Smith Herrick LLC was formed in 2007 for the purpose of providing design and manufacturing services to the companies of Central Oregon. The background of the principals covers nearly all aspects of the development process from concept development and patent searching, to detailed product design and tooling, through the production and product testing process. The principals' background is in the area of electro-mechanical and lean manufacturing. All of their design work is done in a computer solid modeling system, SolidWorks, which is an industry standard. Their design philosophy can be summarized in four points:

• Make it simple
• Make it robust
• Minimize the number of parts
• Maximize the number of functions per part

Smith Herrick Manufacturing LLC was formed to supply dedicated manufacturing services to our customers. It currently operates out of a 6,500 sq ft facility in Bend, Oregon. The background and experience of the principals in lean manufacturing, product reliability, quality systems, manufacturing and supply chain management has led to these basic manufacturing tenants:

• Establish relationships with suppliers who have a demonstrated expertise
• Develop those suppliers to support your operations and utilize them to manage your inventory
• Provide your suppliers the opportunity for input
• Move as much of the subassembly as possible to your suppliers
• Provide clear, verifiable instructions to the manufacturing process
• Make quality inherent in the production process (do not "inspect" quality in to the product)
• Deliver to your customer what they expect and on time

John Herrick

John Herrick, one of the Principals in Smith Herrick, holds a bachelors degree in engineering and a masters degree in business administration. John began his career as a manufacturing engineer working for Freightliner Corporation in Portland, Oregon. While at Freightliner, John worked directly in the production operations and was responsible for costing, process planning, and component changeover. He was a member of a task force that worked directly with Microsoft to design and implement a Supply Chain Management system for the Freightliner aftermarket. He also worked as a service engineer and founded the reliability engineering department.

John left Freightliner in 1995 and assumed the position of Chief Engineer at Williams Controls. In this position John was responsible for all product design, product reliability testing and product manufacturing processes and methods. He managed a department of over 30 engineers and technicians. While at Williams, John led the working group which implemented the QS 9000 automotive level quality system and played a major role in the implementation of the ISO 14001 environmental quality standard. Williams also implemented the Toyota production system (lean manufacturing) in 1997. John was an integral part of this implementation and carried some of its concepts into the product design process. John was also trained in 6 Sigma and holds several product design patents for electro-mechanical devices.

Mathew Smith

Mathew S. Smith is a principal at Smith Herrick and holds a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He started his engineering career early in machine design, building insulation reprocessing machines while still in middle school then moved into a wide range of disciplines ranging from titanium investment casting for the aerospace industry to medical machinery designed to implant drugs in a wax medium. His focus through his degree program was in robotics and mechanical devices.

He then went to work as an Engineer at Williams Controls and rose quickly to run projects for large international customers including, Freightliner, Kenworth, Peterbilt and Caterpillar. After just 2 years in the engineering department at Williams Controls he was appointed to China to spearhead the startup of a new manufacturing facility. In less than a year he established and ran the manufacturing facility including securing a building, hiring managers, sourcing components, qualifying suppliers, creating production equipment and machinery, and launching 3 product lines, one of which was production ready within 6 months.

After leaving Williams Controls and moving to Central Oregon he established Mathew Smith Consulting servicing local customers with his overseas experience and engineering background. A year later he partnered with John H. Herrick to form Smith Herrick Engineering which successfully grew at a rapid rate establishing itself as a competitive fast moving and creative engineering firm in Oregon. After 18 months the pair established Smith Herrick Manufacturing to service the production needs of various customers who required a fast moving manufacturing environment to bring products to life in a short duration.