new for us.” Machine Concepts built two new in-line cassette levelers, one for thicker material and one for light gauge.
The warehouse includes 10 truck bays, accommodating four flatbed trucks on the receiving end and six on the shipping end.
This carrier “ships millions of tons of goods across the border” and has its own load transfer facilities at the border. “We are not freight and logistics experts so they handle all the administrative paperwork.”
there exists a need for a company that is willing to work hard and supply material. we are pushing for high volume and pretty quickly. “Pacesetter has steered clear of automotive, but our Nippon side is a huge automotive supplier, so we might be cracking that open with Tier II and stampers,” Philipp says. “There is a huge automotive population in the South. We are open for opportunity.”
NSPS Metals expects the new service center will be fully functional in August, September at the latest. Inventory for production will start arriving in April/May.
“We are in the market to move metals,” he says. “We are leveraging Pacesetter’s skills with those of Nippon and its trading company. The partners have very ambitious growth targets. There exists a need for a company that is willing to work hard and supply material. We are pushing for high volume and pretty quickly,” he says.
Although the startup is now using SteelMan software, it is considering a new ERP platform with Microsoft Dynamic and metal-related features bolted on. That migration will occur within two years.
“We are putting protocols in place around the data,” he continues. “Using data to make decisions is very important. As we build and design everything from our organization chart forward, we want people from data-driven environments. We hired people from outside the steel industry, people who know how to react and analyze. We want to teach them metal, and they bring us correct ideas on how to do things better.”
He contrasts the “stacks of printed reports,” of which “executives look at less than 5 percent,” with screen views, tableaus and user interface, whereby “you can see issues, trends and get minds flowing” into the soundest direction.
The way to manage that, he says, is to “beat into the heads of commercial to communicate: Where is the material? When is it coming in? Let customers know everything that happens from the time the purchase order is received.”
The sales staff will be urged not to “run from those conversations when they are behind. We push the communication outward. And there has been a fantastic response from customers. As long as they know what’s happening, we are catching their needs early and responding quickly.
“You aren’t just a steel supplier,” Philipp says, “You are providing a value-added service that they didn’t know was value add, in terms of market information and what inventory matters most to them.”
as long as customers know what’s happening, we are catching their needs early and responding quickly. 
“We already won a bunch of new customers,” he says. “I like to set up shop quickly and then pour gas on the fire. We hired new salespeople who are going after new customers—that is their 100 percent focus. We have a hyper-focus on commercial activity, and we are already selling tons from the new facility.”
“We recognized a need to have a company with deep roots in the industry but a forward-thinking approach. We merge cultures and leverage two sides, Nippon and Pacesetter, to help our customers be very successful. Our idea is to win big and show the industry how to evolve. And by doing so, you can do well.”
By year five, he expects NSPS Metals will move 135,000 tons a year, and at a speculative $1,000 per ton, that’s a $135 million company.
“The best representation of what we are is a mid-30s American COO [Philipp] and a mid-50s Japanese executive [Nakano] doing this together. It’s wisdom and aggressive, forward thinking being pushed together.”
