Ed Crawford delivers Spring 2001 Mellen Lecture
"When I think of John Carroll, I think of the tower," Ed Crawford told an LSC Conference Room crowd yesterday. The CEO of Park-Ohio Industries, Inc., spent the day speaking to student, faculty and public audiences as part of the Mellen Lecture Series that brings leaders of publicly held Ohio corporations to campus.
He was introduced by Dr. David Schirm, Associate Professor of Economics
and Finance.
"I attended night school at Carroll for five years and took typing in the tower," Crawford recalled. "On one very warm evening, after going up and down those stairs several times, I said to myself, 'Ed, you've been thinking about starting your own business for a long time -- you'd better get on with it!'"
Crawford took his own advice and established Cleveland Steel Container, an inner-city company that made steel pails. He then developed an expertise in corporate recovery, forming the Crawford Group and eventually finding Park-Ohio, "a slightly damaged company," where he took over the helm in 1992. Crawford led Park-Ohio through 31 consecutive quarters of increased earnings and built the company to 4,500 employees, until the downturn in the automobile and truck sectors of his market last year ended that string and forced him to make "some very painful decisions in the third and fourth quarters. We're down to 3,800 now, but we're healthy, we've organized ourselves, and it will serve us well going forward."
Indeed, through ILS/RB&W Logistics and other subsidiaries, Park-Ohio is transforming itself from a manufacturing company into a leader in logistics/supply cain management, a field, Crawford said, that holds "the greatest opportunities young people have had to pursue in the last 10 years ... And you're in the right place. You can't do much better than John Carroll."
Crawford said if the students he'd talked to earlier in the day in the Boler School of Business were any indication, "the school's doing something right." When he told them the word he most associated with a successful entrepreneur was "rejection," and asked them why that might be, a student replied, "You're taking someone who says, 'No,' and converting that hurtful energy into positive thinking and power." Crawford nodded, "If all I did was count the 'No's,' I'd still be taking typing in the tower."
Next fall's Mellen Lecture will take place at 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 1, and feature James Mooney, Chairman and CEO of the O M Group, Inc.