The Story of Methods Manufacturing, LLC

Rick Gelscheit, the founder of Methods Manufacturing, LLC, has close to four decades of experience in machining. His strengths include the ability to find creative solutions that meet and surpass clients’ requirements and expectations. He has established a reputation as the go-to source for machined plastics, injection molding, and turned metal components.

His training in the trade began in 1982 when he joined his father who was previously a shop manager for Fortune 500 company, John Crane, and had just opened his own machine shop. Rick had finished his hitch in the U.S. Army and was studying business in college when his father called him. In the shop, Rick handled the office while beginning to learn how to operate the machines. Due to his father’s illness, Rick soon found himself in the hot seat running the shop. He hired moonlighting machinists – “really top-notch tradesmen” – and continued his education by learning machining from them.

In time, he was the tradesman and was teaching others. He became fluent in a wide range of manufacturing disciplines, while establishing himself as a trusted source for plastic production parts with tight tolerances and critical surface finishes. At the same time, he continued to train in order to keep up with evolving technologies in machining and injection molding.

While he had opportunities to expand Methods Manufacturing, LLC, he felt that didn’t fit his business model. His goal is to provide creative solutions in machining that produce excellence with consistently superior results. That confidence in his work is nowhere more prevalent than providing precision parts in NSF food grade materials and specialized engineering plastics serving military and commercial OEMs. The company has a strong history in food and beverage processing and dispensing, as well as companies that provide hydraulic and fuel dispensing equipment.

His and his father’s experience taught him that clients are often lost in the shuffle when dealing with larger machining companies. Projects they submit have to go through multiple departments, where details can be lost or translated inaccurately. As Rick puts it, “These larger shops have departments for everything and too many cubicles where a project has to go through five or six different desks. Things can fall between the cracks.” At Methods Manufacturing, LLC, when a client brings a project in, it is walked through the process without changing hands. They make sure that the client’s intentions are fully understood, and everything is done to achieve that machining objective with precision and timeliness. “It’s not a cookie-cutter our-way-or-no-way shop.”

Rick started Methods Manufacturing, LLC, in 1996 as an outgrowth of the company his father had started. They specialize in plastics, particularly food-grade plastics machining and injection molding for the food and beverage OEM industry.