Photo by Peter Engeldinger Director of Strategic Marketing Rahil Hasan (left) and Lead Generation Engineer Jim Spoon celebrating 60 years of Windings Inc., New Ulm.

NEW ULM — Two Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. The Parker Solar Probe. Saturn. This is the world of Windings, the local manufacturing company with parts in outer space.

“What I always like to talk about is we have parts spanning from the sun to Saturn,” said Jim Spoon, Lead Generation Engineer at Windings.

“We have parts that are actually heading to Saturn now to do studies,” Spoon said, “It’s just fun to be able to work on those types of projects and see that. When years go by and we visit Mars, I always think, well, these things are probably going to be in a museum at some point.”

“And that’s just one aspect of what we do,” Spoon said. “We do a lot with oil and gas and the exploration of oil and different things. We have very robust and rugged motors that we supply to that industry.”

Spoon has been with Windings for 30 years. He started in the manufacturing engineering side, then moved to the sales department, and he also did some program management. Now he is part of the marketing department with Rahil Hasan, who is Director of Strategic Marketing at Windings.

Windings has 103 employees in their New Ulm location. They’ve become a global company as well, with locations in Mexico, California and another Minnesota site in Eden Prairie, where Hasan works.

“That’s where our sales and technology center is,” Hasan said. “We’ve got a dozen people there, and that gives us more presence in the Twin Cities.”

Windings moved into their current location on Somsen Street in the New Ulm Industrial Park in 2020, after having been spread over three different locations in the city.

“What’s nice about when we purchased this building is we own several acres around the building,” Hasan said. “So we’re not restricted by space.”

Windings is all about attention to detail.

“When we talk about electric motors, we don’t do commodity,” Spoon said. “Washing machine motors, dishwashing motors – that’s not what we’re interested in.”

“When people come here, it really comes down to, ‘How much attention to detail do you have?’ That has to be more individually handled than what a machine can do. We like to deal with the critical applications, things that have to have redundancies. It’s not like we can fly to Mars and get that part because it didn’t work. It has to work.”

And with that need for attention to detail, Windings has developed a robust training program through their human resources department.

“What we do is bring them in, show them this is what you need to do,” Spoon said. “Talk to people out there. But then we separate those new individuals, put them in a different area where they can work comfortably and at their own pace to gain knowledge that they need before they go out to the floor and really compete with the other people out there.”

“We are always on the lookout for good technical talent,” Hasan said. “One of our challenges is, as we ramp up, getting people with good talent.”

Windings is proud of the culture of growth they have established as a 100% employee owned company with an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan).

“Each employee is given shares in the company which are then sold back to the company at the end of their employment,” Hasan said.

Hasan said they have a development plan for each employee based on each worker’s interests and goals, that they custom tailor for them.

“Maybe they want to get exposure to a certain process, maybe they want to get exposure to a certain function. We say, ‘How can we get you some training to support you in that?’ And let them have a say in how their career develops.”