Take a tour of the “largest barrel company that you’ve never heard of”
One of the biggest barrel manufacturers in the world is based in Knoxville. Tactical Kinetics keys to success have been good leadership, a passionate team, and high-levels of technical competence.
John McCracken and Jeff Kaplan started Tactical Kinetics in a little garage in 2011. Today, their company is internally referred to as “the largest barrel company that you’ve never heard of.”
That is because this Knoxville-based company supplies some of the biggest original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) barrels for guns. It is quite likely that if you have ever owned a gun – or known someone who has, the barrel has been precisely manufactured in Knoxville by Tactical Kinetics.
However, a business this robust doesn’t become an overnight sensation. It took more than a decade of hard work in East Tennessee for McCracken and Kaplan to reach this point.
“We decided in 2017 to exclusively focus on making barrels,” McCracken said. “It was our way into an already over-crowded market and industry.”
“We wanted to focus on the area of the industry which had the highest barrier to entry – and why? Because making barrels is precise, it takes high levels of technical competence, and requires expensive equipment that not every manufacturer can afford,” Kaplan shared.
For example, the drilling must be very precise and straight over a long distance. If it’s not, the rifle barrel won’t shoot straight. As you can imagine, getting the details right is very important.
The co-founders have always operated with the mentality that if they land the business, they’ll figure out how to execute the order – whether that meant adding people, machines, new materials, or skills. What makes it even more impressive is that they have bootstrapped nearly the whole venture.
Through their mentality, McCracken and Kaplan have proudly come to be known as “the barrel guys.”
Today, their two-building property in West Knoxville produces between 20-25,000 barrels per month and only sells them at high volume. As previously stated, this level of efficiency didn’t just happen overnight. Kaplan said it is the result of many years of being intentional about incorporating lean practices into their operations.
It started when they switched their production from batch to flow – which sounds like a small shift, but it completely changed the way Tactical Kinetics made parts.
“It dropped our waste, dropped our production cost, and decreased the amount of time we it took to make the barrels,” McCracken said. “Plus, this gives us more time to be extra thorough, checking each piece and part for accuracy as it goes through the flow.”
The partners explained that Tactical Kinetics now produces the barrels so fast, that they can sell a batch before they even pay the invoice for raw materials. This allows for significant cash flow and smoothness of operations.
Another element that has made the production so efficient is the integration of automation and robots in the facility. Behind a cage in Tactical Kinetics’ facility is a self-sufficient robot that helps sort and compile parts. However, Kaplan believes the operation will never be fully robotic. Instead, he believes co-bots (or robots assisted by humans) are more in line with the company’s vision.
“Robots aren’t always the safe choice because they aren’t programmed with empathy or human safety at the forefront. They also take a full-time engineer to implement,” he said.
You may think the efficiency, innovation, and willingness to build the business around their client’s needs is what set the company apart. But, after spending an afternoon at Tactical Kinetics it’s obvious there’s more to the story – sound, quality leadership.
The founders, McCracken, Plant Manager, and Kaplan, Sales Manager are business partners, yes. But they’re also best friends and entrepreneurs to their core.
They both grew up bird hunting, shared the same sentiment for excellent company culture, and poked jokes at each other every few minutes. That comradery ripples through the air amongst all the employees at the plant.
“There’s a reason we started this company – we are both unemployable,” McCracken laughed. “We were tired of working eight hours a day for someone else and decided to work 18 hours a day for ourselves.”
They joked around but insisted that it was true, especially in the early days of the company’s founding. They also believe that Tactical Kinetics’ potential will never be fully realized – even after more than a decade of operations.
“We are a testament to a constant evolution of processes, failing upwards every time,” McCracken said.
To learn more about the homegrown company, visit the website.
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