While rml's Larry Green says it is 'waiting for the world to start again', it is already working on $20 million worth of enquiries. Photo / Sarah Ivey

While rml's Larry Green says it is 'waiting for the world to start again', it is already working on $20 million worth of enquiries. Photo / Sarah Ivey

A Waikato company is showing just how big a boost a business can get from hiring the right people.

That's why Larry Green, managing director and co-owner of automation specialist rml, says the greatest threat to the company's ongoing success is "not being able to attract enough quality people".

"The company has leaped ahead because of the input of people who work for the company. The culture of the place is very positive and we have a feeling we can take on anything," he says.

Rml, based in Te Rapa, just out of Hamilton, began life in the 1980s as a manufacturer of low-cost components for the dairy industry. A major transformation has since seen it become a world-class automation engineering company.

This happened after Green and Peter Botting bought a stake of more than 50 per cent in 2003.

The two aspired to establish a culture that was inclusive. "I have found that if you tell someone what to do, they do what they think you want," says Green.

"If you include people and ask for their input, you normally get a lot more than you expect."

In 2005 Green read Stephen Covey's The 8th Habit - From Effectiveness to Greatness, a book about creating greatness. What followed was a major change in the company's makeup.

It also helped that many key people joined rml just after 2000. Among its staff are dairy industry old hand Ross Townshend, director of automation Daryl Joyce, Keith McCracken (ex Tetrapak), and R&D champion Tim Parker, who was once a mechanic for Kiwi motorcycle racing star Hugh Anderson.

Rml has divisions dealing with machinery, project management, automation, and design and service. Over the past four years the company has changed its business to one focused on innovation.

One of its showpieces is a laboratory automation system for SAITL Dairy Laboratories in Te Rapa, which handles and tests some 20,000 vials of milk a day.

Rml designed automation solutions to help SAITL handle the many vials that had to be opened and closed; loaded and unloaded. Part of the project involved designing a high-speed robot mounted on an overhead gantry rail that helps cut the manual labour needed to sort the vials.

SAITL's general manager, Margaret Malloch, says she was impressed by the team she worked with at rml, describing them as being open to suggestion, attentive, innovative and technically capable.